Down the hill, across the pasture, in at the white gate, and up the two marble steps. The front door stands open unconcernedly. The house makes no stir at receiving its inmate back,—its inmate whose life it has held and brooded during his absence, waiting to reinvest him with it when he wants it again,—but there is a quiet sense of welcome, a content of returning, which is among the sweetest and most establishing of human experiences. The clock ticks steadily in the hall, its hands approaching the genial hour of supper-time. Within the open library door, the books dream on the shelves. Little sounds of a tranquil preparation come from the dining-room; the tea-kettle sings, the black kitten purrs. Blessed indoors! It draws a veil gently over the tired head, bewildered with much marveling, lays a cool hand over the eyes, says, 'Now rest, rest.' Indoors is like the Guardian Angel in Browning's poem.
After supper, one sits by the lamp and reads peacefully. Aunt Susan reads, too, on the other side of the big table, and Cousin Jane sews. The books and the pictures look on benignly, and even the furniture is instinct with a mute eloquence of companionship. The song of the night insects throbs without, and millers hurl themselves with soft thuds against the windows; an owl mutters to himself in the maple tree. But not for anything would one go out, not for anything would one leave this glowing, brooding, protecting indoors which one has regained. After a while, one goes upstairs and lays one's self in the safe white bed in one's own room. The windows are open to the night, but solid walls are all round about; and, before the sleepily closing eyes, gleam one's own peculiar cherished belongings in the creeping moonlight. Into the very heart of one's life one has returned at the close of the day, and there one goes to sleep. 'In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.'
And we will not? Is the discouraged clause, promptly succeeding to that most beautiful verse of Isaiah, true, then, of us? Are we going to despoil ourselves of all the poetry, the intimate meaning of our indoor life?
'A place in which to dress and undress—that is all I want of a house,' an energetic young woman said.
A bath-house would suit her perfectly. Perhaps that is what we are coming to—rows of bath-houses, with sleeping-bags stored up in them against the night. Alas for the pictures! Alas for the music! Alas for the books!
The books! There is a happy suggestion. I believe the books will save us. There is certainty nothing that objects with greater decision and emphasis to sleeping out of doors than a book—yes, even a volume of Walt Whitman. Books are obstinate in their way; they know their own minds, and there are some things which they will not do. The effect of leaving one in the orchard inadvertently over night has a final melancholy about it which most book-lovers understand poignantly. Could books be printed on india rubber and bound in water-proof cloth? Perhaps; but the method does not sound attractive enough to be feasible even in these practical days. No, I believe the books will save us. They are a great army and they have power; a steady conservative hold is theirs on their restless owners. Other threatening situations, they have saved and are constantly saving.
'I sometimes think I'd give up housekeeping, and not have a home any more,' one woman said, 'if it weren't for my books. But I can't part with them, nor yet can I get them all into one room; so here I stay.'
'Buy books?' exclaimed a New York man. 'No; it hurts them too much to move them.'
Which innocent implication has caused me many a thoughtful smile.
Essentially human,—with the humanity of the ages, not of a few decades,—books understand what man really wants, and what he must have, better than he does himself. In the serene and gracious indoors, they took up their places long ago, and there they remain, and there they will always make shift to abide. Perhaps, if we sit down close at their feet, we, too, may abide.