MARY H.KROUT 
 
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PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
Platters and Pipkins 
 
 By 
 MARY H. KROUT 
 
 There's pippins and cheese to come' 
 
 — Merry Wives of Windsor 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 1910 
 
K7 
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 By MARY H. KROUT 
 
 1910 
 
 Published October 15, 1910 
 
 CCIjicago 
 
 (g;Ci.A2'«o^) 
 
DEDICATED TO 
 
 ALL HOUSEKEEPERS: 
 
 THE MANY WHO ARE STILL STRIVING 
 
 AND THE FEW 
 
 WHO HAVE BEEN PERFECTED 
 
 THROUGH SUFFERING 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 CHAPTER 
 
 1. Matters in General 9 
 
 II. About Kitchens 17 
 
 III. The Pains and Pleasures of Dish- 
 washing ^^ 
 
 IV. Sweeping — Past and Present . . 40 
 V. Some Reflections About Dusting 47 
 
 VI. The Pantry Shelves and Door . . 58 
 VII. A Few Thoughts About the Cellar 60 
 
 VIII. Up in the Attic 70 
 
 IX. Round About the Back Porch . 78 
 X. Through the Hall to the Front Door 85 
 
 XI. The Dining- Room 92 
 
 XII. Table Talk 103 
 
 XIII. Where the Books Are . . . .111 
 
 XIV. The Evolution ot the Parlor . .122 
 
 XV. The Secrets of the Spare Room . 132 
 
 XVI. The Sewing-Room 143 
 
 XVII. Euphemia's Bower 153 
 
 XVIII. Mistress and Maid 165 
 
 XIX. Small Politenesses 176 
 
 XX. Questions of Detail 186 
 
 XXIe Euphemia's Unrest 193 
 
 XXII. Conclusions 202 
 
Matters in General 
 
 THERE are houses and houses. 
 Comfort and cleanhness are not 
 indigenous to any special soil. 
 They are, rather, like growth in 
 grace — the outcome of struggle, 
 of conflict and of eternal patience. 
 We all know that in the midst of life we are in 
 death, and, in the ceaseless disintegration that 
 goes on everywhere the house and its belongings 
 are not spared. Moth and dust are busy with 
 the clothing, curtains and rugs, while silent chem- 
 ical agencies cease not, by day or night, proclaim- 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ing themselves in mould, fermentation and decay, 
 apparent to the sight and to the sense of smell. 
 What the cook calls "spoiling" is but a varied 
 reminder of the temporary nature of all things 
 earthly. Matter may be indestructible, but its 
 transformations are without end and number. 
 
 There are some melancholy verses pasted in 
 more than one woman's scrapbook which recite 
 the woes of the despairing housekeeper who 
 throughout her existence swept and dusted, and 
 scrubbed, waging a life-long war against dirt. 
 The conclusion of the whole matter was, that, 
 overcome at last, she lay down and "was buried in 
 dirt" — a tragical conclusion which must be ac- 
 cepted, notwithstanding Richard Grant White's 
 strictures against the hateful word. 
 
 It is the inevitable end, of course, but it is not, 
 after all, a cause, fdr hopeless discouragdfeient. 
 Because oite must work to-day, and to-morrow 
 and the next day, doing pretty much the same 
 things over and over again, it should not really 
 dishearten one. The great mother of us all, Dame 
 Nature herself, proceeds in the same round, on 
 
 10 
 
MATTERS IN GENERAL 
 
 the same plan, and so furnishes the race an eter- 
 nal example of perfect order and submission. 
 
 The leaves that swell and burst, and shake 
 themselves free, under the skies of May, to find 
 the sun shining, the birds singing, the soft south 
 wind blowing, are doomed to wither and fall. 
 Beyond the heavenly graciousness of spring, the 
 fervid heat of midsummer, the frost is waiting to 
 blight, and the snow to cover them. But what 
 of it ? They will come again and yet again, with 
 unfailing verdancy from the secret places of cre- 
 ation. 
 
 Women are apt to rebel against what they call 
 "the monotony of housework." But what work, 
 well done, is not monotonous? The husband and 
 father goes to his shop or office six days in the 
 week, often the whole year round. He pores 
 over his ledgers, contends with stupid and idle 
 employees, and has a thousand vexations which 
 he knows are inseparable from the business he 
 has chosen. Between the sins of the slatternly 
 maid in the kitchen, and the blunders of clerks 
 or workmen, that may involve the loss of thous- 
 
 11 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ands of dollars, there is certainly not much 
 choice. 
 
 The only wisdom is not to expect perfection — 
 an unattainable state that no human being has 
 yet achieved. 
 
 When Euphemia kindles the kitchen fire with 
 gasohne — with disastrous consequences — one 
 must reflect that, if she knew better, she would 
 not be in the kitchen at all, but in a "nate house 
 of her own," or perhaps on your calling list. To 
 put one's expectations on "a low plane" — to 
 use one of the trite expressions of the hour — is 
 alike to be prepared for disappointment, should 
 it come, or for joyful and ecstatic surprise if it 
 doesn't. 
 
 *'Think on your marcies," as Uncle Tom coun- 
 seled, in his beautiful faith in the Giver of all 
 good gifts. If the biscuits are heavy, be thank- 
 ful that they are not poisonous; if your second 
 best muslin has been faded to a sickly grey by 
 one of those perfectly harmless washing pow- 
 ders, be thankful that you still have a first best 
 that you can, in an emergency, "do up" your- 
 
 12 
 
MATTERS IN GENERAL 
 
 self, or send to the cleaner — one of course whom 
 you know well. This method, resolutely adopted 
 and followed, will develop philosophic endur- 
 ance, if not a cheerfulness, passing that of 
 Mark Tapley, in all but the hopelessly dyspeptic 
 or the victims of hereditary melancholia. 
 
 In the midst of much mending, patching, 
 darning and altering, the minds of the orthodox 
 turn wistfully to the imperishable garments of 
 the children of Israel sojourning in the wilder- 
 ness. No wonder that then and there was de- 
 veloped a superior type — "Mothers in Israel" 
 — who have been a synonym to this day, for all 
 the high virtues of exceeding godliness. 
 
 But, reflect upon their opportunities! Those 
 simple and indestructible garments which noth- 
 ing could soil, or tear, or mar in any way! For 
 forty years the fashions never changed. The 
 sleeves, full at the top and tight at the wrist one 
 season, did not maliciously and perversely re- 
 verse themselves the next, and if they were but- 
 toned it was with buttons that never came off; 
 or, if tied, with strings that never broke. This 
 
 13 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 one department of household economics, to use 
 another word in high favor just now, left hours 
 for devotion and meditation, under circumstances 
 that tended to soothe the most irritable nerves 
 and the most perturbed spirit. 
 
 But the blessings of the Chosen Ones did not 
 end there, for, with the entire elimination of the 
 clothes problem, they knew nothing of houses 
 with modern improvements, and, for a time, at 
 least, manna was rained down from Heaven, only 
 to be gathered, fresh and satisfying, every morn- 
 ing. There were no struggles with brands of 
 poor flour and adulterated baking-powder, no 
 by-products of coal-tar, no glucose, no cotton- 
 seed oil, or health foods; nor were the days of 
 high teas, ceremonious luncheons or the ten 
 course dinner even prophesied, though that was 
 the dawn of a prophetic age. 
 
 When one reflects upon all this, one is amazed 
 that the Mothers in Israel — the only women of 
 leisure that ever lived — did not set their faces 
 stubbornly against further emigration. No 
 Promised Land could have offered them half the 
 
 14 
 
MATTERS IN GENERAL 
 
 opportunities for high thinking and serene char- 
 acter building that they found there in what has 
 passed into history — and very mistakenly — as 
 the wilderness. 
 
 The Promised Land, once reached, meant for 
 their lords, who apparently had not yet become 
 their masters, endless warfare with tribes whose 
 names alone constitute entire lessons in the morn- 
 ing service from time to time during the ecclesi- 
 astical year; and for themselves living in houses 
 with all that appertains thereto. 
 
 With their indestructible clothes and an un- 
 failing supply of manna, they might have estab- 
 lished an ideal civilization in the wilderness based 
 upon perfect equality — a spiritual and intel- 
 lectual communism beyond all imagining. 
 
 They did not ; hence the combined ills and occu- 
 pations that have descended to the present gener- 
 ation. Upon the whole, however, these descend- 
 ants have not acquitted themselves so badly when 
 one bears in mind the steady increase of obstacles 
 to the simple life which we are all discussing 
 a great deal and avoiding as much as possible. 
 
 15 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 Indeed, I am reminded in this connection of a 
 good old clergyman of the primitive Baptist 
 Church who used to combine lecturing on tem- 
 perance with his sermonizing. He was address- 
 ing a drowsy audience one hot August afternoon 
 in the village court-house. Frightful examples 
 of the effects of intemperance were cited and end- 
 less facts and figures poured into the dulled ears 
 of his hearers. Last of all, he said : 
 
 "Those present who wish to do so may now 
 sign the pledge. The females need not sign. The 
 females are doing as well as they know how." 
 
 16 
 
II 
 
 About Kitchens 
 
 T 
 
 HE kitchen is like the power- 
 house of an electric railwa}^ The 
 comfortable cars fly fast as the 
 wind over the smooth rails. The 
 passenger sits in his cushioned seat, 
 reads his i^aper, or looks out of the 
 window at the changing landscape. He sees the 
 varied life of town and village, the cattle in the 
 fields, the orchards pink with blossoms, or the 
 boughs hung with fruit surpassing in brilliancy 
 the jewelled trees of Aladdin's adventure. The 
 motorman keeps his eye fixed on the track he- 
 
 ir 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 fore him ; the conductor collects the fares and an- 
 swers questions, stops and lets people off and 
 takes them on. All this time, far off, out of sight, 
 the great wheels revolve where the potent force 
 is generated — where the elements do not inter- 
 fere — under the M^atchful eyes and the guid- 
 ance of other hands, unseen and unknown to the 
 traveller. 
 
 The kitchen fire is really the mot've power of 
 the "whole domestic machinery, and the presiding 
 genius that regulates it is a sort of culinary en- 
 gineer. 
 
 There are lazy women who profess superiority 
 to nourishment for the body. If left to them- 
 selves, they browse off the pantry shelves, as 
 Wordsworth and his helpmeet are said to 
 have done, taking what they find, "because it 
 is too much trouble to set the table and cook for 
 one." These are the sad and erring patrons of 
 restaurants who lunch on ice cream and lemon 
 pie, and dine on nothing but entrees, few in num- 
 ber, but potent in the promotion of indigestion. 
 
 I have in mind a writer on a western news- 
 
 is 
 
ABOUT KITCHENS 
 
 paper, hard-worked and not wealthy. She did 
 what is called "light housekeeping," in two small 
 rooms — that is, she prepared her own breakfasts 
 and luncheons. Now, as she was a newspaper 
 writer — or simply a woman writer, for that 
 matter — it will be at once assumed that she 
 could not cook or keep house — "light," or other- 
 wise. The opinion is one of those stubborn, 
 lingering fallacies like the unreliable proverbs 
 which Charles Lamb has dissected, though not 
 yet likewise disproved. 
 
 In reality, this woman was highly skilled, 
 to such a degree that if she had been a theoso- 
 phist — which she was not — she would have 
 chosen in her next incarnation to be a cook, and 
 leave the typewriter and fountain pen to those 
 who had £eons of punishment to undergo for their 
 sins. Her napery was of the finest; her china 
 and silver shone with much polishing, and to the 
 breakfast of fruit, coffee, rolls and chops, a queen 
 might have been asked any day in the week. 
 What she had, though simple, was of the best 
 and beautifully served, and in that spotless sit- 
 
 19 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ting-room, when the table was cleared, there 
 never was the faintest smell or suggestion of 
 cooking. She had a closed cabinet for her dishes, 
 utensils which were light and few in number, a 
 covered shelf at the back window for butter, 
 milk, and fruit in mild weather, and the use of 
 the refrigerator in the basement. She was a 
 walking advertisement of good living — sound 
 digestion and healthy nerves. 
 
 She said, "I had but one catastrophe in the 
 whole three years — and that, of course, was 
 when I was expecting friends to lunch. At the 
 very last moment the coffee pot fell from the gas 
 jet into the upper bureau drawer, which I had 
 opened and forgotten to close. But that was 
 nothing of consequence. I made fresh coffee and 
 shut the drawer until I could set it to rights, 
 after the visitors left." 
 
 This illustrates the fact that even in two-room 
 housekeeping there must be some semblance of 
 a kitchen, though it may not be recognized as 
 such. 
 
 20 
 
ABOUT KITCHENS 
 
 In the old days, in old-fashioned houses, the 
 kitchen was the favorite family rendezvous. 
 
 "Where's mother?" was the first query of hus- 
 band and sons, and without waiting the answer 
 they straightway sought the kitchen and there 
 they found her. And she was never bothered by 
 their incursions. Nervous prostration was at 
 that time unknown. 
 
 I remember what might have been an embar- 
 rassing situation had it not been frankly and 
 squarely met. A young lawyer asked permission, 
 which was granted, to call upon a young woman 
 of his acquaintance and bring with him a friend 
 — a dignitary of the state Supreme Court. It 
 was early in October, and the stoves were not 
 up — for that was long before the days of the 
 prosaic but convenient steam coil. Suddenly it 
 turned very cold. The man hurriedly engaged 
 to put up the parlor stove did not arrive until 
 six p. m. When it was moved in from the barn 
 and heaved into position it was found that the 
 pipe had one of those strange attacks of swelling 
 
 21 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 that occur during summer storage, and it would 
 not and could not be made to fit. 
 
 By that time the shops were closed and the 
 callers were to arrive at eight. There were but 
 two alternatives: the callers could be received 
 in the icy parlor, there to shiver and catch pos- 
 sibly fatal pneumonia; or, they could have the 
 privilege of sitting by a comfortable fire in — the 
 kitchen ! 
 
 Which should it be? After calm reflection, 
 false pride was cast to the winds, the sanctity of 
 the Supreme Court was resolutely disregarded. 
 What was a judge anyway — except in rare 
 instances — but a man? When the visitors 
 arrived the situation was explained. They ac- 
 cepted it like gentlemen, as they were, and both 
 being charming and interesting talkers, the time 
 passed swiftly. I am forced to acknowledge that 
 it was a very superior sort of a kitchen. It was 
 carpeted with a pretty rag carpet of the kind now 
 considered very high art, the table was covered 
 with a bright crimson cloth; there were nice 
 shades and fresh muslin curtains, and a coUec- 
 
 22 
 
ABOUT KITCHENS 
 
 tion of thrifty geraniums in full bloom on the 
 window sill. One of those capacious modern re- 
 ceptacles that might be anything, held and hid 
 all the cooking supplies and paraphernalia. The 
 stove was brilliantly polished, and beside it were 
 drawn up three comfortable chairs. The clock 
 ticked cheerfully, and near at hand was the pan- 
 try from which, at the psychological moment, 
 were brought forth satisfying things to eat and 
 drink. As a social function, the evening was an 
 entire success, which the novel surroundings ap- 
 peared only to enhance. 
 
 Our English cousins have a pleasant fashion 
 of "showing you the house," once you have been 
 asked across its threshold. You are personally 
 conducted through drawing-rooms, library, re- 
 ception rooms, and even bedchambers, and they 
 never think of leaving out the kitchen. 
 
 "Would you like to peep into the kitchen and 
 see the cook making bread?" asked a hospitable 
 matron who, in her shiny black silk dress and 
 high lace cap, lacked only the mediaeval cuirass 
 
 23 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 and sword, to have posed for Britannia raling 
 the waves. 
 
 I have another English kitchen in mind — a 
 sweet place in Kent — ''homely," a British sub- 
 ject would have called it. There was a stone- 
 flagged floor, with stout beams of age-blackened 
 oak overhead, and many kinds of burnished cop- 
 per vessels were ranged along the walls. Here, 
 after a long walk across the twilight fields to 
 hear the nightingales sing in the copses, we gath- 
 ered about the well scoured table to refresh our- 
 selves with a truly English ten o'clock supper of 
 bread and butter, cheese, brawn and salad. To the 
 American guest, the clock of time had stopped. 
 Her native land had only just been discovered; 
 telephones and telegraphs, air ships and motor 
 cars were questionable blessings and undreamed 
 of. Had the host begun to talk in the vernacular 
 of Pepys and Evelyn, she would not have been 
 surprised. But what American would have in- 
 vited an unfamiliar guest to supper at a deal 
 table in the kitchen, in that unaffected and truly 
 hospitable fashion? It must be confessed, how- 
 
 S4 
 
ABOUT KITCHENS 
 
 ever, in extenuation, that few or none of us have 
 such kitchens. Ours are never so dignified and 
 massively simple, invaded as they have been by 
 all manner of balking, labor-saving inventions — 
 doubtful improvements in a disguise that they 
 will never shed — around which the plumber and 
 the electrician hover perpetually. 
 
 Much of the work to which the kitchen was 
 once devoted is now done elsewhere. The coffee 
 is ground at the grocer's, and the morning slum- 
 bers of those who occupy the back bedchambers 
 are not disturbed by the reassuring rattle of the 
 coffee-mill. 
 
 Linoleum is warmer and easier to clean than 
 bare boards, and deadens Euphemia's elephant- 
 ine tread — Euphemia who has sniffed at and 
 rejected with scorn the sound-proof felt slippers 
 provided her gratuitously by a generous mistress. 
 
 The cabinets which have been mentioned, and 
 which really are not lightly to be rejected, re- 
 mind one, nevertheless, of folding beds. The 
 pot closet is decorously veiled ; there are pictures 
 and illuminated calendars with a correct domestic 
 
 25 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 sentiment for every day in the year; and there 
 are little recesses curtained with art chintz for the 
 dish, that never again, in this age of suppressed 
 imagination, will run away with the spoon. 
 
 The water is "laid on" as the English say, 
 though why, no one knows, and a turn of the 
 nickel-plated faucet in the sink lets forth a clear 
 stream which one is admonished by the Board of 
 Health to boil carefully before drinking, as a pre- 
 caution against typhoid germs. 
 
 Some of the inventions are really a saving of 
 backs, without which the woman's club would 
 not be possible. But it is among the unsolvable 
 problems that with the multiplication of patent 
 contrivances our domestic burdens apparently 
 increase, and we have less leisure than ever. 
 
 The contented soul that pieced "Rising Sun" 
 patchwork quilts, did all the family sewing by 
 hand, and spun and wove the household flannel 
 and bleached the family linen, has vanished with 
 long-legged spiders and warming-pans, cakes 
 made with seventeen eggs^ — whites and yolks 
 beaten separately — and funeral invitations. 
 
 26 
 
ABOUT KITCHENS 
 
 But, to return to the original proposition, the 
 kitchen fire is really the motive power of the 
 whole domestic machinery. With that fire out, 
 the whole household mechanism comes to a stand- 
 still. Three good, plain, wholesome meals a day, 
 which must be produced from its stores and ap- 
 pliances, are necessary to the well-being of the 
 whole family, to the mother, herself ; to the father, 
 harassed by many business cares ; to the children, 
 driven to the limit of their strength in the frantic 
 rivalry to "make credits" and pass grades. 
 
 And, though Euphemia may strike, or be dis- 
 abled with some sudden and acute ailment, the 
 situation need not become desperate. Family co- 
 operation can be secured with a little firmness; 
 simple diet may be prescribed. The practicable 
 rule observed of "washing up as you go," put- 
 ting everything back in its place when it has been 
 used and is, no longer needed, will, of itself, rob 
 the kitchen of half its terrors and restore at least 
 a part of its old pleasantness. 
 
 27 
 
ains and Pleasures 
 of Dish -washing 
 
 NE of the mixed troubles of my 
 childhood is the recollection of 
 ^f standing on what was known as 
 "the flat-bottomed chair," in one of 
 the familiar crises — just after the 
 last maid-of-all-work had departed 
 and her successor had not yet arrived. The stand- 
 ing was not in the nature of discipline, but be- 
 cause I was short of stature and the table was 
 tall and covered with dishes to be washed — oh, 
 so many, many of them, ranging all the way 
 from the glasses, which to the undiscriminating 
 
DISH-WASHING 
 
 mind of childhood it was a work of supereroga- 
 tion to dip into water again, to the spoons — 
 and everybody used so many — the plates, the 
 platters and the heavy vegetable dishes coated 
 with a hard, grey, "goose-flesh," down to the 
 coarse cooking vessels. 
 
 But my dissatisfaction was chiefly because I 
 was a feeble, ailing child; furthermore, being of 
 an imaginative and inventive turn, at the time 
 the dishes were to be washed I always wanted 
 to do something else. I recall having success- 
 fully relieved the tedium of rocking the baby by 
 drawing the cradle up to the open door — in the 
 absence of the family, of course — tying the 
 clothes line to it, then descending the steep back 
 steps, carrying the line with me to the farthest 
 limits of the side yard, and from this safe dis- 
 tance, with the protests of the baby materially 
 diminished, rocking it jerkily under the pleasant 
 shade of an apple tree. A Jerk too much upset 
 the cradle and the baby rolled out, luckily un- 
 hurt, which ended the experiment abruptly. But 
 
 29 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 while it lasted it had all the excitement of novelty 
 and the enjoyment of uncertainty. 
 
 We were musically inclined, I and the younger 
 sister who "wiped," while I "washed," and we 
 endeavored to throw a glamour over our task by 
 rendering selections from a long repertoire — 
 ballads, hymns, national airs, and what were then 
 known as "Sunday School songs." These, at 
 that period, were peculiarly gloomj^ chiefly re- 
 minders in verse of sudden and untimely death. 
 The singing was loud — there were no pianissimo 
 passages, even in the most funereal of the Sun- 
 day school songs, as we interpreted them. We 
 sang energetically and we unconsciously kept 
 time to the measure, especially in those passages 
 marked ritardando on the score, holding dish- 
 cloth and tea-towel immovable at the whole notes 
 and dotted half notes. By this arrangement we 
 prolonged the dish-washing out of all reason. 
 
 Once the grandmother, of beloved memory, 
 came for a visit — her sweet voice sounding in 
 my ears, and her gentle, benign face rising out of 
 the long, long vanished past as I write. In the 
 
 30 
 
DISH-WASHING 
 
 midst of one of our customary duets over the 
 dish-pan she appeared at the kitchen door and 
 said: "Children, you sing beautifully, but sup* 
 pose you finish your work first and see how 
 quickly you can do it. Then, you can have all 
 the afternoon for singing." 
 
 We looked at each other astonished. It was 
 a brilliant, new idea that had never occurred to 
 us. We put the suggestion into immediate prac- 
 tice, and the dishes were washed, wiped and put 
 away in a jiffy. 
 
 But — we did not then care to sing — nor did 
 we, ever again — "over the teacups." We dis- 
 covered that expedition was better than music 
 on such occasions, and we profited by the grand- 
 mother's gentle hint. 
 
 There is, perhaps, nothing about the work of 
 the house which the average woman dislikes so 
 much as dish-washing. There are few who do not 
 object to it, and still fewer who say that they 
 actually like it. They are seldom believed — 
 like the people who insist that they love Wagner 
 and Browning, and yet want professional expla- 
 
 31 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 nation to make all their hidden meanings clear. 
 It assuredly is a part of housekeeping at which 
 mere man, left to himself for a time — on his 
 camping expeditions, or while his wife is visiting 
 her family — boggles disgracefully. The sticky 
 dishes and dingy glass usually speak for them- 
 selves. Occasionally, however, the guilty one 
 confesses how he managed it, and with the arro- 
 gance of his sex, even recommends his method 
 over that brought to perfection by the wisdom 
 of the feminine mind, from time immemorial. 
 
