In a certain neighborhood are two families whose social and domestic animus illustrates the difference between ideality and the want of it.
The Daytons are a large, easy-natured, joyous race, hospitable, kindly, and friendly.
Nothing about their establishment is much above mediocrity. The grounds are tolerably kept, the table is tolerably fair, the servants moderately good, and the family character and attainments of the same average level.
Mrs. Dayton is a decent housekeeper, and so her bread be not sour, her butter not frowy, the food abundant, and the table-cloth and dishes clean, she troubles her head little with the niceties and refinements of the ménage.
She accepts her children as they come from the hand of Nature, simply opening her eyes to discern what they are, never raising the query what she would have had them,—forming no very high expectations concerning them, and well content with whatever develops.
A visitor in the family can easily see a thousand defects in the conduct of affairs, in the management of the children, and in this, that, and the other portion of the household arrangements; but he can see and feel, also, a perfect comfortableness in the domestic atmosphere that almost atones for any defects. He can see that in a thousand respects things might be better done, if the family were not perfectly content to have them as they are, and that each individual member might make higher attainments in various directions, were there not such entire satisfaction with what is already attained.
Trying each other by very moderate standards and measurements, there is great mutual complacency. The oldest boy does not get an appointment in college,—they never expected he would; but he was a respectable scholar, and they receive him with acclamations such as another family would bestow on a valedictorian. The daughters do not profess, as we are told, to draw like artists, but some very moderate performances in the line of the fine arts are dwelt on with much innocent pleasure. They thrum a few tunes on the piano, and the whole family listen and approve. All unite in singing in a somewhat discordant and uncultured manner a few psalm-tunes or songs, and take more comfort in them than many amateurs do in their well-drilled performances.
So goes the world with the Daytons; and when you visit them, if you often feel that you could ask more and suggest much improvement, yet you cannot help enjoying the quiet satisfaction which breathes around you.
Now right across the way from the Daytons live the Mores; and the Mores are the very opposites of the Daytons.
Everything about their establishment is brought to the highest point of culture. The carriage-drive never shows a weed, the lawn is velvet, the flower-beds ever-blooming, the fruit-trees and vines grow exactly like the patterns in the best pomological treatises. Within doors the housekeeping is faultless,—all seems to be moving in time and tune,—the table is more than good, it is superlative,—every article is in its way a model,—the children appear to you to be growing up after the most patent-right method, duly trained, snipped, and cultured, like the pear-trees and grape-vines. Nothing is left to accident, or done without much laborious consideration of the best manner of doing it; and the consequences, in the eyes of their simple, unsophisticated neighbors, are very wonderful.