A man’s home-coming is not an end in itself, its objective is the woman; but a woman’s home-making exists both for the man and for itself. A woman needs to be alone with her house because she talks to it, and in a tongue really more natural than her talk with her husband, which is always better for having a little the company flavor, as in the seraglio. The most devoted wives are often those frankest in their abhorrence of a man in the house. It is because they do not like to keep their hearts working at high pressure too long at a time; they prefer the healthy relief of a glorious day of sorting or shopping between the master’s breakfast and his dinner.
It is a rare ménage that is not incommoded by having its males lunch at home. It is much better when a woman may watch their dear coat-tails round the corner for the day, with an equal exaltation in their freedom for the fray and her own. A woman whose males have their places of business neither on the great waters nor in the great streets, but in their own house, is of all women the most perpetually pitied by other women, and the most pathetically patient. She never looks quite like other women, this doctor’s, minister’s, professor’s, writer’s wife. Her eyes have a harassed patience, and her lips a protesting sweetness, for she does not belong to her house, and so she does not belong to herself. When a man’s business-making and a woman’s home-making live under the same roof, they never go along in parallel independence: always the man’s overlaps, invades. Kitchen and nursery are hushed before the needs of office and study, and the professional telephone call postpones the orders to the butcher. The home suffers, but the husband suffers more, for he is no longer a guest in his own house, with all a guest’s prerogatives; he now belongs there, and must take the consequences.
Fortunately the professional men-about-the-house are in small minority, and so are their housekeepers, but all women have sometimes to experience the upheaval incident on a man’s vacation at home; whether father’s, or husband’s, or college brother’s, or son’s, the effect is always the same: the house stands on its head, and for two days it kicks up its heels and enjoys it, but after two weeks, two months, that is, on the removal of the exciting stimulus, it sinks to coma for the rest of the season. The different professions differ in their treatment of a holiday, except that all men at home on a vacation act like fish on land or cats in water, and expect their womenfolk either to help them pant, or help them swim. They seem to go out a great deal,—at least they are always clamoring to have their garments prepared for sorties, social or piscatorial,—and yet they always seem to be under heel. Some men on a home holiday tinker all day long, others bring with them a great many books which they never read, and the result in both cases is that house-keeping becomes a prolonged picking up. All men at home on a vacation eat a great deal more than other men, or than at other times; but with the sole exception of the anomalous academic, who is always concerned for his gastronomy, they will eat anything and enjoy it,—and say so. A man at home for his holidays is always vociferously appreciative. His happiness is almost enough to repay a woman for the noise he makes, and the mess; yet statistics would show that during any man’s home vacation the women of the house lose just about as many pounds as the man gains. But what are women for, or homes?
After all, you can have a house without a man in it if you are quite sure you want to, but you cannot have a home without one. You cannot make a home out of women alone, or men alone; you have to mix them. Still every woman must admit, and every man with as much sense as a woman, that it’s very hard to make a home for any man if he is always in it. Every honest front door must confess that it is glad to see its master go forth in the morning; but this is only because it is so much gladder to see him come back at night.
III
Old-Clothes Sensations
PEOPLE whom penury has never compelled in infancy or adolescence to wear other people’s clothes have missed a valuable lesson in social sympathy. In our journey from the period when we first strutted thoughtlessly in our Cousin Charles’s cast-off coat on to the time when we resented its misfit, and thence to that latest and best day when we could bestow our own discarded jacket on poor little Cousin Billy, we have successively experienced all the gradations of soul between pauper and philanthropist. Most of us are fortunate enough to put away other people’s clothes when we put away the rest of childhood’s indignities; but our early experiences should make us thoughtful of those who have no such luck, who seem ordained from birth to be all the world’s poor relations. In gift-clothes there is something peculiarly heart-searching both for giver and recipient.
This delicacy inherent in the present of cast-off suit or frock is due perhaps to the subtle clinging of the giver’s self to the serge or silk. It is a strong man who feels that he is himself in another man’s old coat. If an individuality is fine enough to be worth retaining, it is likely to be fine enough to disappear utterly beneath the weight of another man’s shoulders upon one’s own. Most of us would rather have our creeds chosen for us than our clothes. Most of us would rather select our own tatters than have another’s cast-off splendors thrust upon us. It is no light achievement, the living up to and into other people’s clothes. Clothes acquire so much personality from their first wearer,—adjust themselves to the swell of the chest, the quirk of the elbow, the hitch in the hip-joint,—that the first wearer always wears them, no matter how many times they may be given away. He is always felt to be inside, so that the second wearer’s ego is constantly bruised by the pressure resulting from two gentlemen occupying the same waistcoat.
Middle children are to be pitied for being condemned to be constantly made over out of the luckier eldest’s outgrown raiment. How can Tommy be sure he is Tommy, when he is always walking around in Johnny’s shoes? Or Polly, grown to girlhood, ever find her own heart, when all her life it has beaten under Anna’s pinafore?
The evil is still worse when the garments come from outside the family, for one may readily accept from blood-kin bounty which, bestowed by a stranger, would arouse a corroding resentment. This is because one can always revenge one’s self on one’s relatives for an abasement of gratitude by means of self-respecting kicks and pinches. A growing soul may safely wear his big brother’s ulster, but no one else’s; for there are germs in other people’s clothes,—the big bad yellow bacilli of covetousness. People give you their old clothes because they have new ones, and this fact is hard to forgive.
There may, of course, exist mitigating circumstances that often serve to solace or remove this basic resentment. To receive gown or hat or boots direct from the donor is degrading, but in proportion as they come to us through a lengthening chain of transferring hands the indignity fades out, the previous wearer’s personality becomes less insistent; until, when identification is an impossibility, we may even take pleasure in conjecturing who may have previously occupied our pockets, may even feel the pull of real friendliness toward the unknown heart that beat beneath the warm woolen bosom presented to us.