 If at home, his suggestion is, paper — wrap- 
 ping paper preferred, but if that is not obtain- 
 able, then newspapers, and that, too, in this de- 
 generate age when they run to full-page illus- 
 trations that are largely smears of printer's ink. 
 
 If camping, his method is to use sand, swiping 
 the things round and round, with a brisk polish- 
 ing off by way of a coup de main. So firm is the 
 operator in the belief that this is the true and 
 only way, that, in addition to discoursing at 
 length on dish-washing made eas}^ he can hardly 
 be restrained from putting a cart-load of sand 
 
 32 
 
DISH-WASHING 
 
 into the cellar with the winter coal. But there are 
 others — of the same superior sex — who frankly 
 acknowledge their total inability to cope with the 
 dish-washing problem. Not many, of course, but 
 a few, frank, fearless, honest souls who stand 
 out in bright refulgence, have admitted that their 
 powers have limitations. I once saw indications 
 of such a spirit, and indications only, as is usually 
 the case among those who deal even on terms of 
 familiarity with spirits. 
 
 It was in far-off Australia. We came upon 
 reminders of an abandoned camp, beside a stream 
 under a eucalyptus tree. There were traces of 
 extinguished fire where the "billy" had been 
 boiled, empty and rusting "tins" of many dimen- 
 sions, blackened and battered cooking vessels and 
 broken dishes. It resembled a battle ground 
 after a hard fight. But the vanquished ones 
 were not ashamed of their defeat ; they manfully 
 — or unmanfully — acknowledged it, for they 
 had left nailed up against the tree a board 
 whereon was inscribed, plainly and legibly, 
 this legend : * ' Wanted : A General. ' ' 
 
 33 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 A "general" did not in this context mean a 
 commanding officer to reorganize the demoralized 
 forces. It is the antipodean term for maid-of- 
 all-work. 
 
 The woman of some sorrows and many vexa- 
 tions knows well that the devices enumerated 
 above are in reality faulty inventions of minds 
 rebelling, for the moment, against their environ- 
 ments. She is satisfied that the sink — if it 
 has been constructed for a woman below the pro- 
 portions of a lady of Brobdingnag — an ample 
 pan, a long-handled mop, a nice and saving soap- 
 shaker, are the indispensable accompaniments of 
 good dish- washing — and, of course, plenty of 
 scalding hot water. It is the instinct of man to 
 simplify everything but technical phraseology. 
 This he clings to with the tenacity of an uncon- 
 querable will; because, like the mystery that en- 
 shrouded the Delphic oracle, it helps him keep the 
 upper hand with the masses, deluding them into 
 the belief that, after all, there may be something 
 in it, and filling them with an unreasoning ad- 
 miration for a mind that is not unbalanced by so 
 
 34 
 
DISH-WASHING 
 
 much vain repetition. Hence the sand-and-news- 
 paper dish "cleaning." 
 
 I frankly confess that I am one of the few 
 women who love Wagner and Browning and 
 have no antipathy to dish-washing. Not that I 
 love it; but there is a real satisfaction in remov- 
 ing the chaos of an abandoned dinner-table, car- 
 rying the dishes away and "scraping" them in the 
 kitchen or butler's pantry, for cooks quit, even 
 in houses- 'that have a butler's pantry — and ar- 
 ranging them in order for purification. Polished 
 glass, shining silver, glossy and burnished plates 
 upon whose surface not even the sensitive fin- 
 gers of a blind man could discover the slightest 
 semblance of roughness, all set forth in chaste 
 and spotless groups, fill my soul with satisfac- 
 tion not untinctured by pride. Even the potato 
 masher, so slippery and sticky, and the big, dull 
 lid of the stew-pan that has lost its brightness 
 through age — like folks — I can contemplate 
 with serene approval after their cleansing, though 
 I am free to admit that it is the kind of approval 
 one feels who has done one of those trying stints 
 
 35 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 that can be classified as duty — such as paying a 
 visit to a dull, censorious neighbor, or bearing 
 patiently with a man who sniffs. 
 
 The whole secret of successful and not dis- 
 agreeable dish-washing is that imparted by the 
 shrewd old grandmother so long ago — expedi- 
 tion, combined with thoroughness; next to that, 
 the right sort of getting ready. There are weak 
 and self-indulgent persons who "pile up" a whole 
 day's dishes and leave them until the next morn- 
 ing. They love to sit around the table, the meal 
 ended, and gossip ; or, after breakfast, slip away 
 to "glance over the morning paper" before the 
 library fire — an occupation which means read- 
 ing it all, carefully, to the last bargain adver- 
 tisement and the last sentence of the dryest edi- 
 torial. But all this immoral and shiftless pro- 
 crastination brings its own punishment. AH the 
 while one is gossiping, no matter how congeni- 
 ally, the eye wanders over the waiting dishes ; and 
 during the narrative of battle, murder and sud- 
 den death, not forgetting the divorces, now recog- 
 nized as the only legitimate "news," there is still 
 
 36 
 
DISH- WASHING 
 
 a subconscious realization that the dishes are still 
 waiting and will never betake themselves to the 
 kitchen without human intervention. The "con- 
 trols" of even the most advanced spiritual me- 
 diums seem to do nothing more than raise heavy 
 tables from the floor, which is not of the slightest 
 practical use to anybody. When they so far de- 
 velop as to send the dishes to the kitchen sink 
 and back again, ready for future use, there will 
 be an immediate accession to the ranks of earnest 
 inquirers, followed no doubt by many sound con- 
 versions. But, as the young sophomore orator 
 would remark — "that time is not yet." 
 
 The only method that is both sure and certain 
 is to rise at once; seize the dishes firmly and re- 
 move them, no matter how much you may want 
 to know what happened to Ellen Jones then, or 
 who was elected President of the Mothers' Con- 
 gress on the last ballot. Place glass and silver 
 scrupulously to themselves, neither chipping the 
 one by piling it together, nor dinting and bend- 
 ing the other under the soup plates or heavy chop 
 platter; then arrange cups, saucers, small dishes 
 
 37 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 and plates in proper order. The true dish-washer 
 stands self-confessed in these nice preliminaries. 
 If silver, glass and china are scattered about, 
 higgledy-piggledy; if the plates are not freed 
 from every trace of food than can be removed by 
 conscientious scraping, then one knows what to 
 expect — dish-washing degraded to the merest 
 savage rite. A glance at the dish-pan reveals 
 there a mixture — "thick and slab" — as that 
 brewed by the witches in Macbeth. The tea- 
 towels are also eloquent witnesses and, like the 
 mistress's pocket handkerchiefs, if possible, 
 should be many, fine, and white as snow. And 
 this, too, is achieved only by willing hands, plenty 
 of soap and hot water without limit. 
 
 When the rule given is followed scrupulously, 
 like the musical diversion I have described, the 
 interest in Ellen Jones and the doings of the 
 Mothers' Congress will, possibly, have quite 
 evaporated, but how pleasant the kitchen looks! 
 So pleasant that, for the moment, you forget that 
 the same process must be repeated to-morrow, 
 and through all the to-morrows, for years to 
 
 38 
 
DISH-WASHING 
 
 come. For it will not be in our time that the race 
 will be sustained on concentrated food pellets, 
 carried in the glove, like a street car fare, or in 
 the waistcoat pocket — an evolution destined to 
 banish the kitchen and all that therein is. 
 
 39 
 
IV 
 
 Sweeping— Past and Present 
 
 HO can explain the dismalness of 
 dust ? It is an implied reminder — 
 never welcome except in prolonged 
 sea-sickness, or face-ache — of the 
 final end of all mortality; of the 
 most depressing and least uplifting 
 texts in the Bible, and the sadness of the burial 
 service. 
 
 The relation between ideas and their obscure 
 origin is so subtle that psychology devotes many 
 abstruse chapters to this one theme alone. At 
 any rate, dust is undeniably the outward and 
 visible sign of neglect and decay. 
 
 40 
 
SWEEPING — PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 It is terribly dej)ressing to come home from a 
 holiday, spent in the clean forest, or at the still 
 more cleanly sea-shore, before Euphemia has ar- 
 rived to set the house in order and wind the 
 clocks. 
 
 The dust that has gathered on the window-sills, 
 on the piano and the banisters, is so very dusty 
 — so much greyer and grittier than that which 
 settles down from day to day, and which is from 
 day to day removed. It mournfully indicates 
 that the holidays are over, with all their lounging 
 and sailing, hammocks and novels, and that, with 
 the broom and the dust-pan again to the fore, 
 the serious business of life begins once more — 
 getting the children into school, the fall sewing, 
 the revival of the club and the missionary society, 
 and the ordering of three meals daily. 
 
 There is nothing for it but to face the dust-pan 
 boldly and be sure that the new broom sweeps 
 clean. 
 
 It is remarkable what a deal there is about 
 brooms in folk-lore and literature. The mischief- 
 making witch of our beloved old fairy tales could 
 
 41 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 mount her broomstick and whisk herself oat of 
 danger in the twinkling of an eye. The old 
 woman who swept the cobwebs out of the sky 
 must have been a benefactress in her time — a 
 vast improvement on some municipal street 
 sweeping that could be mentioned. The broom 
 came up many times in the Salem trials, while 
 those of Joe and the Marchioness are still dear to 
 the few and dwindling readers of Dickens. 
 
 Sang Puck in the revels of "A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream": 
 
 "Not a mouse 
 Shall disturb this hallowed house ; 
 I am sent with broom before 
 To sweep the dust behind the door." 
 
 The construction of the last clause in the above 
 quotation should commend itself to the many 
 classes that spend long hours in clearing up liter- 
 ary obscurity for the less intelligent readers; it 
 would lend itself most suggestively to debate as 
 to whether the "tricksy sprite" had been sent to 
 sweep the dust behind the door, after Euphemia's 
 manner, when she is in a hurry, or frorn behind 
 
 42 
 
SWEEPING — PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 the door, where she has absent-mindedly left it. 
 
 There are clean, conservative souls who regard 
 the patent sweeper with loathing. They are the 
 severely thorough who still rigorously fell all 
 seams that ought to be felled; who despise all 
 easy ways of doing things and who will reach 
 Heaven, at last, only by the narrowest path of 
 all, because they prefer it. Their brooms, singly 
 and collectively, are a credit to them. They never 
 shed straws, or run to a sharp peak, like an in- 
 dex finger pointing skyward on an old-fashioned 
 tombstone. A string is run through a hole in 
 the handle of each broom, and by this it is hung 
 on its own nail, when it does not stand, as a re- 
 spectable broom should, reversed in its proper 
 place behind the pantry door. And it is washed 
 
 — roundly scrubbed — with soap and water, like 
 a submissive child. Then, no matter how stubby 
 
 — evenly stubby — it becomes from long use, it 
 is never soiled — not even the last remnant that is 
 finally committed to the furnace. 
 
 The well kept broom is as efficacious as it is 
 what the country newspapers call "nice-appear- 
 
 43 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ing." There is no corner that it does not rind — 
 under the bed, under the bureau, along the base- 
 board — and where it has gone a West Point in- 
 spector might pass his white-gloved fingers and 
 find them still immaculate. 
 
 Hardwood floors have certainly simplified the 
 business of sweeping, though the removing and 
 beating of rugs could hardly be recommended as 
 light and easy employment for decayed gentle- 
 women. The great compensation is, that when 
 rugs have been carried out of doors and well 
 beaten the house is really clean. Microbes have 
 been carried away bodily — if they do not float 
 back through the open windows — your neigh- 
 bors', or your own. 
 
 It is too much to hope, with a people so fond 
 of change as are Americans, that the fashion of 
 rugs and polished floors will remain. But, we 
 can make the most of it while it lasts ; rejoice that, 
 through its agency, the most malignant feature 
 of house-cleaning has been held, for a time, in 
 abeyance, and that the art of darning holes with 
 carpet ravellings bids fair to become as obsolete 
 as sampler marking. 
 
 44 
 
SWEEPING — PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 But there are still many carpeted floors, and 
 these yet demand the ministration of the broom or 
 carpet sweeper. It will be some time before the 
 vacuum cleaner will come into universal use. 
 
 The charges brought against the carpet sweeper 
 are fairly well sustained. I have seen rooms and 
 furniture so battered and beaten by it that one 
 might almost imagine that a herd of hard-hoofed 
 quadrupeds had been turned loose in and 
 amongst them, there to gambol at will. 
 
 When Euphemia is not watched, she likes to 
 throw open the windows, tie the curtains in hard 
 knots, and sweep amongst the furniture like some 
 large, square craft navigating an intricate archi- 
 pelago. Her guiding principle is to sweep 
 around, and by no means move, things. In this 
 exercise she raises clouds of dust that collect 
 again on walls, ceilings and cornice, like a lasting 
 haze, the obscurity increasing with the length of 
 her term of service. 
 
 Of course, no intelligent woman need be told 
 that every chair and table should be wiped, pol- 
 ished and removed, the mantel cleared and the 
 
 45 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 pictures covered. Then the carpet — if there is 
 one — should first be sprinkled with damp tea 
 leaves or bits of damp paper, and brushed firmly 
 and thoroughly with a clean, solid broom. In 
 some houses even this careful method is tabooed, 
 and carpets, or matting, are wiped with soft 
 cloths. But while the English housemaid will 
 still creep about obediently, on hands and knees, 
 with her big, inconvenient brush that wakes you 
 at daybreak, whacking the banisters as she 
 *'does" the stairs, there is something in the free 
 air of the Republic that raises the opposition of 
 her sister, American or naturalized. She de- 
 mands a broom, or gives notice, and she usually 
 gets the broom. , 
 
 As in the kitchen, when the dishes are washed 
 and put away, so, after the weekly sweeping 
 there is a temporary brightness that one wishes 
 might last; fresh flowers in the vases, a new 
 lustre on the bric-a-brac, and the fragrance 
 of pure, cool air that has blown through the 
 house. Cleanliness is "akin to godliness," and 
 this should be the special text for sweeping day. 
 
 46 
 
Some Reflections About 
 Dusting 
 
 As to the respective merits of 
 dust-cloths and brushes, competent 
 authorities differ as irreconcilably 
 as they do over the many ways of 
 making coffee and washing flan- 
 nels. The advocate of the feather- 
 duster, who is the natural enemy of the dust- 
 cloth, no matter if it is of softest silk or brier- 
 stitched cheesecloth hung in the chimney corner 
 in a bag embroidered with a motto, asserts that 
 the heavy hand of Euphemia scouring it round 
 and round leaves lines and zig-zags on furniture 
 
 47 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 and woodwork like those that flying cinders 
 groove on the windows of a Pullman car. 
 
 On the other hand, a model housekeeper — an 
 Oliio housekeeper — declares that the feather- 
 duster is put to a far better use when worn as a 
 head-dress by a South Sea Islander or a North 
 American Indian. Furthermore, a competent, 
 though popular writer on health and hygiene, has 
 sounded the warning: "Let sleeping microbes 
 lie" — over doors and windows and other difficult 
 places, rather than disturb and scatter them, to 
 be innocently swallowed by members of the fam- 
 ily •— all through the agency of the feather-duster. 
 Of course, it is perfectly reasonable to say that 
 dust, thus disturbed, is not removed ; that it rises 
 and settles again ; and so certain was one feather- 
 duster opponent of this, that, detecting Euphe- 
 mia furtively dusting the rungs of a chair in the 
 prohibited manner, she lost her temper, and at 
 the same time her dignity, jerked the brush from 
 the maid's hands, broke the handle in two and 
 tossed the fragments into the grate, exclaiming: 
 
 "That thing shall never come into my house 
 
 48 
 
REFLECTIONS ON DUSTING 
 
 again!*' She added, being wonderfully bold and 
 fearless, "If you disobey me again, you go." 
 
 Euphemia did not disobey her again, be- 
 cause she did not remain long enough to dust 
 another room with a brush, or without it. In her 
 own pertinent and impertinent language, and 
 with the match factory and the mitten factory 
 advertising daily for hands, Euphemia said "she 
 didn't have to." 
 
 The summing up seems to admit some argu- 
 ment on both sides. The cloth, no matter how 
 soft, does leave grooves and lines; but, with a 
 light touch this does not happen, and a dexterous 
 finger can introduce it into the tracery and lat- 
 tice work of the imitation Chippendale now in 
 vogue. Furthermore, dust allowed to remain in 
 these lurking places becomes damp and black 
 and then solidifies, until it is as hard as the wood 
 to which it is attached and can be removed only 
 by thorough redressing. Another item in favor 
 of the dust-cloth is its washableness. 
 
 To the model housekeeper, and to her humble 
 and less successful imitator, there is a sense of 
 
 49 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 comfortable abundance in a whole shelfful of 
 hemmed dust-cloths, as^ fresh and clean and as 
 neatly folded as the table-cloths and bed-linen, 
 and to be as often changed. These perfect dust- 
 cloths are not for a moment to be confounded 
 with those of coarser quality, for commoner use, 
 and much less with the shabby rags that leave 
 trails of lint and thread everywhere. 
 
 I refer only to those that go to the wash every 
 week in generous relays, and are as smoothly 
 ironed as the pillow-cases. 
 
 The feather-duster admits of no such treat- 
 ment, but it will still be favored by those who, 
 with good reason, are afraid of step-ladders. As 
 for disturbed and scattered microbes, they are 
 everywhere, it is urged ; there is no escaping them, 
 and a few million more or less floating about do 
 not appear to shorten materially the allotted span 
 of human life. There is in hotels, and perhaps in 
 those houses where every member of the family, 
 including the baby, has a suite of rooms and an 
 automobile, a huge machine by which both 
 the sweeping and dusting are done. This is the 
 
 50 
 
REFLECTIONS ON DUSTING 
 
 vacuum cleaner, to which I have already respect- 
 fully alluded. It arrives with considerable clat- 
 ter and confusion, mysteriously covered with can- 
 vas, which appeals strongly to the imagination 
 and inspires one with distinct doubts and fears. 
 There are usually two men or more in charge, 
 and as it is trundled across the threshold one 
 might well mistake it for the apparatus of a 
 surgeon about to undertake a major operation, 
 or some sort of a contrivance for inflicting in- 
 stantaneous and painless death. There is a still 
 more imposing variety, common in cities, oper- 
 ated by a steam engine which, of course, stands 
 outside in the street, and from which lengths of 
 hose are carried into the house, and from room to 
 room. The engine outside puffs and pants, the 
 dust is gathered up and forced into the recep- 
 tacle — also outside — and when the house has 
 been gone over from attic to cellar, the hose is 
 reeled up, the engine trundles down the street, 
 having performed its whole duty, like a dull but 
 useful citizen. The automatic method, like cre- 
 mation, is steadily growing in favor, and may one 
 
 51 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 day be in general use, but to me a room cleaned 
 in this way has none of the freshness and bright- 
 ness that follows old-fashioned sweeping and 
 dusting with a cloth. Hand- work in dusting will 
 probably always be preferred by the fastidious, 
 as in the case of the superior arts — painting, 
 carving and embroidery. The hand is the natural 
 tool of the brain, and there is an intimate rela- 
 tion between them. Where the task is bungled — 
 no matter what it is — there is almost sure to be 
 behind the clumsy fingers a turgid, intractable 
 mind. To realize this is the beginning of all do-' 
 mestie wisdom. Euphemia, washing the French 
 gilt clock with Sapolio, or scouring the porcelain 
 bathtubs in the same way, is thus logically ex- 
 plained. 
 
 Machines will never mend matters, whether 
 propelled by gasoline, compressed air, or electric- 
 ity, while the same limited intelligence is in 
 charge. The real domestic problem must, after 
 all, be solved by hand, and complicated modern 
 appliances seem often to introduce into the house 
 only a new element of bother. 
 
 62 
 
VI 
 
 The Pantry Shelves and Door 
 
 THE pantry shelves are often the 
 foraging ground of many preda- 
 tory species, even in what appear 
 to be well kept houses. Flies buzz 
 angrily and throw themselves 
 against the screen outside the win- 
 dow, lured by the smell of dainties and ready to 
 force an entrance at the first opportunity. 
 
 Here, if permitted, the horrid cockroach 
 prowls, tainting what he does not eat, and the 
 huge, bloated water-beetle, glossy and black, 
 greedily joining the others in the work of spoli- 
 
 53 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ation. Then there are ants, big and little, black 
 and red, large and small, and, last of all — mice. 
 
 The hatred of mice, except for their destruc- 
 tiveness, has always seemed to me as senseless as 
 the panic of a horse that takes fright and runs 
 away for just nothing at all. The mouse is not 
 dangerous. His bite, unlike that of his repulsive 
 kinsman, the rat, is not venomous. His little 
 body is a model of grace and elegance, from the 
 fine, pink-veined ears to his delicate and exquis- 
 ite feet; his soft, silken coat is beautiful, and his 
 eyes are bright and intelligent. He never at- 
 tacks, unless brought to bay, and even then he 
 gives one the merest nip, that does not hurt much 
 more than a pin scratch. I learned to tolerate, 
 if not like, mice, from a habit I had, when a child, 
 of taming and petting them, and carrying them 
 with me to school to beguile the ennui of the 
 multiplication table and the parts of speech. I 
 found them peaceable and companionable in their 
 little cages, which were securely hidden in my 
 desk, among my neglected and ill-used books. 
 
 But, having thus done justice to the attractions 
 
 54 
 
THE PANTRY 
 
 of mice, I am forced to agree with their enemies 
 that they are wholly out of place on the pantry 
 shelves. Their footprints, though pretty from 
 an artistic standpoint, are not appetizing or 
 decorative on butter or cake icing. For the im- 
 pudent invader of this forbidden ground, there 
 can be nothing but the trap ; but it should be one 
 that does its work speedily and humanely. Some 
 of the devices used by women who profess to be 
 tender-hearted are instruments of genuine tor- 
 ture — ^^even those recommended by members of 
 the Humane Society, who talk vehemently 
 against cruelty to animals and the wearing of 
 machine-made bird's wings in hats. 
 
 There are various things that will drive away 
 the smaller vermin — borax, hellebore, corrosive 
 sublimate, and, it is said, the fresh parings of 
 cucumbers. Large black ants, it is well known, 
 devour the small red ones — seemingly drawing 
 the color line, for they never appear to molest the 
 smaller species of their own complexion. 
 
 Most vermin love darkness because their deeds 
 are evil — a proposition that is applicable to 
 
 55 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 many creeping things. For this reason, every 
 pantry should have a large window which will 
 freely admit light and air. There should also be 
 a cupboard with solid doors for jellies and such 
 supplies as are chemically affected by too much 
 sunshine. 
 
 Plates for cooking — not those that properly 
 belong in the china closet — should be stood upon 
 edge within a cleat close to the back of the shelf, 
 while bowls and cups and pudding dishes should 
 be turned upside down. All this is j)erfectly well 
 known to most housekeepers, but not all carry it 
 into effect. 
 
 The upper shelf in the pantry is very often a 
 catch-all. There are put away the cracked dishes 
 kept for old associations, the pink-flowered sugar 
 bowl that belonged to one's grandmother ; the tea- 
 pot with the broken nose, that was great-aunt 
 Honoria's ; the old grimy candle-moulds that did 
 duty long before the days of kerosene and gas; 
 boxes of dusty bottles, forgotten balls of twine 
 and ancient parcels of garden seeds that are al- 
 ways spilling. 
 
 56 
 
THE PANTRY 
 
 One reason for all this flotsam and jetsam is, 
 that the top shelf is hard to get at. The insecur- 
 ity of the step-ladder has been noted, and in 
 addition to this grave fault it must be carried 
 from the cellar or the back passage and climbed. 
 The lower shelves, too, must be cleared to receive 
 the rubbish that must be lifted down to be sorted 
 or removed. So dreadful are accidents with step- 
 ladders that, before one begins this, one feels im- 
 pelled to make one's will, or, at least, to study- 
 minutely all rules of "First Aid to the Injured." 
 This is the true and real reason why the upper 
 pantry shelf is occasionally neglected, in the 
 houses of otherwise thorough housekeepers. If 
 some person could invent one that could be raised 
 and lowered at will by a set of smoothly working 
 pulleys, warranted never to get out of order, his 
 fortune would be made and the top pantry shelf 
 would no longer burden the mind of any but theo- 
 retical domestic economists. 
 
 The slovenly habit of leaving food uncovered 
 — except meats that are to be served cold, which 
 should be allowed to cool thoroughly after cook- 
 
 5T 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ing — is a habit to which Euphemia is prone. It 
 is an invitation to mouse, ant and beetle to a 
 bountiful and free entertainment. A few crumbs 
 of cake, or pastry, a bowl of cold potatoes over 
 which no one has thought to place a protecting 
 saucer, the remains of the steak, a little jelly in a 
 lidless tumbler, a spoonful of preserve in a glass 
 dish — all are temptations which no mortal mouse 
 or ant can resist. A pantry where such neglect 
 is permitted inevitably becomes a rich field for 
 the entomologist, but it must be spoken of under 
 one's breath by persons who are averse to com- 
 bining the wonders of Nature with their daily 
 food. 
 
 The housekeeper has another and almost hope- 
 less pantry difficulty with which to contend. It 
 is usually desired to keep the supplies cool that 
 are placed there. Who has ever been able to 
 train Euphemia to close the door behind her as 
 she goes and comes, carrying a cup of flour or 
 a brewing of tea? No one — if she tell the truth, 
 the whole truth and nothing but the truth. A 
 swing door acquires all manner of creakiness. It 
 
 58 
 
THE PANTRY 
 
 screams if you touch it, and will seldom or never 
 close tightly after Euphemia has kicked it for a 
 week. Some one has suggested that she might 
 be reminded of her neglect by means of an ex- 
 plosive attachment, like the signal torpedoes that 
 are placed upon railroad tracks as a warning. 
 But what would it avail with Euphemia, after 
 the first few days — she who must be called regu- 
 larly every morning, although she sleeps with 
 an alarm clock under her pillow of such calibre 
 that it rouses everybody but herself in the house ? 
 No; the only sure means would be for some 
 reliable member of the family to take her stand 
 beside the pantry door and close it, with her own 
 hand, every time Euphemia entered and emerged, 
 and this, in time, would prove monotonous and 
 confining. 
 
 59 
 
VII 
 
 A Few Thoughts About 
 the Cellar 
 
 HUMAN beings, like rodents, have 
 had, always, an inclination to keep 
 their stores underground. Princes 
 and others favored of fortune, in 
 the "Arabian Nights," frequently 
 found, just at the right moment, 
 convenient flights of steps leading down to sub- 
 terranean palaces, or gardens wherein jewelled 
 trees gave of their perennial riches, and where 
 air and sunlight seemed to be superfluous. 
 
 The delightful old pirates, whose manners 
 were often perfect, after capturing and scuttling 
 
 60 
 
THE CELLAR 
 
 a ship, habitually went ashore to bury their 
 plunder in the earth. 
 
 We know it is there that Nature has hidden her 
 rarest and most lasting treasures, apparently to 
 force men to dig and sweat for them, and thus, 
 for the time being, keeping them harmlessly em- 
 ployed. The cellar has always been the storage 
 place for creature comforts of many kinds, be- 
 cause, in the primitive days, when we travelled by 
 stage-coach, subscribed to a weekly paper, and 
 looked forward to the arrival of the new almanac, 
 it was the only security against the heat of Au- 
 gust and the frost of December. 
 
 There was a real charm about an old-fashioned 
 cellar. How cool it was in midsummer, and how 
 warm when the snow lay deep on the ground! 
 The atmosphere was a perfectly blended frag- 
 rance of good things : yellow cream, sweet butter, 
 honey in jars, and, in the apple compartment, 
 bins of all the best varieties. 
 
 How well I recall the bushels of small crimson 
 "Milams," of waxen pink-and-yellow "Sheep- 
 nose," of the mellow and spicy *'Bellflowers," 
 
 61 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 and the ''Vandevere," unsurpassed for pies and 
 mince-meat. How we hunted and sorted them 
 over, for the very choicest specimens to give the 
 teacher, as a peace-offering or as a means of cur- 
 rying favor, or to chnch a hard bargain with 
 Emily Ellen in a trade for her depleted water- 
 color box. The bins ran around the walls; the 
 milk pans were set in shining rows on the shelves, 
 and there were separate spaces for the less invit- 
 ing potatoes and carrots. Collections of many- 
 hued jellies, rich peach and cherry preserves, 
 made by the old recipe, "a pound of fruit to a 
 pound of sugar," that "kept" from their own ex- 
 ceeding richness like Oriental sweets, crowded 
 the long, swinging shelf. Big, round pumpkins, 
 showing a rich purplish bloom on their yellow 
 surface, heaped in convenient corners, breathed 
 intimations ojp Thanksgiving Day. In jars al- 
 most as ample as those to which the cunning Mor- 
 giana devoted her attention, were stored gallons 
 of spiced mince-meat, sausage and "head-cheese" 
 — the rich mixtures with which our grandmoth- 
 ers ruined their digestion and set their children's 
 teeth on edge. 
 
THE CELLAR 
 
 ^ There was no end to the resources of an old- 
 fashioned cellar. It had its own catastrophes, 
 too, like most things mundane. One that I re- 
 member best was subject to being flooded by 
 heavy rainfalls. I used to lie awake listening to 
 the dull beat of the deluge, knowing that there 
 would be difHculty in getting the supplies for 
 breakfast, and that the swarthy "Mexican Pete," 
 who wore earrings, and had an insatiable appetite 
 for red pepper, would arrive as soon as the storm 
 was over, if sober, to pump out the water. I re- 
 call, too, tubs and tables afloat, and the hurried 
 removal of spoilable things that had not been 
 placed permanently above high water mark — as 
 had the apple bins, and the big jars. I also have 
 fond recollections of the clever cat named "Sebit- 
 uane" (by my mother shortened to ''Sooby") 
 for the hospitable African chief who befriended 
 Livingstone. Unlike most cats he was a fearless 
 swimmer. One night he leaped into the cellar 
 when the water was too deep to wade. He pad- 
 dled vigorously to the cellar steps, reached the 
 intervening pantry, there knocked down a pan 
 
 63 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 of flour and presented himself, to our intense de- 
 light, much abashed and well dredged. Another 
 bath was required, but for several days his black 
 coat was quite stiff and sticky. 
 
 After Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote her 
 "Lady of Quality," there was quite a furore 
 for exploring the cellars of old London houses. 
 And what well-preserved secrets did they not 
 unearth? I was told that in one mansion whose 
 mistress had died the previous century in the 
 odor of sanctity two skeletons were dug up, 
 buried many feet below the pavement. In 
 her own beautiful old house in Portland Place, 
 Mrs. Burnett occasionally conducted favored 
 guests through what she called her "Tower of 
 London Kitchen." At the fireplace an ox might 
 have been roasted, and the stores in the wine-bins, 
 in the heyday of its glory, might have quenched 
 the thirst of Falstaff 's army. 
 
 This cellar was much below the level of the 
 street, and there were rooms without number, 
 one beyond the other, with floors and ceilings of 
 
 64 
 
THE CELLAR 
 
 stone, the latter vaulted and groined like the 
 ceilings of a crypt. 
 
 In the rear, farthest back of all, dark and 
 breathless as a tomb, the use of which no man 
 ever knew, was a mysterious cell. It was this 
 sinister hiding-place that suggested the story and 
 the concealment that followed the tragedy. 
 
 The cellar of a modern house has no traditions. 
 There are focused many inventions, that, while 
 intermittently beneficent, have long spells of the 
 utmost malignancy. There is the furnace in 
 which the fire goes out on mornings when the 
 mercury stands at ten degrees below zero, and 
 burns luridly in the unseasonable, warmth of a 
 hot day in March; the hot water plant, or the 
 steam instalment, subject to what Carlyle called 
 awful "gurgling and gluttering," and occasional 
 bursting; the gas meter that keeps on steadily 
 measuring hundreds and thousands of cubic feet 
 while the family are away for the summer va- 
 cation, just as it does when the house is filled 
 with guests, or Eupheraia is burning it all night 
 in her room because she is afraid of ghosts. 
 
 65 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 There, too, is the water meter, to which will be 
 added in the near future an air meter, after a 
 syndicate with a billion dollars capitalization shall 
 have monopolized the atmosphere; with other 
 already existent indicators, reminding one, as 
 they noiselessly perform their work, how riches 
 take wings and a moderate income evaporates. 
 
 The bins once devoted to the "Vandeveres" 
 and "Rambo, " whose praises have been cele- 
 brated, are now filled with coal or dusty coke, 
 outdoing in ugliness the furnace above mentioned 
 with its ugly brick foundation, or other heating 
 apparatus, with all its ramifications of pipes and 
 valves. The top of the furnace does make a good 
 warm bed for the cat, where the masonry is of 
 proper thickness, but that is the most that can be 
 said for it. I have always detested all the im- 
 plements that go with a furnace, because they are 
 so big and sooty, so heavy, awkward and hard to 
 lift: the long poker for scratching out jagged 
 "clinkers" that multiply so fast and which though 
 white hot keep on absorbing and never giving 
 out heat ; the capacious shovel that the man han- 
 
 66 
 
THE CELLAR 
 
 dies so airily — when he can be induced to handle 
 it at all — and which serves, as nothing else can, 
 to remind frail woman of the pitiless limitations 
 of sex. 
 
 Then there is such a bewildering array of 
 dampers to be regulated in all kinds of weather, 
 one quarter closed, half closed, shut tight — a 
 mistake with which puts out the fire, or fills the 
 house with poisonous gas. I have dwelt upon 
 the vagaries of the furnace in weather totally 
 unsuited to those vagaries — the scorching heat 
 it emits in the early autumn and spring when but 
 little is wanted, and its sulking when that heat 
 is needed; and I have always hoped that some 
 plan might be discovered for storing caloric un- 
 til it was required. Then there would be no 
 such thing as a bad furnace. The heat which it 
 often gives out below stairs and nowhere else, 
 is also a fault, almost human in its imperfection. 
 This has necessitated the construction of a cold 
 chamber, else the potatoes will sprout, the apples 
 shrivel and decay. Thus one so-called im- 
 provement brings on another, like the conse- 
 
 6T 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 quence of bad deeds, and so fast do they multi- 
 ply that it is hard, at last, to distinguish the 
 original from its consequences. 
 
 The most that can be said for the furnace, 
 from an aesthetic standpoint, is, that when the 
 wind is in the right direction, and the door can 
 be left open, it sends a cheerful glow into the 
 dark corners. And if it is responsible for effac- 
 ing the hearthstone of poet and painter, it is 
 much more comfortable to sit around a register, 
 or beside a radiator, than constantly to feed a 
 fire and carry out ashes. But when this is said, 
 all is said. 
 
 Many cellars, or basements, have laundry 
 attachments. With their stationary tubs fitted 
 out with faucets for hot and cold water, the stove 
 that keeps the wash-day smell out of the house, 
 they are excellent things — if a laundress can 
 be found. Nowadays, in her efforts to elude 
 pursuit, she is like a fugitive fleeing and hiding 
 from merited justice. 
 
 If she is white, her children have the measles. 
 If she is black, she does her work between "pro- 
 
 68 
 
THE CELLAR 
 
 tracted meetin's'* and the funerals of relatives — 
 a connection so enormous that it never is lessened 
 by continuous and frequently recurring deaths. 
 
 Even when she arrives, she must be allowed 
 generous intervals in which to smoke her pipe 
 and meditate. With her, washing day and iron- 
 ing day, like the eternal Sabbaths of the hymn, 
 "never end," but lap over into each other the 
 whole year round. Still, it is something that she 
 and her ways, which are not always "ways of 
 pleasantness," are underground, where she may 
 be left in solitude to smoke and soliloquize, with- 
 out interrupting the established order on the 
 floors above. 
 
 In considering this aspect of the cellar and 
 its possibilities, putting all prejudice aside, the 
 German semi-annual wash-day has much to re- 
 commend it — a mighty splashing, and clear- 
 starching, twice a year, and then — peace. 
 
 69 
 
VIII 
 
 Up in the Attic 
 
 AN ATTIC, dear to memory, was 
 reached by a flight of enclosed 
 steps from "the long bedroom." 
 In the centre of the space one 
 could stand upright and not touch 
 the rafters, while the slope of the 
 roof lowered gradually on either side until it 
 touched the eaves. There was no real floor in 
 the attic, only narrow, rough boards laid along 
 the centre that clattered as you walked and gave 
 you a delightful sense of insecurity. We were 
 always cautioned to keep on the boards, and were 
 
UP IN THE ATTIC 
 
 held in check by a terrible tale of a "distant" 
 cousin who inadvertently stepped off, and whose 
 foot went through the ceiling of the room below, 
 bringing a bother of plasterers to repair dam- 
 ages, at much expense and inconvenience. What 
 would have happened had the hole been larger 
 and the "distant" cousin dropped down bodily 
 with a crash, we often imagined — a disquieting 
 but salutary reflection. There were always fam- 
 ilies of fluffy kittens in the garret, behind boxes 
 pushed back close under the eaves; and we 
 peered around and over the boxes, thrilled with 
 delicious fear at good old Tabby's eyes blazing 
 in the dark. It was a harrowing catastrophe 
 when once two of her many litters fell down be- 
 tween the plastering and the weather-boarding 
 and had to be rescued by the intervention of the 
 carpenter. 
 
 We could hear the scratching claws of pink- 
 footed pigeons running over the shingles, and 
 by putting our ears close to the weatherboarding 
 we could hear the grumbling of the mothers and 
 the petulant squealing of the squabs in the nests 
 
 71 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 outside in the cornice — squabs doomed, alas I to 
 furnish forth the most delectable pigeon pies that 
 ever came steaming to the table. 
 
 In the summer, wasps came flying through the 
 open window with their burdens of lint and mud 
 for the nests which they built along the rafters. 
 Big bunches of dried pennyroyal, hoarhound and 
 catnip were hung up at intervals from these same 
 rafters. Often were these supplies drawn from ; 
 when the children had colds, or their measles 
 "would not come out," or the newest baby was 
 getting its first taste of human ailment in the 
 throes of colic. These herbs gave out a dusty 
 odor to the old attic that was pleasant enough. 
 
 The battered, hairy trunks that were stored in 
 the place, to say nothing of other receptacles, 
 were full of old clothes and parcels of calico, 
 silk and woolen scraps — the "pieces" that we 
 coveted and which we relied upon to replenish 
 our dolls' wardrobes. There were queer old hats 
 and bonnets that we used when we wanted 
 to "dress up," and a chest, the lid of which we 
 lifted with bated breath, whenever we could sum- 
 
 79 
 
UP IN THE ATTIC 
 
 mon up enough courage, getting a fearsome 
 glimpse of yellow bones and grinning skull — for 
 the grandfather was a country doctor and the un- 
 articulated skeleton was a survival of his student 
 days. There were also piles of medical pam- 
 phlets bound in glossy paper — white, yellow, 
 green and blue, out of which we clothed our pa- 
 per dolls with surpassing magnificence. From 
 the dusty window we could see the flash of the 
 cannon when the salute was fired on the Fourth 
 of July, out on the village common. When tired 
 of playing there were snug nooks where divans 
 could bd arranged from spare pillows and dis- 
 carded comforters and where we read "Puss in 
 Boots," "Hop o'My Thumb" or "Swiss Family 
 Robinson" to the patter of the summer rain on 
 the shingles. 
 
 The child of to-day is sorely exercised and 
 thinks much about her clothes. She knows that 
 Santa Claus is a myth, that "Puss in Boots" is 
 foolish and the fascinating ingenuity of "Swiss 
 Family Robinson" quite impossible. Perhaps 
 this is partly the reason why the attic, too, like 
 
 73 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 all the rest of the modern house, has undergone 
 a change which has added much to its convenience 
 but has robbed it of the last vestige of sentiment. 
 Still another old-fashioned attic belonged to 
 a delightful farmhouse. It was floored and plas- 
 tered, the space at the sides only being reserved 
 for storage, quite enclosed and entered by small 
 doors that fastened with a button. In this attic, 
 which extended the entire length of the house, 
 there were three big four-post beds, and a win- 
 dow in either end which, left open on summer 
 nights, gave full sweep to the west wind. The 
 moonlight streamed in and lay, a silver patch 
 across our beds, and the breeze brought the far- 
 off barking of dogs from other farms, and the 
 fragrance of sweetbrier, of new-mown hay and 
 the clove pinks along the garden walks. We 
 were always given a candle to undress by, and, 
 to this day, the smell of a smoking candle wick 
 brings back the memory of that pleasant place, 
 although now 
 
 **A11, all are gone, the old, familiar faces.'* 
 
 74 
 
UP IN THE ATTIC 
 
 Through the day in the spring and summer 
 it resounded with the cheerful hum of the spin- 
 ning-wheel, for here all such work was done, Ann 
 and Martha walking to and fro, drawing out 
 the long thread that wound itself on the fast- 
 flying spindle, while Aunt Polly sat, her half- 
 blind eyes shaded by the sunbonnet drawn down 
 over her face, carding the snow-white fleeces. 
 
 The attic of to-day is reached by a conventional 
 staircase, quite as good as the best, forty years 
 ago, furnished with a banister or safe hand-rail. 
 It is liberally supplied with electricity, or gas 
 jets, registers or radiators. There are several 
 windows for light and perfect ventilation which 
 are washed regularly and properly equipped 
 with shades and sash curtains. There is a smooth 
 floor for dancing, and even a stage for private 
 theatricals or stereopticon lectures. Very little 
 second-hand furniture is kept there because it 
 has been either done over or sold to the second- 
 hand dealer, or sent to the summer cottage. 
 Whatever relics of clothing there may be are 
 neatly arranged in drawers and wardrobes. 
 
 75 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 Occasionally the best satin gowns, with laces and 
 silken scarfs, are stored here in long cedar chests. 
 Here little Rollo, who was put into spectacles at 
 eight, declaims his speech for Arbor Day, and 
 Julia practices reading the paper that she has 
 written for the reunion of her "sorority" — hate- 
 fullest of all words, except "smart" and "swag- 
 ger." No fairy tales for them, or paper dolls, 
 or watching wasps, or thrills at Tabby's fiery 
 eyes, if you please. They have reached a loftier 
 "viewpoint," "a higher plane," "along these 
 lines," to quote again the phraseology of plati- 
 tude. But it must be confessed — once more — 
 that what the attic has lost in one direction it 
 has gained in another, and the laundress — when 
 there is one — is thankful for the clean, roomy 
 place where the Monday washing can be dried 
 on Monday, without postponement, regardless 
 of the weather. 
 
 Once in a while an attic is neglected and rub- 
 bish accumulates distractingly. This is the attic 
 of the overburdened, or procrastinating woman, 
 who fully intends "to get at that attic one 
 
 76 
 
UP IN THE ATTIC 
 
 of these days," but never does. Sometimes 
 she is only discouraged, and no wonder, if 
 she has married a man who has the horrible 
 habit of saving old newspapers — yellow, 
 bulging bundles dating back to the debate on 
 the Fugitive Slave law; others recording the stir- 
 ring events of the Civil War, from Fort Sumter 
 to Appomatox; illustrated journals, technical 
 papers, all tied up with strips of list, or fuzzy 
 hempen string. One of these days the procras- 
 tinating woman may be of that company of wid- 
 ows who immediately make bonfires of such col- 
 lections when there is no longer a strong marital 
 hand to restrain them. Then she will really 
 clean up the attic, and the work of renovation, 
 once begun, will be carried to its last resolution. 
 She would never, of course, acknowledge it, 
 but when the last Tribune of December 30, 1850, 
 is reduced to ashes, she will have a chastened 
 sensation of satisfaction, like Mrs. Belden in 
 "The Breadwinner," who found a real consola- 
 tion for bereavement in at last having all the 
 hooks on both sides of the closet for her gowns. 
 
 77 
 
IX 
 
 Round About the Back Porch 
 
 SOME new people had bought the 
 fine old house next door. The 
 sheds and rookeries in the rear 
 had been torn away and a spa- 
 cious porch had been built, instead, 
 extending to the upper story, en- 
 closed in a lattice. 
 
 "Why are they doing that?" asked the won- 
 dering neighbor. "Everybody knows that a 
 back porch, especially a latticed back porch, is a 
 perfect catch-all. The clothes-line and the bas- 
 ket of clothes-pins and the washing machine are 
 
 78 
 
THE BACK PORCH 
 
 always left there. The baby's perambulator is 
 wheeled across the door where you stumble 
 over it in the dark. In the fall there will be 
 crates of cucumbers and mangoes and tomatoes, 
 and in the winter, buckets of coal." 
 
 The view of the wondering neighbor was de- 
 spondent, for, even as a repository for cucum- 
 bers and mangoes and tomatoes the back porch is 
 a great convenience, and doubly so if screened 
 by a neat lattice. When vines are framed over 
 it — the splendid Cobea scandens, pale moon- 
 flowers, clematis, or even the many-hued morn- 
 ing glory — it becomes a bower, a vernal retreat, 
 where one hears but faintly the puffing automo- 
 bile or the rattling trolley, and is not pained by 
 the grocer's boy who drives by on the delivery 
 wagon, lashing the sweating horse for a race with 
 a rival while the mercury stands at 90 degrees in 
 the shade. 
 
 A distinguished woman whose husband was a 
 famous litterateur and diplomat, often talked of 
 her back porch and how much she enjoyed it, in 
 the first serene days of her simple housekeeping. 
 
 79 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 "I had my sewing-machine out there in the 
 summer," she said, "and I remember an unex- 
 pected visit we had from General H — on a 
 heavenly September morning. Pie came quite 
 unexpectedly — on horseback, for we had no rail- 
 way connection with the outside world in those 
 days. The breakfast table had been set on the 
 back porch where we always ate during pleasant 
 weather. I was baking waffles and he sat down 
 and had coffee and %vaffles with us, and then we 
 talked. How pleasant it was!" 
 
 The humbler visitors, too, use the back porch 
 — a very different class from those who arrive on 
 foot, in carriages or motors, to be admitted by 
 the front door, card-cases carried decorously in 
 hand, on one's day ; or the doctor making his pro- 
 fessional call when there is sickness in the house ; 
 the clergyman paying a pastoral visit; the com- 
 pany bidden to the wedding or some other high 
 festivity, or, those who come silently and unasked 
 ■ — old friends and acquaintances — on that last 
 occasion of all, when there is no brightening eye 
 and no outstretched hand to welcome them. 
 
 80 
 
THE BACK PORCH 
 
 But, if all these prosperous folk know nothing 
 of the back entrance, by way of the back porch, 
 it has its own familiars — the red-faced butcher's 
 boy who calls for his order ; the grocer's man on 
 the same errand; the millanan with his crimson 
 cheeks and his cap drawn down over his ears on 
 frosty mornings, who tells you that "he never 
 heard tell of formald'hyde." Then, too, the back 
 porch has its touch of romance. Euphemia sits 
 there star-gazing on the steps, the weather per- 
 mitting, with the arm of her latest admirer 
 around her waist. He tells her wondrous tales 
 of personal prowess — how he got even with the 
 boss; of the lucrative jobs he has had, or refused, 
 or expects to get. 
 
 Occasionally Euphemia sings. It may not be 
 generally known, but there is a whole lyrical an- 
 thology, familiar only to persons of her calling. 
 Many of these songs are simply sentimental ; oth- 
 ers are dismally tragic, as these verses, quoted as 
 rendered, will show: 
 
 81 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 "My tender parients brought me up 
 
 Pervided fur me well, 
 And in the city of Lexington 
 
 They placed me in a mill. 
 At last I saw a prett}'^ form, 
 
 On her I cast my eye. 
 And then I saw another one 
 
 That suited me full well 
 And Satan put it in my heart 
 
 My first true love to kill. 
 
 **I asked her fur to walk with me, — 
 
 To walk a little ways — 
 That her and me might both agree 
 
 Upon a wedding-day. 
 I took her by the lily-white hand 
 
 And led her to the place, 
 I took a rail out of the fence 
 
 And stroke her in the face. 
 
 "She fell upon her bended knee 
 
 And did for mercy cry, 
 *For Mercy's sake O, pity me, 
 
 I'm not prepared to die. ' 
 But little did I care for that, 
 
 I only stroke her more 
 Until I ended that sweet life, 
 
 I never can restore. ' ' 
 
 82 
 
THE BACK PORCH 
 
 By far the larger part of Euphemia's reper- 
 toire is equally gloomy, although occasionally 
 she bursts forth with a cheery lilt like this : 
 
 "On the banks of the Minnehaha, my love, 
 
 On the banks of the Minnehaha, 
 We will buy us a farm and together we will live 
 
 On the banks of the Minnehaha. ' ' 
 
 As in compositions of a higher order, poetic 
 license grants wide latitude in these songs, dear 
 to the heart of Euphemia, in matters of geog- 
 raphy and other items which, after all, are not 
 essential to the emotions or the imagination. 
 
 In the leafy retirement of the back porch, the 
 telephone cannot be heard; you cannot be called 
 up while absorbed in some intricate bit of sewing, 
 or a book which must be finished that day, to be 
 asked if that is the Police Station or Smith's 
 Foundry. 
 
 The door-bell, too, rings faintly, so you miss 
 the poor, much-to-be-pitied canvasser, who in 
 very bad grammar tells you at once, and patron- 
 izingly, that she is from Boston and is the agent 
 for caustic soap and face-powder. 
 
 83 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 You may ply the sewing-machine uninterrupt- 
 edly, or finish your book in peace, for the repre- 
 sentatives of trade, unwilling to curtail five min- 
 utes of their protracted interchange of pleasantry 
 with Euphemia, seek her boldly and pass by. 
 Yes; there is much to be said in favor of a back 
 porch — with a lattice — and the house which 
 we have been building in imagination, for years, 
 shall assuredly have one. 
 
 84. 
 
Through the Hall to the 
 Front Door 
 
 N nearly all old English houses 
 the hall furnishes evidence of fam- 
 ily distinction. It is emblazoned 
 with splendid coats of arms, with 
 trophies of the chase, weapons and 
 mediaeval armor, with works of art 
 and settees of carved oak. In the houses of 
 the well-to-do in our own professedly demo- 
 cratic country, the hall may boast a good 
 polished oak floor and fine rugs; but there 
 are other unconsidered thousands who are con- 
 tent if, with hard-wood floors and rugs, there 
 
 85 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 is a table, a hat-rack and a hanging lamp 
 of wrought iron. The main staircase, with 
 a cathedral glass window at the landing, it is 
 thought, affords sufficient diversity, particularly 
 if there is an imposing newel post and an up- 
 borne sheaf of electric lights. 
 
 The hall is a fair index to the taste of its 
 owner and the home-making instinct of his help- 
 mate. I remember how painfully and conclusive- 
 ly this was proved once in a search for habitable 
 lodging in a western city. I had cut from the 
 morning paper a long list of addresses, those of 
 people in reduced circumstances who offered all 
 the comforts of a home for a modest considera- 
 tion, or received "paying guests" — a sinister 
 term borrowed from England. What revela- 
 tions followed that day's fruitless quest! Door 
 after door was entered, some with bells whose 
 slack wires Jangled like the broken strings of an 
 aged piano ; others with a sort of twirling ratchet 
 arrangement, or electric buttons that failed to 
 respond, or that began ringing and would not 
 leave off. In many places the doormat was 
 
 86 
 
THROUGH THE HALL 
 
 ragged to the last degree and clogged with lint 
 and sand ; on another you could faintly discern a 
 half -obliterated and highly satirical * 'Welcome" 
 — in faded red. letters on a dun background. 
 There were cobwebs around the transom and slits 
 in the shades of the side lights and curtains that 
 were ragged and hung askew. There was much 
 difference in the agility of the maid, or landlady, 
 who admitted one ; the door opening so promptly 
 in some places as to suggest that the maid or 
 matron in waiting had been resting on the stairs, 
 rather discouraged that so few came, and ready 
 to spring, panther-like, at the first tinkle; while 
 others presented themselves at a leisurely pace, 
 chewing, perhaps, as if they had been disturbed 
 while taking a little refreshment. The door open, 
 what a stale, dead atmosphere greeted one! so 
 heavy, with so much "body," that it seemed re- 
 markable it had not settled down, visible, over 
 everything, like a "London Particular." It 
 was the lingering effluvia of hundreds of "boiled 
 dinners" in which the distinct odors of onions, 
 cabbage and carrots could be immediately recog- 
 
 87 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 nized. Through the Cimmerian gloom one had 
 glimpses of a soiled and ragged carpet, a huge, 
 grim chandelier, with stair rods displaced, or 
 missing. As a comforting reminder that man is 
 mortal, and that earthly suffering must finally 
 have an end, I noted one cheerful wall decora- 
 tion — the plat of a large, new cemetery that 
 could be reached quickly and conveniently by 
 the car line that passed the door. 
 
 Now, whatever may be said, and though there 
 are men and women who will find fault with 
 Heaven, should they ever get there, the average 
 lodger does not ask the impossible. So many 
 boarding houses now accommodate — or profess 
 to accommodate — business women, and this 
 class patronize laundries — unless they are send- 
 ing home money to their families on a salary of 
 ten dollars a week. They do not invade the 
 kitchen to "rub out handkerchiefs," or "press 
 out two or three collars"; they hire all this done, 
 glad that they have not to do it themselves. Such 
 women are more than grateful for common com- 
 fort, which by the way is most uncommon, and 
 
 88 
 
THROUGH THE HALL 
 
 they count just plain, unpretentious cleanness 
 a luxury. 
 
 When such an applicant for room and board 
 finds a front hall which has been well swept, or 
 the floor of which has been brightly polished; 
 where pure air circulates freely and there is a 
 reasonable amount of light, she looks no further ; 
 she knows, instinctively, that the rooms above 
 and below stairs, however simply they may be 
 furnished, will give satisfaction. The mattress 
 will not suggest a collection of wire rat-traps, 
 and she will not be forced to invest in hammer 
 and nails to patch up things that are falling in 
 pieces, or buy cheap stuff for drapery to hide 
 splotches of shoe polish or kerosene on the wall 
 paper. 
 
 The well ordered hall, which may be plain as 
 it can be, gives cheerful assurance of tidiness and 
 comfort which can usually be relied upon. 
 
 I remember, once, taking lodgings in London 
 upon the sole and unsupported testimony of the 
 "wax-cloth" in the "passage" — the brightest 
 blue and brown, upon which not a speck of dust 
 
 89 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 could be seen — even in that sooty town ! They 
 were the only English lodgings I ever occupied 
 where the vegetables were cooked done; where 
 the aromatic mint leaf was left out of the green 
 peas, and where the entrees might have been the 
 handiwork of a French chef. 
 
 I spent months there, and left only because 
 the husband of the landlady — a gentleman of 
 extremest leisure — had a trying habit of pound- 
 ing the table with his first and bawling at "Scott," 
 the maid, who was always, consequently, in a 
 state of abject terror. But he had not wiped up 
 that immaculate wax-cloth and had no place in 
 the logical sequence of the good housekeeping 
 for which his garrulous little wife alone deserved 
 the credit. The deduction still remains unas- 
 sailable; the polished brass knocker and door- 
 knob were as bright and cheerful as the shining 
 sun, as was the whole house — when the master 
 was away. 
 
 It is not surprising that, from a conscientious 
 apprenticeship. Sir Joseph Porter, K. C. B., rose 
 to be "the ruler of the Queen's navee." It was 
 
 90 
 
THROUGH THE HALL 
 
 the merited promotion of one who had not 
 shirked, but who, in youth, had, to the best of his 
 abihty "pohshed up the handle of the big front 
 door." 
 
 He deserved well of his country, and it was 
 the most natural thing in the world that he should 
 have been idolized by "his sisters and his cousins 
 and his aunts." 
 
 91 
 
The Dining -Room 
 
 N most houses the dining-room is 
 set apart for one function only, 
 the serving and eating of meals. 
 Among persons of moderate 
 means one corner is frequently oc- 
 cupied by the sewing-machine, 
 while the long table, when it is not required for 
 its specific use, is utilized for "cutting out." 
 Scraps are scattered about which Euphemia picks 
 up unwillingly. For a brief season — while the 
 fall and spring sewing are going on — such a 
 dining-room is not comfortable. 
 
 92 
 
THE DINING-ROOM 
 
 In many prosperous, middle-class houses in 
 England the dining-room is the common sitting 
 room. In the morning, at least, the table is 
 covered with a cloth of serviceable woollen ma- 
 terial, of some warm, dark shade; the prints on 
 the wall are always good. In cold — not cool — 
 weather a clear fire burns in the shining grate 
 which is scrupulously black-leaded every morn- 
 ing — such is the subjection of English house- 
 maids, even yet — and there is a high, bright 
 brass fender, with a fender-stool, worked in old- 
 fashioned cross-stitch. The sideboard is loaded 
 with glass and plate — the latter authentically 
 hall-marked — and at a nice little desk near the 
 window the mistress, with characteristic prompt- 
 ness and courtesy, answers the notes that have 
 come by morning post, and goes over her house- 
 keeping accounts. There is space for a sofa, and 
 here the boys lounge — seldom the girls — read- 
 ing novels. The cherished cats and dogs have 
 the run of the house, including the dining-room, 
 even at meal time, and while they are sometimes 
 
 93 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 well-behaved, at others they take liberties that 
 shock our sense of propriety. 
 
 With us, however, no one sits in the dining- 
 room. There seems to be an unwritten law that 
 it must be left to itself, except at meal-time, 
 and during the few minutes of gossip when the 
 family think they may loiter at table. At most, 
 the children spread out their atlases and diction- 
 aries under the convenient light, after dinner, or 
 write their essays and exercises there, undis- 
 turbed. 
 
 And yet, much time and thought are often 
 given to beautifying the dining-room, to the 
 selection and arrangement of all its belongings; 
 to the plate-shelf, with its array of jugs and plat- 
 ters, the chairs, sideboard, table and rugs. 
 
 There has been a reaction against pictures 
 of dead game and fish, and peaches and straw- 
 berries spilling out of overturned baskets. Ap- 
 parently these have been consigned to oblivion, 
 with spinning-wheels and decorated snow-shovels. 
 The impression is spreading that pictures on 
 the dining-room walls may be, without offense, 
 
 94 
 
T HE DINING-ROOM 
 
 just as good as those elsewhere in the house. 
 
 Sydney Smith loved books, not only for their 
 contents, but because they ^'furnished a room." 
 In the days of his comparative obscurity he 
 longed for a room, the walls of which should be 
 lined with books in bright bindings. In his lonely 
 and remote Yorkshire parish, where the coaches 
 of his titled visitors mired in the mud in front of 
 the drawing-room windows, his wish was grati- 
 fied. With the coming of more prosperous 
 times, he was able to have the books and they 
 were all collected upon shelves, not in a library, 
 but in the dining-room, where he surveyed 
 them with satisfaction at least three times daily. 
 They were compensation for mud and lack of 
 near neighbors. 
 
 Whether used as a sitting-room or not, there 
 should be, if possible, an abundance of sunshine 
 — cheerfulness, in any event. Most of us are dis- 
 posed to begin the day in a state of querulous ir- 
 ritability more or less suppressed, according to 
 our theories of politeness. Why this is true, no 
 one has ever explained. But it must be sadly 
 
 95 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 admitted that there are comparatively few who 
 are as good-tempered at breakfast, no matter 
 how trying may have been the labors of the day, 
 as they are over the mid-day luncheon or the 
 after-dinner coffee. Sleep should refresh one, 
 though to be sure all do not sleep, and to these, 
 morning brings only lassitude and weariness. 
 Such sufferers must be pitied and forgiven, if 
 nothing suits them, though they are enjoined not 
 to inflict their morning megrims upon their in- 
 nocent and unoffending brothers and sisters. 
 
 Because so many of us do come to breakfast 
 soddenly and heavily, it should be above all 
 others, an appetizing meal, — the coffee clear 
 and fragrant, the eggs flawless, with the toast 
 brown, crisp and tender, with fruits and mel- 
 ons in their season, and flowers fresh as dew. 
 In the country all these things are obtainable, 
 most of them being home products; and in the 
 city, with overstocked markets, luxuries often 
 come within the reach of people of very moderate 
 means. 
 
 One of the most delightful dining-rooms I 
 
 96 
 
THE DINING-ROOM 
 
 have ever seen was that of a friend in one of the 
 enchanting hamlets of the Hawaiian Islands. It 
 was separated from the parlor only by an arch- 
 way with an inconspicuous grille, with narrow 
 open spaces on either side of the archway, in 
 which were placed fine foliage plants that were 
 of a most thrifty and luxuriant growth. The 
 floor was covered with soft, white Japanese mat- 
 ting. I cannot recall a single detail of the fur- 
 nishings — everything about that house was in 
 exquisite taste, for all its simplicity. But I recall 
 even yet, with delight, the deep, recessed window 
 with its broad, cushioned window-seat. Just out- 
 side was a strip of ground set thick with nastur- 
 tiums of many shades, and at the edge of the 
 flower-plot a perpendicular cliff fell sheer to the 
 sea. 
 
 From that wonderful window-seat the great 
 Pacific Ocean, blue as sapphire, or grey as a 
 cloud, reflecting the tropical sky above it, 
 stretched to the horizon and on and on, the waste 
 of water unbroken by a single island, to the coast 
 of South America. 
 
 97 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 Sails shone in the offing, and occasionally 
 a great man-of-war dropped anchor in the har- 
 bor, and far away, ethereal as a dream, rose the 
 snow-capped peak of Mauna Kea. To the north 
 were groves of dark-foliaged palms and 
 mangoes of exquisite grace, their broad leaves 
 swaying slowly and fitfully in the trade 
 wind. I thought at first, "This is beautiful — 
 now, that it is summer, but what will it be when 
 winter comes?" Then I remembered that tliere 
 is no winter in those Fortunate Isles. Some 
 days there were storms; then the surf rolled in 
 and tossed its spray against the cliff with a re- 
 sounding roar, and the trade wind answered with 
 its deep, strong cadence. 
 
 But even Mahomet could not bring the moun- 
 tain to himself, chosen of Allah though he was; 
 and such a seascape, with its tropical setting, it 
 is not given many to study and enjoy while doing 
 justice to substantial creature comforts. The 
 point is, however, that my friends might ha\^e 
 selected another part of the house for their din- 
 ing-room — one to the rear, or overlooking the 
 
 98 
 
THE DINING-ROOM 
 
 road; but they did not, and I have always 
 thought that their close companionship with the 
 great and mysterious ocean must have had a 
 very real influence in their daily lives. For 
 without laboring to be cultured they were people 
 given to high thinking, of sweet, tranquil dignity 
 and natural gentleness of speech and manners. 
 
 Another wonderful dining-room was in Lon- 
 don, superbly adorned with costly Delft — 
 hearth, mantel and wainscoting; with chairs, ta- 
 ble and sideboard of some lustrous wood which I 
 did not know. The napery on great occasions was 
 a marvel of antique needlework. The dull Lon- 
 don street was shut out by windows of stained 
 glass that filled the room with a softened, opales- 
 cent light. Much of the talk of that splendid 
 table was of London, and reminded one of Henry 
 James's declaration — "Nowhere else is there 
 such fulness of life." 
 
 The main features of that luxurious dining- 
 room may be out of the reach of most people — 
 the Delft, the antique needlework, and the host 
 
 99 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 and guests, who had drawn from the resources 
 of the whole world their power to entertain. 
 
 But it is possible for the humblest of us to 
 take into the dining-room a cheerful countenance, 
 pleasant and gracious speech, a ready willing- 
 ness to bear with dulness, and to make no sign if 
 the fare is disappointing and unpalatable. Such 
 evils should not exist in an enlightened society, 
 in the houses of the intelligent. But they do ex- 
 ist, in dire crises, for there are failures every- 
 where against which human ingenuity is power- 
 less to contend. 
 
 It is of benefit to reflect, then, that while bad 
 coffee is unpalatable it is not really harmful, and 
 tough beefsteak and heavy bread may be eaten 
 occasionally — not habitually — with no lasting 
 bad results. It is certain that a poor breakfast, 
 even after a restless night, is not a sufficient cause 
 for surly complaint, or for the bad temper that 
 affects the digestion and makes others feel sad 
 and unhappy for the rest of the day. 
 
 A smooth, spotless cloth, shining china laid 
 with precision, a sharp carving knife and steel 
 
 100 
 
THE DINING-ROOM 
 
 ready at hand, a cheerful, clean, well-ventilated 
 dining-room, are a good beginning for the day's 
 work, and if the meal is wholesome, however 
 plain, and the conversation agreeable, those who 
 are thus fortified go forth to meet their responsi- 
 bilities with augmented courage. 
 
 It has become a fad with many to eat no break- 
 fast — an abuse against which the body, which 
 requires sufficient and regular nourishment, must 
 finally rebel. It is not only the simple nutritious 
 fare that cannot be foregone, but the pleasant 
 talk, the advice, the encouragement, the sugges- 
 tion which the aroma of coffee seems to inspire. 
 
 Three pauses daily, in the rush of work, three 
 reunions daily around the table within the en- 
 compassing walls of the dining-room, are not 
 too many. 
 
 It would be a blessed thing if it were possible 
 for all — for the boys and girls who carry their 
 luncheons to school, for the husbands and 
 fathers who hurry to the restaurant and then 
 hurry away again, inviting wretched invalidism 
 and criminally shortening their lives — to return 
 
 101 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 instead for their mid-day meal to the restful quiet 
 and better fare of the home. 
 
 The spread of rapid transit in every direction 
 brings the school and the down-town office into 
 closer and closer proximity to the family dining- 
 room, and it is a factor in health and happiness 
 not to be underestimated. 
 
 109 
 
XII 
 
 Table Talk 
 
 TALK at table demands very 
 serious consideration. It has ac- 
 quired a meaning of its own and 
 brings to mind men and women 
 of affairs — Macaulay and the ar- 
 bitrary Lady Holland, Sydney 
 Smith, the poet Rogers and his 
 breakfasts, Lord Houghton and Longfellow, in 
 once classic Cambridge — all denizens of the high 
 world, gifted, brilliant and witty, with a wide 
 knowledge of art, literature and science, and of 
 strange, interesting countries. Out of the fulness 
 of such knowledge and mental equipment their 
 
 103 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 talk could not be other than delightful, and for 
 their proficiency in a difficult accomplishment 
 they have been immortalized in history, and their 
 utterances live after them. 
 
 But it is not of such table talk as theirs that 
 this brief commentary has to deal. It is, rather, 
 with the ordinary conversation of every-day talk 
 on the practical things of every-day life, which 
 already has been casually touched upon. 
 
 But it will bear further discussion. Some of 
 us have an involuntary superstition as to the 
 sort of a beginning we make of the day, and we 
 are almost persuaded that there is sl visible tide 
 of circumstance that sets in with the morning 
 and does not turn until the sun has gone down. 
 
 A number of homely proverbs — the survival 
 of generations of folk-lore — deal with right 
 and wrong beginnings, and warn one to make, 
 if possible, a propitious start in whatever task or 
 pleasure one may have essayed. As has been re- 
 marked, good-tempered, interesting talk, and 
 a firm determination to regard indifferent cook- 
 ery with tolerant patience, when it is not persist- 
 
 104 
 
TABLE TALK 
 
 ent, makes a most propitious beginning of the 
 day's work. With self-control and amiability the 
 selection of suitable subjects for talk at table, 
 particularly the breakfast table, where they do 
 not present themselves spontaneously, should 
 steadfastly be borne in mind. 
 
 There is one topic that should be eternally 
 tabooed and that is — disease and painful ac- 
 cidents. Upon this point Emerson has written 
 with authority. He warns us of the unwisdom 
 of making even the most formal inquiry as to 
 our neighbors' health lest it set in motion a flood 
 of particulars impossible to check. He lays 
 such stress upon the avoidance of disease as a 
 theme for talk that one almost hesitates to ask: 
 "How do you do?" 
 
 Christian Scientists, however much of their 
 theories we may reject, especially that of "mali- 
 cious animal magnetism," hold one vital princi- 
 ple, that to dwell upon disease mentally is to 
 invite it. It is not an invention or discovery 
 of that cult, since such a belief has existed for 
 ages, and it is a well-known physiological fact 
 
 105 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 that thinking of it seriously retards and impairs 
 the function of digestion. 
 
 And yet, what a common topic is sickness and 
 accident as table talk, amongst those who in all 
 other respects are charmingly polite. Who has 
 not been forced to sit at table with intelligent 
 people and listen, powerless to change the sub- 
 ject, to interminable discourse upon tonics, pills 
 and plasters. 
 
 Even worse are the descriptions of symptoms 
 and "attacks," and minute accounts of horrible 
 catastrophes that make the flesh creep. One of 
 these days we shall come to look upon all such 
 discussions at table as another evidence of de- 
 fective civilization, far more reprehensible than 
 the misuse of the knife in the past. 
 
 There is no end of pleasant things to talk 
 about, so the inherently unpleasant should be 
 rigorously barred — sickness above all, hard luck 
 and misfortune — all the disagreeables that it is 
 the fine flower of courtesy to bear in silence, or 
 to mention as seldom as possible, and never at 
 table. 
 
 106 
 
TABLE TALK 
 
 The interesting and amusing happenings that 
 have brightened the days; the new book that is 
 being read ; the plans that are being arranged for 
 some important event; the permissible gossip of 
 church, society or club — all these afford material 
 for talk that goes well with the morning omelette 
 or the dessert that ends the dinner. The short- 
 comings of servants, the stupidity of Euphe- 
 mia, the impertinence of the seamstress, their 
 waste and mischievous blundering, also belong 
 to the list of domestic "dont's" — no matter how 
 painful and palpable may be the evidence of their 
 sins, set forth in plain view. And while the mis- 
 tress endeavors to meet her trials with a calm, un- 
 ruffled front, the master should strive to excel in 
 well-doing of the same sort, keeping to himself 
 the vexations he has endured, and leaving to the 
 tete-a-tete any objections to domestic matters 
 he may be disposed to offer, and such exhorta- 
 tions to economy as he may consider are urgently 
 needed. 
 
 Another species of tiresome talk, which re- 
 minds one of those examples in the old grammars 
 
 107 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 headed "errors to be avoided," is that which 
 abounds in dogmatic statements meant to be stol- 
 idly and laboriously improving, which are 
 hurled at one's head like so many bricks. Argu- 
 ment, at table, has no justification at all. It is, 
 usually like the great matter which a small fire 
 kindles. It begins with some apparently unim- 
 portant remark which is questioned or contra- 
 dicted; the debate on either side becomes more 
 and more heated and noisy, each faction gaining 
 supporters until presently the entire family is in- 
 volved in it. It is doubtful if argument under 
 the most favorable conditions has ever accom- 
 plished so very much, after all. People make up 
 their minds of their own accord, each for himself, 
 the conclusions which they reach being worked 
 out from a mass of pros and cons. Juries may 
 be swayed by it, but not until they have been 
 forced to listen to the testimony of many wit- 
 nesses, cross-examination and rebuttal ; and even 
 after all this they disagree, very often, the few 
 "hanging out," testimony and debate both having 
 been lost upon them. If, then, professional de- 
 
 108 
 
TABLE TALK 
 
 bate, highly technical and thoroughly searching, 
 can prove so futile where vast interests are in- 
 volved, how much more futile is it when there is a 
 mere personal point of view to be sustained, that 
 will benefit nobody, when all is said and done, 
 and which serves only to spoil an otherwise en- 
 joyable meal. 
 
 As bad as stubborn and excited argument, is 
 the habit of reading the newspaper aloud. There 
 mav be some excuse for the husband and father 
 who will have little leisure during a busy day 
 if he props up the paper and scans the headlines 
 as he eats his toast and drinks his coffee; but it 
 is not a habit conducive either to health or to 
 the genial companionship that should refine the 
 business of eating to something more than mere- 
 ly satisfying the wants of the body. But far, far 
 worse is the odious habit of reading aloud stories 
 of railroad wrecks, dull leaders and stupid and 
 witless attempts at humor. This is invariably 
 done by the most inexpert reader in the family 
 — the young man who stumbles and blunders 
 
 109 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 over the hard words, or the young woman who 
 has never been taught "to mind her pauses." 
 
 Only that which interests and entertains all, 
 young and old, comes within the scope of perfect 
 table talk, and reading aloud is no substitute for 
 conversation. The custom was once ordained, and 
 still is in force, in monasteries and convents — 
 during the brief time spent over the coarse 
 fare in the refectory, where conversation at meals 
 is prohibited. Then the "Lives of the Saints," 
 or excerpts from church history may be welcome, 
 furnishing food for reflection. But the rule that 
 applies to the monastery is not applicable in the 
 family or to the morning paper. 
 
 no 
 
XIII 
 
 Where the Books Are 
 
 SYDNEY SMITH was right 
 when he said that books furnished 
 a room and, as has been related, it 
 is pleasant to remember that he 
 lived to enjoy such a room — whole 
 shelves filled with beautiful bind- 
 ings in which he took a never ending delight. 
 
 The requisites of a perfect library are plenty 
 of space and light. In these records of domestic 
 facts and possibilities I have dwelt much upon 
 the importance of light. The iteration and re- 
 iteration may have grown tiresome, but, like 
 
 111 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 Martin Luther, "I can no other." There are 
 certain awful ailments to which light is inimical, 
 but to the normal human being it is the source 
 of health and happiness. Nowadays, when there 
 is such a frantic searching of encyclopedias and 
 maps — the children "looking up" the endless 
 data they are required to "stand and deliver" 
 with their daily lessons, and the club member 
 "reading up" for the paper she must prepare — 
 a good light and a large table are highly de- 
 sirable. 
 
 The library, or book-room — which is all that 
 most places can rightfully be called in private 
 houses where the books are kept — should be a 
 practical workshop, well supplied with paper, 
 pens, pencils, ink and blotting paper — the last 
 mentioned not to be forgotten. If in cool 
 weather an open wood fire is possible, the last 
 touch of luxury has been achieved. 
 
 If the shelves are high, movable folding steps 
 should be at hand, and it is necessary for the 
 proper care of books that all bookcases be sup- 
 plied with glass doors even at the sacrifice of 
 
 112 
 
WHERE THE BOOKS ARE 
 
 artistic effect. Curtains, no matter how orna- 
 mental, are not enough, and are certainly no im- 
 provement over glazed doors from an aesthetic 
 standpoint. 
 
 The present method of heating houses, though 
 a vast gain in cleanliness, dries the air, and in 
 spite of all correctives is destruction to books. 
 The paper and bindings that have been pre- 
 served through long years of stoves and grates 
 go to pieces, drop into fragments or are reduced 
 to impalpable powder by the dry heat of the 
 steam radiator. 
 
 Books should be taken from their places and 
 carefully dusted at regular intervals, and an old 
 booklover of my acquaintance is in the habit of 
 reversing choice volumes on the shelves — large, 
 heavy volumes — to relieve the strain of one posi- 
 tion, which he considers injurious. 
 
 There are few people who really know how to 
 care for books as they should be cared for, and 
 this is very largely because they have never been 
 taught. Our public libraries are monuments to 
 our national abuse of books. Within a short 
 
 113 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 time the books become grimy from the unwashed 
 hands through which they have passed, and the 
 leaves are dog's-eared or defaced with annota- 
 tions the reverse of those with which Coleridge 
 is said to have enriched every book that came 
 into his possession. The marginal comments of 
 the average reader are nearly always pointless, 
 flat, and stupid. Occasionally a reader of the old 
 school attempts to correct the slipshod English 
 of the latest popular author, substituting a gram- 
 matical "which" for a misused "who," correcting 
 the steadily increasing split infinitives and re- 
 storing a dislocated "only" to its rightful place. 
 But it is a hopeless task, whatever be its crying 
 need, and there would hardly be space on the 
 margins of many popular books for corrections 
 urgently demanded in the interests of pure 
 English. 
 
 When I come upon the pencillings of the or- 
 dinary kind — usually exclamations, running 
 largely to adjectives — I have a sensation as if 
 some one were reading over my shoulder in a 
 husky voice and breathing on the back of my 
 
 114 
 
WHERE THE BOOKS ARE 
 
 neck. Such notes are salutary, occasionally, as 
 a corrective to intellectual conceit, for they re- 
 veal to the unconscious author who imagines that 
 he has mastered the mother tongue how little he 
 has been able to convey his real meaning to what 
 is now known as the reading public. I remember 
 finding in a copy of Walter Balestier's "Benefits 
 Forgot," obtained from Mudie's in London — 
 which is not patronized by the uncultured masses 
 — an annotation that will serve as an illustration. 
 
 The story, as will be recalled, is a remarkable 
 narrative of moral conflict and development. 
 Some one had scrawled upon a fly leaf: **A Very 
 Silly Book." 
 
 This was not the slightest reflection upon the 
 skill and genius of the author ; it was the scribbler 
 who stood, self-confessed, a dolt and a clod. 
 
 A great deal of the tendency to maltreatment 
 of books by the rising generation might be cor- 
 rected at school, although it would be adding to 
 the burdens of teachers, already sufficiently heavy 
 and constantly increasing, and shifting to their 
 shoulders duties that should be performed by 
 
 115 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 parents at home. Not long ago I visited a model 
 school in a Western city, and a boy — a fine well- 
 dressed, well-behaved lad, — handed me his spell- 
 ing-book. It was so dirty that I was glad that 
 I had not removed my gloves. The book was 
 chewed and warped, scrawled with rude carica- 
 tures and a confusion of pencil marks that made 
 the print almost indecipherable. It was the lad's 
 private property. Perhaps where text-books are 
 supplied by school boards such wanton abuse 
 would not have been permitted. But it should 
 not have been permitted, though the book was 
 the boy's own. There was something positively 
 brutal in the treatment it had received, and I 
 observed that it called from the teacher, who had 
 apparently not discovered it before, only the 
 mildest "Dear me!" 
 
 I do not wonder that there is now an accepted 
 theory that contagious disease may be spread by 
 books taken from the free circulating libraries. 
 If their soiled pages are not the lairs of all man- 
 ner of malignant bacilli, where, then, shall the 
 creatures be found? 
 
 116 
 
WHERE THE BOOKS ARE 
 
 The conscienceless borrower is another enemy 
 of the well ordered library — the person who 
 never returns a book, or who keeps it month after 
 month and is then indignant when the owner calls 
 to get it; who props up the window, or the leg 
 of an unsteady table with it, and uses the scissors 
 for a book mark. 
 
 *'I am so sorry," said a woman who always 
 boasted of a reverential love of books, "but little 
 Alfred got hold of your 'Omar Khayyam' when 
 I left him for a moment. He is simply wild 
 about pictures. I didn't know that he was eating 
 a cream puff at the time, and I could have cried 
 when I saw what he had done." 
 
 And so could the owner when she saw what he 
 had done. 
 
 Unless one wants his library to vanish, volume 
 by volume, it is necessary to keep a strict account 
 of all books as they are loaned and returned. 
 The borrower who never returns a book, or brings 
 it back so soiled and maltreated that it is fit only 
 for the furnace or the old-rags-and-paper man, 
 should be ruthlessly blacklisted, and no further 
 
 117 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 favors should be granted. If this rule is hard to 
 enforce, then books that tempt the ruthless bor- 
 rower should be kept out of sight and never 
 spoken of. Nothing should be left lying about 
 but things like "Young's Night Thoughts," and 
 "the best selling novel." 
 
 There is a real pleasure in sharing one's books 
 with friends who enJoy them, and who, because 
 they truly love them, handle them as delicately 
 as you do yourself ; who will not lend them again 
 without permission, who will not surrender them 
 to little Alfred, whatever may be his budding 
 taste for art. To such friends one's shelves should 
 always be free, and to no other. 
 
 While reading or study is in progress, silence 
 in the librarj^ is, of course, an imperative neces- 
 sity. There are fortunate ones who can forget 
 themselves in a beguiling volume to such an ex- 
 tent that conversation may rage, an army might 
 almost deploy around them and they would be 
 blissfully unconscious of it. I recall one such en- 
 viable person who used to sit buried in Froude's 
 "Queen Elizabeth," wholly unaware that her 
 
 118 
 
WHERE THE BOOKS ARE 
 
 brother across the table was executing the most 
 florid compositions on the flute. But concentra- 
 tion like that is a gift from Heaven. 
 
 Many readers — real readers — have sensitive 
 nerves with an acute sense of hearing, and it is 
 difficult to fasten the mind upon the printed page, 
 when disturbed by shuffling and ffdgetting, or, 
 worse still, by teasing, sibilant whispering. 
 
 When not occupied by readers for a legitimate 
 object, the library is likely to be a favorite con- 
 gregating place. Somehow, family councils here 
 take on an air of dignity and importance, and the 
 very presence of the books seems to inspire one 
 to good talk in which every one takes some part. 
 Here the best stories are told, adventures related, 
 the summer outing is planned, the European 
 tour, the journey to interesting places in our own 
 country. The various routes are followed on the 
 convenient maps, and what has been said of fam- 
 ous places by famous people may be looked up 
 on the instant. 
 
 The furnishing and decorating of the library 
 deserves even more careful study than is given 
 
 119 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 the drawing-room or dining-room. A clear north 
 light is always desirable, but perhaps not more 
 so than a south window that admits the sunshine 
 all winter, which may be subdued, if so desired, 
 by proper shades and drapery. There is no more 
 certain evidence of the practical use to which a 
 library is put than is shown in the manner of its 
 lighting. Some estimable people once bought a 
 splendid house which had been built by a man 
 of taste and culture. When the purchasers 
 moved into it they proceeded to rearrange it ac- 
 cording to their own ideas. An ugly view in the 
 dining-room had been hidden by a superb stained 
 glass window which did not darken the room in- 
 conveniently for the use for which it had been 
 planned. The newcomers, who cared a good deal 
 more for showy bindings than for the contents 
 of any books whatsoever, very promptly selected 
 the dining-room for their library, because they 
 never wished to read, nor were their intimate 
 friends ever disposed to use it for that purpose. 
 They had no need of light, and the stained glass 
 window, consequently, was no drawback. 
 
 120 
 
WHERE THE BOOKS ARE 
 
 The decorative ideas of amateurs sometimes 
 run to portraits of poets and historians, done in 
 distemper on the ceihng, which only the keenly 
 observant can identify. 
 
 "How would you like a nice frieze, ma'am, of 
 books, as if they was a standin' on a shelf — some 
 of 'em fallin' down?" asked an aspiring kalso- 
 miner of his patron — a woman, whose beautiful 
 new study was the pride of her heart. 
 
 Warmth of color, simple, tasteful furniture, a 
 noiseless clock with a dial upon which the numer- 
 als can be read across the room, lamps with soft- 
 ly-tinted, clear shades — these come next in im- 
 portance to the equipment of the shelves. Given 
 the necessary taste, all this may be had by people 
 of moderate means; and it is impossible to 
 others who have the wherewithal to gratify the 
 most extravagant fancies, and little else. 
 
 The library, in daily and constant use, should 
 be the pleasantest room in the whole house. 
 
 121 
 
The Evolution of the Parlor 
 
 HOSE of us who have the cour- 
 age to confess that we still delight 
 in Dickens, in the face of recent 
 realistic fiction, recall that in his 
 stories the parlor was a snug re- 
 treat behind the shop where the 
 family partook of tea, shrimps and buttered 
 toast ; or into which the genial innkeeper invited 
 travellers toward whom he was especially well 
 disposed. 
 
 The drawing-room was the state apartment in 
 the great house, and I recall how I was charmed, 
 
 m 
 
THE PARLOR 
 
 as a child, by an enchanting picture of the draw- 
 ing-room at "Chesney Wold," in a beautiful 
 Enghsh edition of "Bleak House." 
 
 In our country, "drawing-room" is the term 
 which has always been most in favor in the South, 
 while in the West and in New England we cling 
 to the "parlor" of our shop-keeping forebears, 
 although we have ceased to spell it with a "u." 
 
 The New England parlor has a distinct place 
 in American fiction: from Hawthorne to How- 
 ells, it has been presented as a room where grim, 
 stiff furniture kirks amid darkness seldom broken 
 in the Arctic cold of the long winter, or in a 
 summer atmosphere that is redolent of mould 
 and potpourri. 
 
 We are also told that the sacred solitude is 
 seldom disturbed, except when the minister calls, 
 at the regular spring and fall cleanings, wed- 
 dings, funerals and Thanksgiving. 
 
 When the darling "Lady of the Aroostook" 
 had been married and came back to her native 
 village, the occasion was deemed of sufficient im- 
 portance to be celebrated by a frosty little gath- 
 
 123 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ering of neighbors in the parlor. A fire was 
 hghted in the air-tight stove, where wood and 
 kindhng were laid ready for such emergencies; 
 cake and coffee were served, imparting to the oc- 
 casion, as the delightful chronicler informs us, an 
 almost sinful sense of dissipation. 
 
 That was years ago — in the days when real 
 novels were written — before the era of problem 
 plays or vitiated fiction. There has been a won- 
 derful liberalizing influence at work upon the 
 New England parlor, as with most of New Eng- 
 land's inherited customs and traditions. 
 
 In regard to the relinquishment of many of 
 the old convictions, strange cults have sprung up ; 
 spiritualsim first, then theosophy; Christian Sci- 
 ence, with all its offshoots, ramifications and 
 * 'malicious animal magnetism" — and lastly a 
 still newer revelation based upon what are called 
 "vibrations" — intelligible only to a small, eso- 
 teric circle. There will be, one of these days, pos- 
 sibly a reaction and a return to at least a modified 
 form of the old beliefs. 
 
 During the last decade the hand of change has 
 
 124 
 
THE PARLOR 
 
 been laid upon the tightly closed shutters of the 
 New England parlor, owing to the persistent 
 efforts of the present and more liberal generation. 
 First, a few dim rays of light were admitted — 
 enough to reveal the haircloth sofa with some dis- 
 tinctness, the tidies, the daguerreotypes opened 
 at the same angle in an even row on the mantel; 
 the family Bible and the big lamp on the centre 
 table; the hair wreath in its frame on the wall. 
 When it was found that the light did no serious 
 damage, the blinds were turned a little more; 
 and of late they have been flung wide, and in 
 many localities the parlor has lost its sanctity. 
 
 In a thriving hamlet in Connecticut I saw but 
 one house where a well-beaten track led to the 
 back door, and where the unbroken sward from 
 the gate to the front step proclaimed the fact 
 that the front entrance was "for looks" only, and 
 not for general use. 
 
 The furniture, in this evolution of the parlor, 
 has been led a lively chase. In families where the 
 daughters went away to school, or paid long visits 
 to progressive friends in Boston or New York, 
 
 195 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 they came home — this was in the early TO's — 
 with a firm determination to remove the old heir- 
 looms to the attic. And they did it. 
 
 The first stages of this reform filled the spaces 
 thus left vacant with chairs and divans of black 
 walnut upholstered in green reps that faded — 
 oh, how it faded! With the green reps were 
 curtains of Nottingham lace, vases for the man- 
 tel and an onvx clock, and there was a ruthless 
 sweeping away of the old daguerreotypes. About 
 that time, too, the chromo lithograph was in- 
 vented and popularized, and first came Whit- 
 tier's "Barefoot Boy," and "Wide Awake and 
 Fast Asleep." 
 
 It is not to be supposed that modern improve- 
 ments stopped here. Through the medium of art 
 journals, Kensington designs became known; 
 then followed Eastlake furniture. This, also, has 
 had its day and ceased to be, and we have settled 
 down into a tolerant acceptance of whatever is 
 good, insisting only upon a reasonable degree of 
 harmony, and demanding that Japanese and old 
 
THE PARLOR 
 
 English shall not be placed in too close proxim- 
 ity, lest they clash. 
 
 There are still some doughty souls who have 
 not been intimidated by the hue and cry after 
 microbes. They still cling desperately to their 
 carpets fastened down with tacks. But the 
 change to rugs and polished floors which I ap- 
 pear to have emphasized with perhaps tiresome 
 iteration, is an incalculable improvement, and it 
 is an object to which the truly public-spirited 
 may devote their energies with profit to the coun- 
 try at large, in order that the fashion may be 
 universally adopted and remain. 
 
 The Swiss rocker still lingers furtively in a 
 few dark corners, where it betrays itself, like an 
 ill-tempered dog, by the jangle of its internal 
 machinery and a vicious propensity to nip the 
 carelessly suspended hand of the absent-minded 
 person who seats himself in it. There are now — 
 worse luck — really shocking tables, with drop- 
 sical bulges and carving suggestive of the plan- 
 ing mill, sofas that recall Procrustes and cabinets 
 that make one gasp ; but there are also charming 
 
 127 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 and really good things that may be had, by those 
 capable of choosing them, at a moderate cost. 
 
 We have never followed the English custom, 
 fortunately, of so crowding the drawing-room 
 that it is difficult to move about without stum- 
 bling over ottomans or running against tables 
 overloaded with fragile bric-a-brac. With all the 
 changes, there are still few houses where the 
 drawing-room is commonly used, though in these 
 days of informality and thorough heating, there 
 is no reason why it should not be. Tradition still 
 unconsciously tempers custom. It is in some 
 more favored haunt, which is often given some 
 peculiar, local nam^e by the family, that the 
 genius of intimate hospitality holds sway, and 
 that the most familiar altar has been reared 
 to our Lares and Penates. Callers who are not 
 on terms of intimacy ; the distinguished stranger ; 
 the committee; the gentleman who presents a 
 letter of introduction — these and their like are 
 received in the drawing-room, as they always 
 have been and always will be. But though the 
 window shades, nowadays, are always raised, the 
 
 128 
 
THE PARLOR 
 
 sun shines in and the doors stand invitingly open, 
 the drawing-room, with all its splendor, is de- 
 serted, except on solemn and formal occasions. 
 
 Why? There seems to be no good reason ex- 
 cept that which I have given — its old-time ex- 
 clusiveness still repels familiarity. 
 
 There is another — all rooms, in large houses, 
 at least, have specific uses and each its own spe- 
 cial attraction. The piano is in the music room, 
 the books in the library, and it has been learned 
 — none too soon — that it is unhygienic for two 
 persons to occupy the same bedchamber, so that 
 each member of the household gathered in the 
 family congregating place, wherever it may be, 
 is disposed frequently to slip away to write a 
 note undisturbed at his or her own desk; to 
 snatch a moment on the lounge, or meditate 
 awhile behind the closed door. This leaves the 
 drawing-room deserted, in sohtary grandeur. 
 
 Not so very long ago I attended a funeral in 
 a stately Kentucky mansion. The family had 
 been one of position and importance for some six 
 generations, and it had held the original freehold, 
 
 129 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 bought from the government, for more than a 
 century. The house was big and empty, and many 
 of the rooms, being disused, had at the last re- 
 verted to two aged, unmarried women. The 
 younger of the two, who was past seventy, died 
 first; then, five years later, the elder. She was 
 ninety-three, still stately and distinguished in 
 manner and appearance, but she had long out- 
 lived her generation. 
 
 The funeral was held in bitter winter weather ; 
 fires were lighted in the great drawing-room upon 
 whose hearths no blaze had shone for nearly four 
 decades; the rose-brocade-covered furniture was 
 still shrouded in the Hollands covering that had 
 enveloped it for years, the keys of the old piano 
 were yellow as saffron, and the carpet, a thing 
 of luxury at the beginning, was dimmed and 
 blackened from the dust and soot of more than 
 fifty years. For that drawing-room there had 
 never been any evolution except in the direction 
 of a gradual return to its elements. 
 
 It is now common to substitute in plainer 
 houses a large living room for the less demo- 
 
 130 
 
THE PARLOR 
 
 cratic drawing-room. Its chief purpose is utility, 
 but with it beauty is often cunningly com- 
 bined and a great degree of comfort. The table 
 in the centre is covered with books and prints; 
 there are cushioned window seats, a fireplace, 
 good pictures and a great variety of chairs and 
 lounges, and the whole effect, as one crosses the 
 threshold, is of refinement and good cheer. 
 But a living room of this sort is practicable 
 only in small families, especially where there are 
 no young children. For, to enjoy play as they 
 should, children must and will scatter their toys 
 about, and harness the chairs together, resenting 
 any disturbance of their arrangements. 
 
 As between the deserted drawing-room and a 
 living room which the family really use and en- 
 joy, it will not be hard to choose. A few dints 
 on the table legs, or an occasional splash of ink 
 on the rug, is not too high a price to pay for a 
 living room meant really to be lived in. 
 
 131 
 
The Secrets of the Spare Room 
 
 y^OSPITALITY prompts one to 
 give of his best to the stranger 
 within his gates. Bearing this in 
 mind, the spare room should be a 
 pleasant abode, fresh and sweet in 
 its attractiveness, appealing at 
 once to the eyes of the travel- worn guest. "What 
 a lovely place!" she exclaims as she disposes of 
 her hand luggage, takes off her hat and wraps 
 and looks about relieved and glad that the tire- 
 some journey has had so fortunate a termination. 
 Perfect freshness of curtains, table and bureau 
 
 132 
 
THE SPARE ROOM 
 
 coverings is an important requisite, and no spare 
 room where a guest is expected, is complete with- 
 out flowers in bowls and vases. What such a 
 welcome means I never fully realized until once 
 when I arrived, all unknown, in a foreign land, 
 and found in the chamber assigned me quantities 
 of pansies, exquisite in color and of heavenly 
 fragrance, arranged in shallow bowls upon the 
 bureau and table. Whenever I see pansies now- 
 adays it brings back that pleasant house — the 
 polished brasses of the door, the white steps, the 
 rosy-cheeked maid coming out to the cab, in her 
 black-stuff gown, pretty apron and cap with 
 floating strings — all in readiness for the dinner 
 which would shortly be served. 
 
 As the hostess seldom or never occupies the 
 spare chamber she is sometimes unaware of its 
 shortcomings, especially those of the bed,the mat- 
 tress that may abound in lumps and ridges and 
 broken springs. There should be abundant bed- 
 covering, both comforters and blankets. How- 
 ever much some may object to the former, there 
 
 133 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 is nothing that quite takes their place. A small, 
 soft pillow should always be provided. 
 
 Who that hates to sleep, or rather, doze, in 
 a semi-sitting position, has not been disheartened 
 by the sight of huge, hard, smooth pillows that 
 display the lace and embroidery of their cover- 
 ing to perfection, but are as little conducive to 
 repose as an ancestral tombstone ? Still worse is 
 the bolster, even harder, stiff and round, with 
 which one is sometimes left alone and entirely 
 unprotected. The expedients that must be re- 
 sorted to in contingencies are secrets that 
 die with one — chair cushions, newspapers, and 
 even one's clothing rolled into a bundle and 
 slipped under the lumpy mattress. There are the 
 experienced who carry with them always a small, 
 soft cushion that adds fervency to their prayers 
 of gratitude on many a night that, otherwise, 
 would be sleepless. A shortage of bed-clothing, 
 of which the hostess is often quite unconscious, is 
 not an uncommon occurrence, even in houses 
 where lavishness is the rule in almost every other 
 particular. There are people who are always 
 
 134 
 
THE SPARE ROOM 
 
 vv^arm, like polar bears, and who have little sym- 
 pathy for the feeble and thin-blooded. They can- 
 not realize what it is to shudder and shiver under 
 one light coverlet, until one is forced to rise and 
 heap wraps and clothing over the counterpane, 
 supplemented, possibly, by the floor rug. 
 
 Our English cousins, who are but indifferent 
 cooks, and many of whom appear to have only 
 the most rudimentary ideas of the primary colors, 
 are wise in other lore that we should do well to 
 acquire. 
 
 One thing they consider imperatively neces- 
 sary, upon which Charles Reade, forgotten, now, 
 like others of his peers, has discoursed at length ; 
 this is — airing the sheets, — in the sun in sum- 
 mer, and in front of the fire in winter. 
 
 Another good English custom is, placing a 
 lounge at the foot of the bed that the latter may 
 not be disarranged by use during the day. Chairs 
 should be chosen for pure comfort and not merely 
 for appearance, although it is possible to com- 
 bine the two. Looks alone cannot be relied on; 
 each must be sat in — tried — before it is bought 
 
 135 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 and sent home. Many a pleasing arm-chair, 
 judged only by externals, proves to be an aggre- 
 gation of knobs and convex curves to which an 
 elastic serpent alone could adjust itself. 
 
 The pictures and ornaments should not be 
 too many. Each should be as good of its kind as 
 possible, chosen with care and taste. A good 
 New England bishop who had an abounding 
 sense of humor, used to tell of his adventures in 
 the spare rooms of his diocese. In one house he 
 was shown to a guest chamber, in which, prob- 
 ably, there had never been a fire. The mercury 
 stood at zero; frost coated the windows, and he 
 saw by the dim light of his candle, through the 
 cloud of his congealing breath, a row of — silver 
 coffin plates, gruesomely arranged on the mantel! 
 They had been thriftily removed from the family 
 coffins and there preserved as mementoes. 
 
 As to pictures, I am reminded of a fine wood- 
 cut framed and hung opposite the bed, in another 
 spare room. It represented a lowering sky and 
 heavy spray tossed high against the rocky cliffs. 
 In this room a member of the family lay ill with 
 
 136 
 
THE SPARE ROOM 
 
 fever through many painful weeks. Even m his 
 delirium his eyes were fixed upon that picture of 
 cool, tossing spray, and when he recovered he said 
 that it did more to save his life than all the doc- 
 tor's medicine. 
 
 In still another spare room, dear to me from 
 a hundred pleasant associations, the pale green 
 wall-paper and the white matting gave always 
 the impression of a grotto under the sea, an effect 
 heightened by the screen of dancing leaves 
 pierced through with sunshine, outside the win- 
 dow. In this chamber of peace, when the sleeper 
 awakened to the consciousness of the most luxuri- 
 ous bed ever devised, her eyes rested on a beauti- 
 ful French lithograph of Rose and Blanche 
 Simon — the lovely twin sisters in "The Wan- 
 dering Jew" — and their faithful mastiff, "Kill- 
 
 joy." 
 
 In the present superabundance of bridge prizes 
 and anniversary souvenirs, to say nothing of the 
 trophies of universal travel, far too much of 
 which goes into the guest chamber, the tendency 
 is toward what our grandmothers called "clut- 
 
 137 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ter." The picture cards, illuminated mottoes, 
 bits of china, baskets and bibelots of all kinds, 
 give an effect of smothered crowding. 
 
 An old friend of mine — past grand mistress 
 in the art of perfect housekeeping — will have 
 none of these things. She has even banished table 
 covers. The furniture is severely plain, with pol- 
 ished surfaces and little carving. There is noth- 
 ing to catch and hold dust. Pincushion and 
 bureau covers are of pure white linen, changed 
 frequently and carefully laundered. The dress- 
 ing table is provided with a generous supply of 
 pins of all kinds, sizes and colors, and with hair- 
 pins of assorted sizes. The match holder is al- 
 ways full, and a receptacle is also placed in 
 plain view for those that have been used, so that 
 they will not be put back among those that have 
 not been lighted ; or, while still burning, be tossed 
 into the waste basket — for there is a roomy 
 waste-basket — and so start a fire that may burn 
 the house to the ground. 
 
 A bureau, or chiffonier, is a necessity — or "a 
 chest of drawers" of some sort. Nothing is more 
 
 138 
 
THE SPARE ROOM 
 
 trying or inconvenient than to "live in a trunk," 
 forced to lift the heavy trays out and put them 
 back whenever something is wanted, which is al- 
 ways sure to be in the very bottom. This is en- 
 dured, with countless other miseries, by those who 
 have become nomads through their own fault, or 
 by undeserved misfortune. But there should be 
 better provision within the home. 
 
 The writing desk, always conspicuous in Eng- 
 lish houses, is being better appreciated and more 
 generally domesticated, of late years, in our own 
 homes. It should be properly fitted out with 
 pens, both sharp and blunt points, paper cutter, 
 writing materials, postage stamps and blotting 
 pads. The true lady bountiful does not omit post 
 cards, domestic and foreign, or blanks for post- 
 ofBce money orders, which, presented at the re- 
 ceiving window, previously filled out, save time 
 and, often, temper. 
 
 The desk, or table which is a satisfactory sub- 
 stitute, should not have underneath it either 
 drawers or that terrible little shelf which makes 
 a comfortable position, long maintained, impos- 
 
 139 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 sible. Those who write steadily for an hour or 
 more at a time must be able to extend their feet 
 at their ease. 
 
 When there is a grate, or a fireplace — and 
 blessed be the habitation in which the guest cham- 
 ber affords either one or the other — the fuel 
 should always be laid ready to light. Even dur- 
 ing the long, hot American summer there come 
 damp, chilly days when a fire is required, not 
 alone for its cheerfulness, but as a means of ward- 
 ing off rheumatism and ague. For there are still 
 thousands of the benighted who have not been 
 brought to that beatific state of mind wherein 
 they have learned to regard bodily pangs as mere 
 errors of mortal mind. Of course, for those who 
 have advanced beyond this weak "belief" in dis- 
 ease, no such precaution is necessary. 
 
 There should be also in the guest room — for 
 the convenience of the woman guest — a small 
 work-basket with a lid — always with a lid — 
 supplied with thimble, scissors that will cut and 
 with buttons, hooks and eyes, thread, silk and 
 cotton, coarse and fine, and of several colors. The 
 
 140 
 
THE SPARE ROOM 
 
 visitor may have forgotten her own, in this age 
 of ready-made clothing and darning attachments 
 to sewing machines, and it may be urgently neces- 
 sary to sew on a button, mend a ripped glove, or 
 take a stitch where gathers or plaits have given 
 way, or an unlucky tear needs instant attention. 
 Such damage cannot always be repaired with 
 substitutes for the needle. Mending materials, 
 just the ones that are required, and ready at 
 hand, are a boon that will be gratefully appre- 
 ciated. 
 
 A roomy shoe bag should also be fastened se- 
 curely to the inside of the closet door. There is 
 nothing more unpleasant to step on in the dark 
 than a shoe that has been left lying about, and no 
 matter how carefully boots and slippers are set 
 away in corners, or under the bureau, they have 
 an unexplainable faculty for gathering dust, all 
 of which explains the real and crying need of a 
 shoe bag nailed to the inside of the closet door. 
 
 There should always be plenty of reading mat- 
 ter, books and magazines, light and serious, not 
 only for the time of afternoon seclusion, but as a 
 
 141 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 means of passing possible hours of sleeplessness, 
 when the night seems endless. 
 
 When everything has been made ready for the 
 expected visitor, the mistress, no matter what 
 may be Euphemia's proficiency, should take "a 
 last look around." Something particularly neces- 
 sary may have been misplaced, or forgotten. As 
 a rule, guests bring with them their own toilet 
 articles, but occasionally it happens that one has 
 been urged to spend the night unexpectedly, and 
 must depend upon her hostess's furnishing. Once, 
 in the writer's experience, under such circumstan- 
 ces, the combs and brush were missing, having 
 been placed in a drawer and forgotten at the last 
 general cleaning. The visitor was forced to ar- 
 range her hair, before joining the family at 
 breakfast, with her small and brittle side-combs. 
 
 Finally, and not least important, the hostess 
 should not take it amiss, if the visitor chooses to 
 spend some hours each day in the quiet and peace- 
 ful room that has been given her. It is rest and 
 refreshment for both, and, like Portia's quality 
 of mercy, is twice blessed. 
 
 149 
 
The Sewing- Room 
 
 No matter what glamour may be 
 thrown around it, the sewing-room 
 is rarely inviting. The sewing- 
 machine is hopelessly utilitarian, 
 although a praiseworthy effort has 
 been made to improve its appear- 
 ance, making it like the cabinet organ that rears 
 aloft a highly elaborate structure of scrollwork, 
 shelves and brackets; or the square piano in its 
 polished case which must still be supported by 
 four stodgy legs. The sewing-machine is as 
 necessary as the kitchen range, or the stationary 
 
 143 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 wash-tubs, and almost as difficult to deal with 
 from a decorative point of view. 
 
 It is now imperfectly disguised with doors, or 
 as a table sunk in a box-like arrangement with 
 a flat top over which a neat cover may be spread ; 
 but, with this device, there are still the betraying 
 wheel and treadles. 
 
 Then, the cutting table, it is held, must also 
 be a thing for purely common use — not too 
 good to be scratched by pins and needles, or 
 scorched when the flatiron accidentally slips 
 from the pressing board laid across it. I have a 
 confessed love for suitable, handsome clothes, but 
 a line stretched across a corner of the sewing- 
 room strung with tissue paper patterns mysteri- 
 ously traced, figured and snipped, produces in 
 me instantly an access of dull spirits. It is per- 
 haps what psychologists call "unconscious cere- 
 bration" — the indefinite recollection of madden- 
 ing struggles that I have had with patterns of 
 the same kind, having been born with a deficient 
 sense of proportion. 
 
 The sewing-room is a modern torture chamber 
 
 144 
 
THE SEWING-ROOM 
 
 to the inefficient needlewoman — it is the place 
 wherein she has ruined yards of good material, 
 cut skirts upside down, made two sleeves for the 
 same armhole and "run" her seams straight 
 where they should have been on the bias. 
 
 Said a woman whom I knew well, and who, 
 with other natural mechanical limitations has the 
 misfortune to be left-handed: "I have always 
 dashed as fast as possible past the sewing-room 
 door, ever since I cut the sleeves of my summer 
 silk by the pattern for Willie's knickerbockers." 
 
 Of course, she did not mean to do it; it was 
 just a mistake. 
 
 With other unpleasantnesses — to those who 
 have no gift for sewing — are the scraps on the 
 floor, the pins that are dropped, the dreary paper 
 boxes of "findings" and , trimmings — each and 
 several, painful reminders of the difficult and 
 gradual stages through which even the simplest 
 garment must pass to its final completion — the 
 fitting, the draping, the finishing, and, if luck 
 is against one, the melancholy altering. Nowhere 
 about the whole house can there be so much fa- 
 
 145 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 tigue, anxiety and bother as in the sewing-room, 
 unless it happen to be the habitat of one to the 
 manner born, who loves to sew and knows how. 
 
 The mother who directs and assists at the regu- 
 lar autumn and spring visitations, witnesses there 
 more bad temper and ingratitude — often from 
 daughters who are ordinarily amiable and re- 
 spectful — than she experiences anywhere else. 
 If the walls could speak they would echo such 
 outbursts as: "I don't like it at aZZ;" "it sags in 
 the back," "it wrinkles under the arms," "it hangs 
 abominably," "it is too tight in the neck," inter- 
 spersed with sighs and even sobs. 
 
 Occasionally one outside hears a sharp, em- 
 phatic "stand stilir as if the one within were ad- 
 dressing a restive horse. It may then be inferred 
 that Susie is trying to see the back of her waist, 
 which is being .adjusted by the usually patient 
 elder sister, who also helps, when the work 
 presses. 
 
 But notwithstanding that these unpleasant as- 
 sociations of the sewing-room must be, it should 
 be arranged so as to mitigate such miseries, as 
 
 146 
 
THE SEWING-ROOM 
 
 far as possible. It may be remarked just here 
 that, as in the case of the laundry, it is a blessing 
 to be able to shut the work to which the sewing- 
 room is dedicated all off in one place, where strips 
 of woollen stuff, or mushn, will not be trailed 
 on the stairs, or loose spools, rolling about, serve 
 as stumbling blocks for those who have never 
 acquired skill on roller-skates. 
 
 The door can then be closed on the whirr of 
 the sewing-machine, if it should be the sort that 
 whirrs; upon the discussions, upbraidings and 
 protests that may occur, should there be great 
 provocation; enabling the affairs of the house to 
 move on without interruption — with no re- 
 minder as to what is going on, except the appear- 
 ance of the sewing woman at the luncheon table, 
 or at dinner, when that meal is quite informal. 
 
 I know of just one sewing-room that can be 
 called a truly inviting place — ^ that is, for a sew- 
 ing-room, which must always be judged by a 
 standard of its own. It must be plainly stated, 
 however, that the mistress of that house never 
 makes mistakes. She never cuts a waist — a bod- 
 
 147 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ice, as our English cousins say, and perhaps 
 more correctly — wrong side out, or upside down. 
 Her "creations" are never experimental. When 
 she unrolls her material, having a clear, practical 
 mind, she knows just what she means to do, and 
 does it. Nobody ever sobbed in her sewing- 
 room. Nothing ever came out of it that was not 
 perfection — artistic, graceful, tasteful perfec- 
 tion. Whether it was an evening gown for 
 Katherine, or a "Brownie" suit for little Henry, 
 it was all the same; there was nothing that she 
 could not make and make well, for she could 
 measure things "to a thread," and knew every 
 hieroglyphic on the patterns, of whatsoever 
 name, number or description. 
 
 Her sewing-room was at the back of the house. 
 The floor was of polished wood, without so much 
 as a rug; the v/alls pale yellow like hazy sun- 
 shine; a wardrobe let into a recess had both 
 shelves and drawers. There was a good folding 
 mirror, in which you could see not only the front 
 of a gown but the lines in the back of the waist. 
 
THE SEWING-ROOM 
 
 The "form" — a convenience that cannot be 
 dispensed with, however much it may be objected 
 to, and justly, on aesthetic grounds — occupied 
 a secluded nook all to itself, when its services 
 were not required. The cutting table was of 
 oak with a smooth covering of dark green oil- 
 cloth. Upon a small side-table, always in readi- 
 ness, was a small gas stove for heating flatirons. 
 In this model sewing-room the purely ornamental 
 had not been forgotten. There were photographic 
 copies of good pictures upon the walls ; the chairs 
 wxre low — except the one at the sewing-machine 
 — and were, of course, without arms. An ample 
 waste-basket held the scraps and ravellings that 
 were never allowed to accumulate under foot. 
 There was also, at all times, thread of all kinds, 
 buttons, hooks and eyes, tape and other staples, 
 with pins and needles, bought by the gross, in 
 their own drawers, always ready when needed. 
 The windows commanded cheerful views of gar- 
 den and shrubbery. All the leading authorities 
 on frills and furbelows were filed and placed 
 where they could be conveniently consulted. The 
 
 149 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 presiding genius of this sewing-room was what 
 we now call *'an old-fashioned mother." While 
 she wished her daughters to be clever, accom- 
 plished women — as they were — ; to enjoy their 
 brief youth in all pleasant, rational ways ; at the 
 same time, she insisted that they should be well 
 grounded in the domestic arts. Fortunately 
 they agreed with her and willingly accepted in- 
 struction at her hands and from the skilled seam- 
 stress who came twice yearly for a fortnight's 
 engagement. The daughters were teachable and 
 worked with a will, becoming proficient in all the 
 mysteries of making buttonholes, overcasting, 
 shirring, and the like. The machine hummed 
 steadily under their active young feet, and the 
 regular semi-annual sewing season had a quality 
 of cheerfulness which was almost gaiety in that 
 house which I do not recall elsewhere. That 
 sewing-room was remarkable for another unique 
 characteristic — it was about the only one I have 
 ever known that was not avoided by the men of 
 the family; for it is well understood that the 
 superior sex has an inbred love of comfort, like 
 
 150 
 
THE SEWING-ROOM 
 
 that of feline creatures who always find a cozy 
 corner and a soft cushion. 
 
 The father would look in as he passed the door 
 on his way down-town, and the brothers could 
 be heard, when they came home, running up- 
 stairs, interested in what was going on, ready to 
 admire and criticize, offering opinions that were 
 never despised and were sometimes even ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 In this family, endowed with only moderate 
 means, the daughters were always well dressed, 
 and had many simple, pretty gowns because they 
 could make them themselves, much more taste- 
 fully and skilfully than could the average dress- 
 maker. They expected to do it, and — because 
 they had been well taught and knew how, v/ith- 
 out costly mistakes and disappointing experi- 
 ments — it was to them thoroughly congenial 
 work. Of course, having had practical experience, 
 when at some later time they can afford to hire 
 their gowns made, or supervise a sewing-room in 
 their own houses, they will be able to plan and ar- 
 range the sewing in the way which is always such 
 
 131 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 a saving of time and is so helpful to the seam- 
 stress, leaving her to devote her energy to more 
 particular and important things. This, of course, 
 provided — that that important person does not 
 insist on being a dictator, and is gracious enough 
 to allow her patrons to have what they like, since 
 they know their own minds and expect to wear 
 the clothes themselves. 
 
 What they have learned in their mother's sew- 
 ing-room will stay with them through life, to be 
 imparted to their daughters after them. Home 
 work and hand-work, when well done, will al- 
 ways have a peculiar value, and it will be a long 
 time before ready-made clothing will be univers- 
 ally worn, the key turned in the lock of the sew- 
 ing-room door, and the seamstress, imbued with 
 the spirit of the age, left free to follow what she 
 mistakenly believes to be "a higher vocation." 
 
 152 
 
XVIT 
 
 Euphemia's Bower 
 
 N the Middle West, especially the 
 states along the Ohio River, there 
 has been an enormous invasion of 
 negroes across the border from 
 Kentucky and Tennessee and even 
 further south. This has not been 
 altogether deplored by the white residents of 
 these states. There are some thousands who, re- 
 alizing that they are not much worse off than they 
 were before, are very apt to say to their Northern 
 sisters, ''Now you will see for j^ourselves" ; and 
 their Northern sisters are seeing. 
 
 l.>3 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 There are still in the world, notwithstanding 
 the gradual spread of enlightenment, many sin- 
 cere persons who have no knowledge of, or be- 
 lief in, the self-evident truths of ethnology. They 
 think that hereditary traits can be changed, or 
 effaced, by a miracle, and that racial peculiarities 
 disappear with a change in surroundings and the 
 distribution of leaflets. There has been an im- 
 mense advance in the regions named, within the 
 past ten years, a growing disposition to make the 
 best of apparently fixed conditions and not to 
 expect the impossible. The colored maid-of-ali- 
 work, with few exceptions, since her emigration 
 north, has become a law unto herself. She ar- 
 ranges her own hours, with increasingly long per- 
 iods of recreation. While she likes to have a 
 room in the house where she is employed, for her 
 personal convenience, that she may stop in, if 
 the weather is bad, or she feels indisposed to go 
 abroad, she prefers to live elsewhere. By this 
 arrangement she comes to get the breakfast at 
 any hour she likes, or not at all; and she has the 
 great advantage of being out of sight upon the 
 
 154 
 
EUPHEMIA'S BOWER 
 
 advent of guests, or during other domestic ir- 
 regularities. She can be neither restrained nor 
 influenced. In southern Ohio, Indiana and Illi- 
 nois she has taken the place, almost wholly, of 
 her white predecessor, who has gone to the fac- 
 tory or shop because she has her evenings, holi- 
 dstys and Sundays, and because she escapes the 
 odium of being called a servant. 
 
 Of course, in the factory or shop, the earnings 
 are small, the employee must pay board and room 
 rent, unless she lives at hom^e — in which case 
 she helps support the family and can save still 
 less. Those who are left for the kitchen are 
 decidedly not sl saving remnant, or in any sense, 
 a survival of the fittest. 
 
 The old rule of one afternoon, and a part of 
 alternate Sundays off, or every Sunday off, and 
 nightly retiring to be not later than ten o'clock, 
 is a dead letter in the domestic code. 
 
 In most cases Euphemia, as well as her colored 
 sister, hurries through her tasks that she may don 
 the large pearl-colored hat and braided walking 
 dress that she is buying on the instalment plan, to 
 
 155 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 promenade the street* up to the very latest sec- 
 ond that will enable her to rush home and broil 
 a beefsteak — or fry it, if she dare. She is not 
 really in the least a domestic character, and has 
 not the slightest vestige of attachment to local- 
 ity. She enjoys rapid change — scooping up 
 the miscellaneous strewings of misshapen shoes, 
 strings, picture-cards and garments, throwing 
 them into her big trunk with various articles 
 which she has acquired by right of discovery, 
 jumping up and down on the bulging lid, snap- 
 ping the key in the lock and engaging in coquet- 
 tish persiflage with the expressman who hauls 
 it to the next place. During this hegira Euphe- 
 mia thinks complacently of the pale blue silk 
 blouse and the five-dollar gold piece which was 
 given her at Christmas for services not rendered, 
 and turns her back upon the vacated den to seek 
 another, without a pang of regret. "Den" is 
 not used in this connection as a common term 
 meant to describe the workroom of a literary 
 toiler. 
 
 She leaves behind her strange, musty odors of 
 
 156 
 
EUPHEMIA'S BOWER 
 
 stale food and cheap perfume, and if she is very 
 advanced, of cigarettes, with scraps of pie left 
 under her pillow, and other remnants of noctur- 
 nal refreshment. 
 
 Since this description has not been exagger- 
 ated, "and naught set down in malice," the ques- 
 tion may be asked, why trouble about Euphemia's 
 bower? She does not care for it; she will not 
 keep it tidy ; why not, then, devote all one's ener- 
 gies to making it safe ? To this end the eminently 
 practical mind will suggest a tiled or concrete 
 floor, and w^alls and ceilings of corrugated iron 
 to avert danger of fire from matches or the light 
 which burns all night; an iron bedstead, inde- 
 structible toilet articles, and chairs that will re- 
 sist the roughest handling. 
 
 There are well-meaning humanitarians who 
 waste much sympathy on the cheerless quarters 
 that are sometimes assigned Euphemia. With- 
 out wishing to subject myself to charges of heart- 
 lessness, I am forced to declare that, it is, in 
 ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, sympathy 
 wasted. Euphemia does not care for ornament- 
 
 157 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ation, except pictures that she has cut from the 
 comic page of the Sunday newspapers, or tintype 
 groups of herself and "Johnny," taken in a booth 
 at a street fair. 
 
 I once studied, with much profit, an illustration 
 in a woman's magazine. It was satirical. Edith, 
 the young bride, had begun housekeeping — in- 
 nocent creature — with the firm intention that 
 Euphemia should have everything in the way of 
 possible "uplift." She began her labors with all 
 the enthusiasm of youth and fatuous hope. Pretty 
 dotted muslin curtains veiled the lower panes of 
 the windows in Euphemia's room ; pots of bloom- 
 ing plants stood in a row along the upper sash; 
 there was a rocking chair with a cushion, a draped 
 dressing table with a mirror such as Edith would 
 perhaps have chosen for herself. This was Scene 
 I. In Scene II Euphemia had been in possession 
 for a fortnight and a day, and had then left 
 abruptly. It was a tableau of destruction with 
 Edith weeping over the ruins. Of the blooming 
 plants but a few dried sticks remained ; the filmy 
 sash curtains had been jerked down for a better 
 
 158 
 
EUPHEMIA'S BOWER 
 
 view of the back premises and the garbage man, 
 while the cracks in the mirror resembled pictures 
 of lightning. And this is precisely what happens 
 in almost every instance, as the lady lecturer on 
 domestic science, who believes firmly in the "on- 
 ward" movement, would have discovered if she 
 had not always lived in hotels. Of course, it 
 would be a bitter disappointment to her, as it 
 was to Edith, whose aims were sincere and high. 
 
 However, there is no need to despair, even in 
 the face of such disappointment many times re- 
 peated, although evolution may be both pro- 
 gressive and retrogressive. 
 
 In New Zealand there once existed a powerful 
 bird, taller than a giraffe, with legs as huge and 
 strong as those of a cart-horse. It was the wing- 
 less Dinornis. It disappeared so recently that 
 fragments of eggs have been discovered within 
 the memory of the present generation. This 
 leads ornithologists to hope that living specimens 
 will yet be found in the unexplored and souther- 
 most island of the group. 
 
 So there; may be some unexplored region in 
 
 159 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 which are yet hving good Euphemias who have 
 mated with their kind and reared children with 
 whom we shall one day be brought face to face. 
 
 I myself have seen three such — and there 
 may be others. In spite of my strictures upon 
 maids of color, I must confess that two of these 
 paragons were negroes. The first was named 
 Azalee. She had entered the high school with 
 excellent grades. Her penmanship was far, far 
 better than my own. She spoke excellent Eng- 
 lish, and she M^as fond of reading. She was quick, 
 orderly, skilful in all things. She kept her room 
 in exquisite order, and she was loved and re- 
 spected in the family where she lived. Her com- 
 fort was considered and provided for, and she 
 was allowed to take the books and magazines 
 and keep them as long as she liked. Possessing 
 dignity and self-respect • — tiny creature that she 
 was — she never abused her privileges. 
 
 The other exception, also colored, was unedu- 
 cated, and not so acutely conscientious as Azalee, 
 but competent to an astonishing degree. She, 
 also, took an intense pride in her room, which she 
 
 160 
 
E U P H E M I A ' S BOWER 
 
 cleaned thoroughly once a week and dusted daily. 
 It was, in her opinion, quite as nice "as any of 
 the young ladies' rooms." In the amazing eight 
 years of her occupancy, she acquired — and law- 
 fully — considerable personal property — not 
 only the ordinary possessions, but two silk dresses 
 and money in the bank. She had one weakness 
 — doting affection for a coal-black cat which she 
 permitted to sleep in the centre of her snow-white 
 counterpane, possibly enjoying the pleasing 
 contrast. 
 
 The third was an American, the daughter of a 
 well-to-do farmer. She became discontented at 
 home, where she washed and ironed, baked and 
 brewed, swept and dusted, milked and churned, 
 for no wages at all, and received only the scanti- 
 est and commonest clothing in exchange for con- 
 stant drudgery, while her brothers, for far less 
 work, had their horses and buggies and their 
 share of all the crops harvested on the place. She 
 liked the steam heat and the electric light of the 
 city house, and she, too, had a taste for good 
 reading which she was allowed to gratify, and 
 
 161 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 far better manners than many a society leader. 
 She, also, excelled in fine needlework, in hem- 
 stitching, drawn-work and embroidery, and in 
 this profitable occupation she spent the greater 
 part of her leism^e with no one to intrude upon 
 the privacy which was permitted her, after her 
 mistress's work was done. 
 
 She was given many privileges in the house be- 
 cause she, too, never presumed upon favors 
 shown her. She came and went as she liked, be- 
 cause she never left the house with work neg- 
 lected or undone. She saw her friends, and was 
 appealed to on questions where her opinion was 
 desired and valued. She never wished to in- 
 trude in the family councils and knew that she 
 could not wait at table and at the same time "eat 
 with the family." 
 
 Little Azalee still blesses the household of 
 which she is the guardian angel — and her mis- 
 tress is envied of all her acquaintances — the 
 little negro maid so loyal and grateful that no 
 offer of higher wages and lighter labor can lure 
 her from her allegiance. Rosabella has set up 
 
 162 
 
E U P H E M I A'S BOWER 
 
 housekeeping on her own account; and the last 
 mentioned has sought a wider and easier field — 
 in a hotel. 
 
 While presenting these three rare and cher- 
 ished examples, hosts of "those others" rise to 
 my mind's eye — a sort of closely- welded human 
 chain. One only — because of her marked and 
 peculiar gifts — shall be mentioned — German 
 Barbara, the dependent employee of an indulg- 
 ent mistress in an Ohio town. 
 
 The furnace being inadequate to heat the en- 
 tire house, -Barbara was entreated to keep a fire 
 in her room in cold weather, a good stove and an 
 abundance of fuel being supplied her. Aprons, 
 collars and handkerchiefs were bestowed upon 
 her in a perfect linen shower. 
 
 She came faltering to her mistress one day, 
 with genuine wet, glistening tears streaming 
 down her cheeks, and her voice choked with grief. 
 She had just received news of her father's death 
 in Germany and must go at once because of legal 
 difficulties in settling his estate which made her 
 presence absolutely necessary. Her room was 
 
 163 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 stripped of everything that could be of seinrice to 
 her on the stormy voyage across the Atlantic in 
 January. She was loaded with additional gifts 
 — warm stockings and petticoats, which she ac- 
 cepted with more emotion. Then she took leave 
 of her sympathetic employer and went — just 
 around the corner, to a new place ! 
 
 She has since married and if there is truth in 
 heredity, her progeny will be the shining literary 
 and histrionic lights of the oncoming generation. 
 
 Barbara's talents were cruelly wasted in the 
 kitchen; she would have shone behind the foot- 
 lights in great emotional parts. She was a treas- 
 ure lost to melodrama in "The Burglar's Bride," 
 or "The Bank Wrecker's Daughter." How she 
 would have wept and implored "on bended 
 knees" in one of those thrilling compositions in 
 which there is a real saw-mill. It is assuredly 
 not in schools of dramatic art that the syndicate 
 should search for genius, but in Euphemia's 
 bower — or Barbara's ; for though the names are 
 different, the principle remains the same. 
 
 164 
 
XVIII 
 
 Mistress and Maid 
 
 T 
 
 HERE are irreconcilable differ- 
 ences among human beings. A 
 Protectionist of the straitest sect 
 will never be convinced that tariff 
 reduction is not tantamount to 
 political and industrial ruin. The 
 Free Trader is as certain that the tariff is a tax 
 paid out of the consumer's pocket. The convert 
 to Predestination considers the advocate of Free 
 Will mistaken if not lost, while the liberal 
 minded and those holding other theological views 
 pity and wonder at both. 
 
 165 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 From an array of illustrations so grave and 
 weighty one should approach the relations of 
 Euphemia and her mistress, perhaps, by regular 
 gradations. But some moments of reflection 
 have convinced me that there are none. 
 
 In treating the comprehensive subject of 
 power, Emerson has shown us how opposing 
 forces struggle ceaselessly for supremacy: the 
 strong animal fighting and winning the mastery 
 of the herd ; the new boy contending for his right- 
 ful place in school ; the born ruler impressing his 
 fellow-men with the courage that inspires them 
 to follow him to the death. 
 
 The kitchen is another arena in which the 
 measuring of wills goes on ceaselessly. 
 
 Euphemia arrives to reconnoitre. She wants 
 to know what is not to be done. She wears her 
 best clothes, the large hat and the red cloak 
 which she thinks give her an air of distinction. 
 Her mien is resolute and severe, and in her pre- 
 liminary remarks she uses the largest words she 
 knows. 
 
 166 
 
MISTRESS AND MAID 
 
 She seats herself, looks her would-be superior 
 over and mentally decides: "She hain't much." 
 
 If she perceives physical wealaiess, timidity 
 or moral cowardice, if she has an inkling that 
 there are young ladies or sickness in the house; 
 that for some necessary cause there are meals to 
 be served at irregular hours, she becomes still 
 more bold and stern. 
 
 She asks questions like these: 
 
 "Do you have dinner at six o'clock?" 
 
 "Who scrubs the porches?" 
 
 "Is the washing done out?" 
 
 "Do you keep a man?" 
 
 "How much time can I have off?" 
 
 And there is not a single "ma'am" in the whole 
 category. 
 
 Well for the mistress — perhaps — if these 
 questions can be answered in the negative or af- 
 firmative, as Euphemia wishes and expects them 
 to be answered. If so, and there is, in addition, 
 a complete surrender of the supposedly master 
 mind, a meek resolve not to cross her, or vex her, 
 or ask more of her than can be avoided, all may 
 
 167 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 go v/ell. This, however, should not be expected 
 as a fixed eertaint}^ With the vast majoiity of 
 human beings, most of whom are still far from 
 regeneration, there is an opinion that the more 
 advantage one can take, the more of this world's 
 goods and pleasures he may count upon having. 
 
 One who is modest and deferential and con- 
 siderate simply suffers for his virtues, and the 
 more he concedes the more will be demanded 
 of him. The feminine pronoun may be substi- 
 tuted in this equation — and the answer will re- 
 main the same. 
 
 Euphemia is only obeying the ruling spirit of 
 the hour ; ask for a great deal if you expect any- 
 thing at all. Fortunately, that rule, like some 
 others, works both ways. The woman who meets 
 the above questions with a boldness that chal- 
 lenges Euphemia's, stands a much better chance 
 of victory than if she met her in a milder and 
 more pacific manner. The days of gentleness 
 are past; it is the era of physical culture, golf, 
 rolled-up sleeves, bare heads and sun-baked 
 complexions; of strenuousness in every walk of 
 
 168 
 
MISTRESS AND MAID 
 
 life. There are no more passages marked "pian- 
 issimo" in our national airs. 
 
 Edith, therefore, should sit erect, look Euphe- 
 mia straight in the eye, anticipate her demands 
 if possible ; and, though it may seem rude, answer 
 all her questions in a breath without so much as 
 a conmfia between them: "I have dinner at half 
 past six no one scrubs the porches the v/ashing 
 is sent out I do not keep a man and you can 
 have the usual time off and no more." 
 
 Of course there are individuals who could not 
 be dealt with thus, successfully; who would be 
 stampeded at once. She who decamps, under 
 such circumstances, might be just the one long 
 sought for and never found before, which would 
 be sadder than almost any affliction short of be- 
 reavement or bankruptcy; but it is much more 
 probable that it is a happy deliverance. 
 
 Half the friction between mistress and maid 
 comes from too great expectation on either side. 
 
 The mistress, herself, is not infallible. Every 
 day of her life she probably forgets or neglects 
 some pressing duty. She, too, breaks dishes, does 
 
 169 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 not know where she has put her eyeglasses, loses 
 her pocket-book, and goes to bed without burning 
 out the light in the library. She forgets that the 
 coffee is out and sends her husband to his office 
 with a depressing cup of tea, instead. Of course 
 she does not — in those sad hours when she is 
 struggling against the powers of dirt single- 
 handed — stuff the best table-cloth under the 
 sink, wipe up the kitchen floor with a damask 
 napkin and throw silver spoons in the garbage. 
 But she expects Euphemia to be a person of flaw- 
 less memory, which would make her — not a 
 humble employee — or, anyhow, an employee — 
 but an intellectual prodigy. If she could always 
 remember, if she possessed unfailing skill, fore- 
 sight, great intelligence, as has been already re- 
 marked, she would not be spending her days in 
 anybody's kitchen. She is there through stress 
 of perhaps pitiful and tragic circumstances; 
 through lack of high qualities; because she is 
 what she is. Were she something more, she 
 might be a lady clerk, a stenographer, a teacher, 
 an editor, or a physician. Though, so far as 
 
 170 
 
MISTRESS AND MAID 
 
 that goes, she doubtless prepares a much better 
 meal, keeps her kitchen in better order, than 
 could many a teacher, no matter how competent, 
 or a physician, no matter how learned. 
 
 In this connection I remember that one of the 
 most cheerless homes I have ever known was 
 that of a successful teacher, and one of the worst 
 meals I have ever tried to eat was set forth upon 
 the table by a woman physician, who knew all the 
 evil effects of bad cookery. 
 
 "Followers" are objectionable; but Euphemia 
 is young. She has that love of companionship 
 which is natural in normal youth, and that de- 
 sire for the attentions of the opposite sex which 
 is just as natural. If her mistress can see no 
 charm in "Tom," or "Charley," or "Johnny," 
 who shuffles his feet and looks sheepish when she 
 comes in upon them, in the midst of their con- 
 fidences, she should reflect that she does not see 
 the young swain as Euphemia sees him, or know 
 him as she knows him — the generous giver of 
 "mixed candy," of strong scents in bottles 
 marked "perfume," or as the gallant escort on 
 
 171 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 Fourth of July excursions, or to the *'op'ry," as 
 Euphemia designates the entertainment at the 
 ten, fifteen and twenty-five cent theatres. She 
 is a creature of few resources. But for her chosen 
 famihars, she would have many long hours of 
 dull solitude. For to her, the whole wide realm 
 of books may have no existence, and, often, she 
 is a stranger in a strange land. 
 
 Many well-born, well-educated women have 
 no power of reasonable command ; they lay down 
 the law in the voice of insolence and with an eye 
 that either freezes or scorches. Often they are 
 quite unconscious of their objectionable manner. 
 A successful teacher was once asked why her 
 pupils so rarely disobeyed her. 
 
 "Because," she said, "I rarely ever command. 
 I request, and with a politeness I would show an 
 equal." 
 
 With the fault of insolence, unconscious or 
 premeditated, there is often another — a sure 
 promoter of discord. This is an inability to 
 know one's mind; the habit of changing orders 
 — of taking Euphemia from one thing before it 
 
 172 
 
MISTRESS AND MAID 
 
 is half finished, to begin, possibly, two or three 
 others. This would vex and distract the most 
 well disposed. The fact should not be lost sight 
 of, as has been said, that Euphemia is not a per- 
 son of strong intellect. No one can do good 
 work in any calling who ventures half a dozen 
 things at once, and certainly not Euphemia, who 
 can scarcely write her name. 
 
 "I must have my work done in my way," is 
 the arbitrary dictum of the mistress who calls 
 Euphemia from scrubbing the kitchen floor or 
 blacking the stove, to prepare the luncheon for 
 unexpected guests whom she has brought home 
 with her from a committee meeting at the club. 
 
 "Then do it yourself," Euphemia will answer, 
 if she is a young woman of spirit, as will all her 
 successors to the end of the chapter. What just 
 person who has ever known the unpleasantness 
 of such a lack of system can blame them? 
 
 Consideration — the ability to put herself in 
 another's place on the part of the mistress — 
 would do much to win Euphemia's loyalty 
 and good-will, if she is not entirely destitute of 
 
 173 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 these characteristics. They are not possessed by 
 all. There are among the serving classes, occa- 
 sionally, as among the served, a rapacity and law- 
 lessness that are beyond control. 
 
 There are few women, no matter how compe- 
 tent and clear-headed, who can endure to have 
 people about while they are in the kitchen cook- 
 ing. Yet it is expected that Euphemia, who un- 
 derstands her business — sometimes — shall pre- 
 serve her equanimity when she is interfered with ; 
 or being supervised as she sifts the flour or peels 
 the potatoes, or being taught a new way of beat- 
 ing eggs, or being stopped while moulding pastry 
 or stirring the cake, which she knows will turn 
 out all right — faith that has always been well 
 grounded. 
 
 There are mistresses who do not want to in- 
 terfere ; who are only too glad to let well enough 
 alone; but they are not much more numerous 
 than Euphemias of flawless memory and ex- 
 traordinary intellect. There is a name for un- 
 reasonable meddling and petty fault-finding — 
 "nagging." Of all small vices it is the hardest 
 
 174 
 
MISTRESS AND MAID 
 
 to bear in patience and silence. There are ami- 
 able criminals whose society, under proper re- 
 straint, I should greatly prefer to that of the 
 man or woman who nags, for it is not a vice 
 monopolized by one sex, although it is generally 
 supposed to be. It not unfrequently goads the 
 polite and long-suffering to desperation, and it 
 is too much to expect Euphemia to exercise 
 superhuman self-control where her superiors fail. 
 There is a wide difference between a firm and 
 persistent enforcement of orders, and perpetual 
 bickering, and wise is she who has come to a 
 realization of this. 
 
 1T5 
 
XIX 
 
 Small Politenesses 
 
 VIEWED from a purely selfish 
 standpoint, quite aside from any 
 considerations of kindness and 
 good nature, there is nothing more 
 thoroughly profitable than polite- 
 ness. There are few who are not 
 immediately sensible of the influence of courtesy. 
 The curmudgeon who snaps and snarls, the in- 
 solent and the too familiar — all may be kept 
 within bounds by simple good manners that scorn 
 to return incivility in kind. It is a soft but im- 
 penetrable garment, against v/hich the shafts of 
 
 176 
 
SMALL POLITENESSES 
 
 the vulgar and violent fall powerless. When the 
 mistress enters the verbal arena with Euphemia, 
 meeting her crude insolence with railing and up- 
 braiding, she is pitting herself against an an- 
 tagonist who can outdo her in volume and in the 
 vocabulary of abuse and who has, in addition, 
 the callousness of a crustacean — which has been 
 graphically described as "a creature all shell and 
 claws." 
 
 But the minor rules of politeness, which are 
 the very essence of the best home life, do not 
 apply altogether to Euphemia. They are far 
 less a matter of words than of deeds. The basis of 
 perfect good manners is always unselfishness — 
 which is a truism. One of the most reprehensible 
 pieces of bad breeding is irregularity in coming 
 to one's meals. The breakfast is kept waiting 
 until some member of the family chooses to ap- 
 pear, after late rising. Dinner is delayed until 
 the soup is cold, and the joint is sodden, because 
 Charles wishes to drop in at his club for half an 
 hour on his way home, or Annabel prolongs her 
 call on a friend, thereby delaying the friend's 
 dinner, also. 
 
 177 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 To dawdle over food at table is another form 
 of bad manners that should be punished by soli- 
 tary confinement and a diet of bread and water. 
 Who did not rejoice in the righteous wrath of 
 the incomparable Shirley when she turned the 
 insolent Mr. Donne out of her garden, after 
 having borne with his selfish dilly-dallying over 
 the tea-table, and his silly affectation? But we 
 need not go so far afield for terrible examples, 
 for have we not all sat helpless while Edith 
 pecked at her salad, or Charles verbosely and 
 heavily explained some philosophical platitude, 
 dull as a patent office report? 
 
 This is not to be construed as advice "to bolt 
 one's food and run." It is necessary to spend 
 sufficient time at table to do justice to one's 
 food, to masticate it properly, and allow leisure 
 for pleasant and interesting talk. But no one 
 person should detain an entire company, unless 
 it be some extraordinarily interesting individual 
 who is urged to finish the anecdote, or story, with 
 which he has been so fortunate as to entertain 
 them all. 
 
 178 
 
SMALL POLITENESSES 
 
 Another common incivility is to neglect, or 
 postpone beyond all reasonable limits answering 
 letters, and such inquiries in letters as are neither 
 unreasonable nor impertinent. Very often both 
 sorts come with the morning mail, and for these 
 — the unreasonable and the impertinent — si- 
 lence and the waste-basket are the appointed por- 
 tion. The model correspondent keeps every let- 
 ter until it is answered, and places it before her 
 on the desk as she replies, referring to the inquir- 
 ies it may contain. No one can get the full gist 
 of any letter, however brief, from one reading. 
 
 Soiled paper, a slovenly address, the stamp 
 put on crooked, or upside down, shabby bits of 
 paper, a scrawl in pencil, indecipherable — all 
 these call for but one comment — "Alas!" Each 
 fault in the list enumerated indicates hurry — a 
 desire to be through with the business as soon as 
 possible, which is anything but complimentary 
 to the person addressed. 
 
 Intolerance and a dictatorial unwillingness 
 "to hear the other side," are, fortunately, con- 
 versational bad manners that are improving as 
 
 179 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 we lay less stress on mere partisan politics and ir- 
 relevant and unfruitful dogma — the two para- 
 mount items that once furnished occasion for 
 prolonged wrangling. Women, especially, are 
 steadily gaining in tolerance and ability to con- 
 sider questions from an abstract and impersonal 
 standpoint; so much, at any rate, has the office, 
 the discipline of business, and the parliamentary 
 rule of the club accomplished. 
 
 But there still exists a type with which we 
 are all more or less familiar, — the person who 
 considers her opinion final upon all questions 
 mundane or super-mundane. So long as her 
 hearers acquiesce or keep still — prudent silence 
 that may irritate but does not provoke — all 
 goes well. But presume to doubt, to offer a 
 counter statement, and the dogmatic one bristles 
 and bridles, flushes and raises her voice, and you 
 regret having spoken, unless you think it time 
 somebody asserted herself, or you are unwilling 
 to sacrifice your inalienable right of free speech. 
 
 With the conversational despot, the only per- 
 missible talk is the monologue — and the mono- 
 
 180 
 
SMALL POLITENESSES 
 
 logue must be hers — to be heard with suppressed 
 sighs, with no wandering of drowsy eyes, or fur- 
 tive effort to escape. "Turn about is fair play," 
 the world over, and the woman who over-indulges 
 in monologue should tolerate it in others; but 
 she rarely does. 
 
 One of the most comforting of all politenesses 
 is the habit of returning promptly that which is 
 borrow^ed, and there are some sacred belongings 
 which should never be asked for at all. I should 
 put at the very head of the list a woman's thimble 
 and scissors. 
 
 "Lend me your thimble," begs the foolish vir- 
 gin, who was never known to carry any oil in 
 her lamp. "I want it only half a second." There- 
 upon she stirs up her victim's work-basket, finds 
 the thimble and carries it off to her room. A 
 little later the victim must hurry to the post-box 
 with an important letter and it is necessary, first, 
 to take an unanticipated stitch ; the thimble must 
 be gone after, asked for, or hunted for, and 
 brought back. In those few moments of delay 
 the mail is collected, the letter misses the post 
 
 181 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 that should have carried it to its destination. 
 Upon this delay may hang innumerable and ir- 
 reparable disasters. 
 
 As for scissors, all women except those who 
 use them chiefly for extracting corks from bot- 
 tles, hold their scissors, sharp and bright, in a 
 sort of reverential esteem. They would far rather 
 lend their best bonnet than this sacred imple- 
 ment. 
 
 To return to the original premise, rudeness, 
 primarily, is selfishness — disregard for the 
 rights and feelings of others. This manifests it- 
 self in innumerable forms. The beauty — or, 
 worse still — the person who was once beautiful 
 and imagines that her charms are perennial, is, 
 we will say, one of a house party. She is invari- 
 ably seated in the pleasantest corner of the ve- 
 randah; she alwaj^s has the most comfortable 
 chair. The lion's share of delicacies and privi- 
 leges fall to her, because she has a highly devel- 
 oped power of appropriation. If she is one of 
 an excursion party she is always found on the 
 shady side of the carriage ; she always secures the 
 
 18? 
 
SMALL POLITENESSES 
 
 lower berth in the Pullman sleeper, and monopo- 
 lizes the services of the porter, whom she has 
 probably bribed with an excessive fee, quite be- 
 yond the means of her companions. 
 
 It is she who takes possession of the toilet 
 room, locks the door, and there dresses herself at 
 leisure, omitting nothing that may be a help to 
 nature — the superfluities that take time and 
 pains. She is not aware, apparently, or she does 
 not care, that mothers with fretful children who 
 want their breakfast, and travellers who must 
 leave the train at the next station are waiting her 
 sovereign pleasure. 
 
 In most camping parties there is usually some 
 one such person — the shirk who refuses to do 
 her part, who must be waited on and borne with, 
 who expects all things, and does nothing in re- 
 turn. To such a woman may be traced the dis- 
 banding of many a pleasant coterie, in which all 
 but herself had a decent regard for the common 
 weal. She finally becomes a burden too great to 
 be borne, and because of her meanness and her 
 exactions, the pleasure, always so much enjoyed 
 
 183 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 but for her, is given up. Of course, the develop- 
 ment of such a character began at home. There 
 is many a mother who has a favorite child. By 
 some strange injustice this is rarely, or never, the 
 most obedient and dutiful. It is more frequently 
 the surly, intractable ne'er-do-well, who riots all 
 night and sleeps half the day; the peevish, in- 
 dolent girl, whom no one ever crosses, for v/hom 
 everything is put aside, and who is waited on 
 with slavish subservience by all the rest of the 
 household. She has her breakfast in bed, served 
 upon the finest linen and the best china, little 
 luxuries that are permitted no one else. She 
 has the first choice in hats and gowns, and the 
 others must surrender any selection that they 
 may have made, if she is disposed to want it. 
 
 Rarely, indeed, does she reward her mother's 
 doting and unjust partiality. It is not to her 
 that the parents will look for care and affection 
 in their old age. Her self-absorbed girlhood, by 
 a natural process of growth, has been a prepar- 
 ation for a maturity in which selfishness has in- 
 creased and intensified. All the faults of bad 
 
 184 
 
SMALL POLITENESSES 
 
 breeding have multiplied without let or hind- 
 rance, until what were, at best, mere rudimentary 
 virtues have disappeared. Old age, filial duty, 
 gratitude, are of less account, even, to the woman 
 of forty than they were to the spoiled and selfish 
 girl in her teens. 
 
 185 
 
XX 
 
 Questions of Detail 
 
 THERE are many housekeepers 
 who have an inherent aversion to 
 dirt ; under whose roofs are neither 
 moth nor rust, and upon whose 
 shining tables no names may be 
 written by the betraying finger. 
 Yet, under their rule order does not exist. The 
 work is never done, everything is at sixes and 
 sevens — or at least at twos and threes — a 
 milder form of chaos. There seems to be no 
 stated time for anything, and nothing in its 
 place. The dishes collect from one meal to an- 
 ise 
 
QUESTIONS OF DETAIL 
 
 other, in the absence of a regular servant, until 
 the array upon the shelves has been exhausted, 
 when a woman, hired by the hour, comes in and 
 "cleans up." 
 
 With ordinary people this slackness would 
 attract many kinds of vermin — beetles, mice, 
 ants — but in that clean woman's house it does 
 not. Wash day is a movable feast, — or rather, 
 fast day, — and it may fall on Monday, or Sat- 
 urday — when it cannot possibly be put off an- 
 other minute. At the end of this period — be- 
 fore the arrival of the laundress, or before the 
 dispatch of the hamper to her, unless the supply 
 of house linen is limitless, the family is on the 
 shortest practicable allowance. The dinner is 
 served on a cloth which, though spotless, has been 
 a field of practice for all the varieties of patching 
 and darning that could be taught in a German 
 school of needlework. When this state of things 
 comes to pass, it proves that its promoter has 
 "no system" — that she is lacking in the com- 
 prehension of details mistakenly considered of 
 little consequence. But, just here lies the differ- 
 
 187 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ence between drudgery and efficiency. In spite 
 of ceaseless effort, the poor unmethodical crea- 
 ture is confronted by rooms never set to rights, 
 meals never on time, the work-basket heaped 
 with accumulations of mending, waiting some 
 future convenience that will never be more con- 
 venient than the present. Every emergency 
 takes her unawares. She is never prepared, and 
 one imagines that she must have been one of 
 those unfortunates born out of due season. 
 
 And yet, with a very little planning, the whole 
 menage could be reconstructed by one simple 
 rule: have a stated time for doing every daily 
 task and try to do it at that time. An absolutely 
 unalterable law cannot be fixed, for every house 
 may be disturbed at any moment, and without 
 warning, by accident, sudden illness, or death, 
 and at such time all else is lost sight of. But 
 these are rare and exceptional circumstances. 
 Most lives move on monotonously through many 
 years, with little change from day to day. 
 
 Where there are daughters, each should be 
 given her task, and it should be changed each 
 
 188 
 
QUESTIONS OF DETAIL 
 
 week, until she has done all the work about the 
 house that the housekeeper should know, and 
 then the cycle should begin again. 
 
 In families where no two members are alike 
 in looks, manners or character, there is usually 
 one who shirks, no matter how industrious the 
 others may be. If her unwillingness does not 
 come from physical weakness or incapacity, or if 
 it is not one of those strange maladies that pre- 
 vent her from using the broom or dust-brush, 
 should there be no servants in the house, while 
 she is still able to attend three receptions in one 
 afternoon and dance all night, she should be 
 held inexorably to her stint. 
 
 Two or three intelligent, energetic girls, each 
 going to her duty as soon as she has finished 
 breakfast, can put a house in beautiful order 
 within an hour; can prepare a palatable meal, 
 can so expedite the sewing that the visitation of 
 the seamstress can be appreciably shortened. 
 But this is possible only where there is fair and 
 honest co-operation. In some households may 
 be found one uncomplaining girl upon whom is 
 
 189 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 put all the labor that nobody else will perform. 
 She does all the cooking when Euphemia leaves ; 
 nobody else can bake the cake, make the pud- 
 ding and jam and jelly. She does all the mend- 
 ing, and darns all the stockings "because she 
 does not mind it." It is elaborately explained 
 that Sarah does not care for dress, or society, or 
 visiting, or any of the recreations every normal 
 girl should enjoy with all the zest that comes 
 only in fleeting and enthusiastic youth. They 
 do not know what wistful desires, what thwarted 
 hopes are hidden deep within her heart, because 
 she is too proud to complain, or to ask for the 
 appreciation that is withheld. The famity, who 
 leave more and more of the work to her, who 
 heap it on her patient shoulders, have many en- 
 dearing names for her — "good old girl" — 
 "dear Sarah" — but their affection expends it- 
 self in affectionate expressions, never in lessening 
 her labor. 
 
 The difference between good and bad house- 
 keeping is not always pronounced. It may be 
 often the merest shade, and this entirely per- 
 
 190 
 
QUESTIONS OF DETAIL 
 
 taining to matters of detail. One may often go 
 into a room that has been well swept, well dusted, 
 and thoroughly well aired; no flecks of lint are 
 blowing about, the back rungs of the chairs have 
 had the most conscientious attention; the vases 
 have been emptied and scrupulously washed; 
 everything has been moved on the mantel, and 
 last weeks' newspapers carried to the attic. Yet 
 the room does not seem tidy. A glance betrays 
 the secret: nothing has been put back quite in 
 its place; the rug is just a trifle askew; the shades 
 have been carelessly drawn ; some of the curtains 
 are looped, or partially looped, while others 
 hang straight. 
 
 Yet no one can truthfully say that Euphemia 
 has not handled her broom painstakingly, or has 
 left behind her accumulations that should be re- 
 moved. But one must go over the house after 
 her, a touch here, a little rearrangement there — 
 all accomplished in a few minutes — and the 
 room smiles again, breathing once more its ac- 
 customed air of taste and neatness. 
 
 It does not detract from the nutritive quali- 
 
 191 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ties of the beefsteak — given proper broiling — 
 if the platter is put on the table obliquely. One's 
 hunger will be appeased with food that is whole- 
 some and well cooked, even if the knives and 
 forks have been flung down with no regard to 
 orderly arrangement. But it is by such dis- 
 regard of details that the hand of the tyro may 
 be seen. 
 
 It is not enough to be clean, to be capable, 
 to be willing; to these must be added, if the 
 house is really well kept, the cultivated sense of 
 arrangement, which can refine the humblest sur- 
 roundings, and without which even luxury and 
 beauty are cheapened and destroyed. 
 
 192 
 
XXI 
 
 Euphemia's Unrest 
 
 HO can explain why Euphemia 
 is not happy? Never has so much 
 been done for her physical well- 
 being. Her predecessors, of a for- 
 mer generation, employed in the 
 city, had to do their work in cold 
 houses. Fires were kept going in the bedrooms 
 in open grates, the bars of which had to be fre- 
 quently black-leaded. Water was carried into 
 all these rooms in heavy cans ; feather-beds were 
 in general use, which had to be shaken and 
 turned — very different from the easy airing and 
 
 193 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 smoothing of mattress, sheets and blankets, now- 
 adays. 
 
 There was the regular Monday wash-day. with 
 ironing on Tuesday, and neither wringer nor 
 stationary washtubs to lighten labor and lifting. 
 In the country there were still fewer conveni- 
 ences. Water for all purposes was often carried 
 in a bucket from the foot of the hill. It was a 
 great advance when wells and cisterns were dug. 
 There was a great deal of company — in the 
 West, at least — for this reminiscence does not 
 deal with Southern homes and slave labor — and 
 few meals were served at which neighbors, rela- 
 tives or passing strangers were not present. In 
 the homely phraseology of the pioneer fathers 
 and mothers, "the latch-string was always out." 
 There was the midsummer cooking for an army 
 of harvest hands and threshers, with the spin- 
 ning and weaving, the "slaughtering" in the 
 early winter, with its curing of hams and "head- 
 cheese" and sausage-making. But it was all 
 by way of wholesome, if strenuous, exercise, and 
 it made the good, old-fashioned servant what she 
 
 194 
 
EUPHEMIA'S UNREST 
 
 was — faithful and self-respecting — a woman 
 who expected to live in one place until she mar- 
 ried or died, in the latter event to be buried in 
 the family lot. She was in a very intimate sense 
 one of the family. The children were also, to a 
 certain extent, her charge. Not even the mother 
 was more deeply concerned in their welfare, their 
 training and education, and their success after 
 they left the home, and she, too, welcomed them 
 back with open arms — them and their children 
 — on their visits to the old home. 
 
 Today Euphemia finds herself in a modern 
 house abounding in every manner of modern 
 convenience. There are no carpets to be swept, 
 taken up and put down again; there is a gas 
 range in the kitchen; the whole house is heated 
 by steam and lighted by electricity, and there is 
 a man to do the heavy labor, and no laundry 
 work is done at home. She has, very often, a 
 pleasant room which is warm in winter and cool 
 in summer ; there is a bath, hot and cold water on 
 every floor. Screens keep out the flies; she has 
 linoleum on the kitchen floor which does away 
 
 195 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 with too much "wiping up." There is a butler's 
 pantry to which the dishes may be removed from 
 the dining-room just beyond; where glass, silver 
 and china may be washed and placed on dresser 
 shelves along the wall, within reach. She has 
 a bureau of her own, a closet with hooks and 
 drawers; she can buy all manner of things on 
 the instalment plan, from enlarged photographs 
 to a couch covered with Brussels carpet. She 
 reads the newspaper regularly in the morning, 
 if she, herself, is an early riser, before any of 
 the family have seen it, and she has unrestricted 
 use of the ten-cent magazines — which is all the 
 current literature she cares for. She also has in- 
 struction at the cooking school and the advan- 
 tages of night classes in shirt-waist making and 
 millinery at the Y. W. C. A., for which her mis- 
 tress very often pays. But all this does not de- 
 velop either a contented or a willing spirit. 
 
 As human beings are constituted, this is noth- 
 ing remarkable. Instead of regarding Euphemia 
 as a strange and unpleasant differentiation of 
 her sex and species, why not accept her, with 
 
 196 
 
EUPHEMIA'S UNREST 
 
 all her imperfections on her head as, willingly or 
 unwillingly, we must? 
 
 Are not we, of a supposedly higher class, — 
 better educated, trained and cultured — fast 
 becoming a race of nomads? It is now a fixed 
 belief amongst hundreds of sober-minded people 
 that it is far better "not to own a home." The 
 payment of a growing variety of taxes and the 
 ruinous expense of repairs are thereby avoided. 
 If a home is unfortunately acquired it must not 
 be so good that it cannot be closed at a moment's 
 notice while the family flit to Florida, California 
 or Europe, or start on a year's tour around the 
 world. It must have no inherited or accumulated 
 treasures of books, pictures or bric-a-brac which 
 the enterprising burglar might load into a wagon 
 waiting in the alley at the back gate, in broad 
 daylight, and carry away. . 
 
 And is there not, in towns and cities every- 
 where, a ceaseless migration from flat to board- 
 ing-house, from boarding-house to hotel and back 
 to flat again? The lady who moved seventeen 
 times in one month is no figment of a satirist's 
 
 197 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 disordered fancy; she still lives, though it may 
 pass belief. 
 
 With the instability of our habitations has 
 come an extravagance in eating, drinking, dress- 
 ing and entertaining, that has infected every class 
 of society. 
 
 Our older relatives remember perfectly a 
 halcyon time when one's best bonnet was ex- 
 pected to last more than one season. Now, there 
 must be a new one with the return of spring, 
 summer, autumn and winter, and for that recent 
 invention the "half season," in between. 
 
 In the days when we wore plain hats or bon- 
 nets, as we were young or old, we ate good plain 
 food; plain pound cake, little scalloped cookies, 
 small, crisp, brown doughnuts sprinkled with 
 powdered sugar, and "floating island" for des- 
 sert. 
 
 Now, the bill of fare is one long array of ris- 
 soles, croquettes and pates, of intricate salads 
 enriched with nuts and fruits, cakes compounded 
 of creams, icings, fruits and "filling," and con- 
 fectionery, into the composition of which have 
 
 198 
 
EUPHEMIA'S UNREST 
 
 gone countless ingredients and flavors. Yet we 
 point to the disappearance of pie from the Amer- 
 ican table as evidence of a more wholesome taste. 
 The allurements that take men and women 
 from home have also multiplied beyond all com- 
 puting. For the husband and father there are 
 the club, politics, the lodge, and the lobby of 
 the hotel; for the wife and daughters, the club, 
 all the ramifications of charities that the church 
 has devised, morning lectures on domestic science 
 and on household economics, the civic federation, 
 and the societies auxiliary to men's secret organ- 
 izations whose humble part it is to enjoy the 
 patronage of the real orders and give fairs and 
 socials for raising funds. In addition to these 
 there are readings innumerable on art and liter- 
 ature, travel classes, concerts and matinees. 
 Where is the woman who professes "to be any- 
 body at all," who is not forced to keep an en- 
 gagement book ; to consult it every day and send 
 out acceptances or regrets — few, indeed, of the 
 latter — as promptly and methodically as the 
 lighting and fuel companies present their bills? 
 
 199 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 Not only are the elders provided lavishly with 
 substitutes for homes, but it has now been neces- 
 sary for school boards to build and furnish social 
 centres for the boys and girls of high schools 
 where they may meet for the amusement and 
 recreation no longer obtainable under their par- 
 ents' roofs. In college, the upkeep of fraternity 
 houses has also become an important item in the 
 cost of a modern education. With their evenings 
 for dancing, and "smokers," these houses have 
 superseded the rooms in halls, or in still more 
 hum-drum private families. 
 
 Why, therefore, shall Euphemia be blamed if, 
 in her blind and imperfect way, and in shoes 
 several sizes too small and a belt that fearfully 
 compresses her thick waist, she, too, is trying to 
 "keep up with the procession" — to quote the 
 graphic language of the paragrapher? Her rest- 
 less haunting of the main thoroughfares every 
 afternoon instead of once a week, as was former- 
 ly the rule ; her frantic conflicts at bargain coun- 
 ters; her interpretations of extreme fashions in 
 cheap materials, are the natural results of ex- 
 
 200 
 
EUPHEMIA'S UNREST 
 
 amples constantly before her, furnished by those 
 whom she admires and envies and whose equal 
 she feels herself to be. 
 
 Then, if she has availed herself of the public 
 schools, she has learned to read in romances 
 where other maids, in positions similar to her own, 
 have been wooed and won by capitalists and 
 promoters, and have risen to the dignity of keep- 
 ing a carriage and a scrupulously revised visit- 
 ing-list. She is not the only example of aspiring 
 mediocrity. Mediocrity everywhere aspires and 
 climbs, not for any spiritual or intellectual bet- 
 terment, but for the accomplishment of purely 
 sordid ends. 
 
 There is no sincere desire for the simple life. 
 If there were, we should have it. 
 
 201 
 
XXII 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 T is the changeless law of human 
 development that mankind shall 
 strive ceaselessly toward some ideal 
 of perfection. Thus it gains much 
 which, if not precisely what was 
 sought, is still of lasting value. 
 The ambition to better one's temporal condi- 
 tion is general, though it admits of countless in- 
 terpretations. There are always men and women 
 of unquenchable hope and of boundless energy, 
 fii'm in the conviction that they will succeed 
 where thousands have failed. It is well for us 
 
 20-2 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 that this is true ; if it were not we should still be 
 dwelling in caves, clad in skins. 
 
 Among these sanguine souls are the undis- 
 couraged young people who have decided to share 
 each other's fortunes, and who have no aspiration 
 towards hotels or boarding-houses, but who look 
 forward "to settling in a home of their own." 
 
 It is a beautiful aspiration, natural as the in- 
 stinct of nesting birds. They plan the appoint- 
 ments of their snuggery to the last spoon, and 
 see throughout a long, tranquil future only 
 sweetness and light ; order, peace, exquisite meals 
 for two, perfect little dinners for their friends, 
 a drawing-room wherein no dust will ever gather 
 and where the flowers will be always fresh. They 
 see in their innocent dreams a rosy-cheeked 
 housemaid in the prettiest of aprons, who does 
 not regard her very becoming cap as a degrading 
 badge of servitude. 
 
 No account is taken by the innocent dreamers 
 of the unexpected which always happens and of 
 the expected which seldom does. They cannot 
 foresee the toil and weariness, the disappoint- 
 
 203 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ment, that lie in wait, that will not diminish un- 
 til the last task drops from the stiffening Angers 
 of old age when death has touched them. In 
 the glamour of their youth, of their unclouded 
 faith, there is no thought of the tribulations that 
 will vex them, and can be escaped by no known 
 powers of strategy or evasion. 
 
 Charles is all devotion; he has spoken, thus 
 far, only in dulcet tones. His wish to please has 
 prompted him to appear only in his best and at 
 his best. How can Edith even faintly imagine 
 him comfortably slouching about the house in 
 loose, shapeless slippers, in shabby smoking 
 jacket, indifferent to appearances? 
 
 And Charles, in his sentimental musings, has 
 no conception of the lovely Edith in a dress- 
 ing sack and curl-papers, perhaps a little irri- 
 table and unable to appreciate his humor. Yet it 
 probably will come to this, unless they are very 
 exceptional young people indeed. Where Charles 
 now hangs upon Edith's slightest word, he will 
 answer absent-mindedly from behind his news- 
 paper; or, being absorbed in the market reports 
 
 204 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 or the account of the football match, he will not 
 hear and will not answer at all. 
 
 And what passes belief, if they are really sen- 
 sible young people, having taken each other for 
 worse, as well as for better, when this prosaic 
 stage is reached they will not lapse into selfish 
 indifference and decide that their whole romance 
 has been a mistake and that marriage is a failure. 
 They w^ll realize that they have simply grown 
 used to each other; that if they can appear in 
 every-day attire, talk or keep silent, it is be- 
 cause they have settled down into a rational, un- 
 sentimental comradeship, which is the comfort- 
 ing and comfortable end of nearly every ro- 
 mance; the inevitable consequence of daily and 
 famijiar association. 
 
 As Edith looks fondly over her beautiful wed- 
 ding presents, it is a wise dispensation of Provi- 
 dence that she should be unable to foresee that, 
 without ceaseless vigilance on her part, the silver 
 forks will be used surreptitiously by Euphemia 
 to clear the ashes from the grate of the kitchen 
 range; that the drawn-work doylies will disap- 
 
 205 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 pear one by one ; that the silk cushions will grow 
 dingy from rough handling; that the cut glass 
 bowl will be cracked by hot water ; that the Vene- 
 tian glass vase, iridescent as an opal and light 
 as a bubble, will be swept from the mantel by a 
 savage swish of the forbidden feather-duster. 
 Yes; it is a wise arrangement that she cannot 
 read the future. 
 
 For her best and most merciful discipline and 
 education these disasters will come one — or, per- 
 haps, two — at a time. But they will surely 
 come, and she need not think she can escape the 
 troubles that have assailed her ancestral grand- 
 mothers back to the days of light housekeeping 
 in Eden. 
 
 Much more forbearance, wisdom and patience 
 have been brought to bear upon the domestic 
 problem in the past than she will ever be able to 
 acquire by mere observation and theorizing; ac- 
 cidents, misfortunes and imperfection are still 
 rife. Nor is there hope for immediate relief from 
 cooking schools and classes in household econo- 
 mics. The teachers in these practical sciences, 
 themselves, deal largely in theories; their pupils 
 
 206 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 are girls of intelligence, who are anxious to learn ; 
 and they work in class-rooms, not in real kitch- 
 ens, where even such as they must meet the com- 
 mon enemy and very often be defeated. 
 
 Three virtues may be cultivated, however, 
 which will be an ever present help in time of 
 trouble — patience, courage and unyielding per- 
 severance. 
 
 All these presuppose health, strength and 
 somid nerves, which it is to be hoped that Edith 
 possesses. Charles, on his part, may not realize 
 that all domestic knowledge is not acquired in a 
 day, especially where the mother has failed to 
 train up her daughter in the way she should go. 
 He is destined in the painful probationary stages 
 of married life to eat many a burnt steak, 
 scorched potato and leaden roll before the fair 
 hand of his Edith has acquired something ap- 
 proaching the skill of his mother. Her appren- 
 ticeship will be for him, too, a season of physical 
 and spiritual discipline, and, possibly, differences 
 may arise not easily adjusted. 
 
 That was a fine old fable — "The Discon- 
 tented Pendulum." How hopeless seemed the 
 
 90T 
 
PLATTERS AND PIPKINS 
 
 ceaseless business required of the poor pendulum 
 — counting, forever, the seconds, through days, 
 nights, weeks, months and years. But what a 
 difference it made when he came to realize that 
 each second was an allotted portion of time, and 
 only one day's work was appointed to the twenty- 
 four hours. 
 
 In spite of everything, making and maintain- 
 ing a good home is of all undertakings the best 
 worth doing. Kate Field once said: 
 
 *'The world would go on just the same if there 
 were not a woman in the professions. It would 
 come to speedy ruin if there were no women in 
 the home." 
 
 All that our highest development has brought 
 to pass has had its origin there, except in very 
 rare instances, for untaught waifs who have be- 
 come great men and women have been few in- 
 deed. It is there that habits of accuracy and 
 obedience must be inculcated, the two qualities 
 above all others upon which success depends, 
 since accuracy is only another name for honesty, 
 and obedience for fidelity. 
 
 The woman who looks well to the ways of 
 
 208 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 her household is a conservator of the greatest 
 forces that shape the destinies of the race, and in 
 what is required of her there is nothing incon- 
 sequential or of little account. She influences 
 and nurtures in their incipiency the economic 
 measures that better the nations and which make 
 all wholesome life possible. A home under fine 
 supervision is like a fertile land through which 
 flow a myriad crystal streams; over which are 
 spread rich fields of ripening grain ; in which are 
 rooted the fruitful trees of the orchard , the giants 
 of the forest that lend their strength to civiliza- 
 tion, to the building of bridges along the thor- 
 oughfares of the world, of ships that carry the 
 traffic of the high seas, of roofs that shelter the 
 life of the race. 
 
 It behooves the home-maker, then, to honor her 
 place with efficiency, and to meet its demands 
 with willingness and fortitude in which there 
 shall be neither regret nor repining, for that 
 which is mistakenly called a wider sphere. There 
 is, in all the varied affairs of this world, none 
 wider and none so sacred. 
 
 209 
 
OCT 16 
 
One copy del. to Cat. Div. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 180 364 2