Prescott journal. [volume] (Prescott, Wis.) 1861-1871, 1864-04-09
HOME KEEPING VS.. HOUSE KEEP.
INC

Keep a house, but there are few who know
how to keep a home.
remember in nv bachelor DAYS going with
nv boon companion, Bill Csrberry, to look
at the house to which he was in a few days
to introduce his bride. Bill was a gallant,
free-hearted, open-handed fellow, the life of
our whole set, and we felt the natural aver
sion of losing him that bachelor friends would.
How could they tell with what strange aspects
he might look forth upon US, when once he
had passed into "that undiscovered country"
of matrimOny? But Bill laughed to scorn our
apprehension.
I'm tell you what, Chris, he said, as he
sprang cheerily up the steps and unlocked
the door of his future dwelling, ''do you know
what chose this house for? Because it's
a sOcial-looking house. Look here, now" he
said as he ushered me into the parlor,-
"look at those long south windows, the sun
lies there nearly all day long; see what a
capital corner there is for lounging chair {;
fancy us, Chris, with our book or our paper
spread out loose and easy, and Sophie gliding
in and out like a sunbeam. I'm getting po-
etieal, you see. Then did you ever see a
better, wider, airer dining-rOom? What cap
ital suppers and things We'll have there the
incest things,-everything free and easy, you
know,-just what I've always wanted house
for. 1 tell you, Chris, you and Tom Inhis
shall have latch-keys just like mine, and there
is a capital chamber there at the head of the
stairs, so that you can be free to come and
90. And here nOw's the library,-fancy this
full of books and engravings from the ceiling
to the floor; here you shall come just as you
please and ask no questions the same as
if it were your own, you know"
"And Sophie, what will she say to ali
this?"
why, you know Sophie is prime friend
of both of you, and a capital girl to keep
things going. Oh, Sophie IL make a house OF
this, you may depend"
A day or two after, Bill dragged me STUN
bling over boxes and through straw and
wrappings to show me the glories of the par
lOr furnIture,-with which he seemed pleased
as a child with a new toy.
"Look here" he said see these chairs,
garnet cOlOred satin, with a pattern on each /;
well the sofas just like them, and the cur
tains to match, and the carpets made for the
floor with center-pieces and borders. Inever
saw anything more magnificent in my life.
SOphie's governor furnishes the house, and
everything is TO be A No. l, you see. Messrs.
Curtain and CollamOre are coming to make
the rooms up, and her mother is busy as bee
getting Us in order"
"Wny, Bill" said l, "you are going to be
lodged like prince. hope you'll be able to
keep it up; bur law hnsinesS comes in rather
slowly, at first, old fellow"
"Well, you know it isn't the way | should
furnish, if my capital was the one to cash the
bill; but then, you see, Sophie's people do it,
and let tbem-a girl doesn't want to come
down out of the style she has always lived
in"
| said nothing, but had an oppressive pre-
sentiment that social freedom would expire
in that house, crushed under a weight of up
hOlstery.
But there came in due time the wedding
and the wedding reception, and we all went
to see Bill in new house, splendidly lighted
up complete from top to toe, and everybody
said what lucky fellow he was; but that
was about the end of it, so far as our visiting
was concerned. The running in, and drop
ping in, and keeping latch keys, and making
informa, calls that had been forespoken, seemed
about as likely as if he had lodged in the
Tuileries.
Sophie, who had always been one of your
swapping, sparkling, busy sort of girls, began
at once to develop her womanhood, and show
her principles, and was as different from her
former self as your care-worn, housing, old
cat is from your rOlliking, frisky kitten. Not
but thai Sophie was good girl. She had a
capital heart, good, true, womanly one, and
was loving and Obliging; but still she was one
of the desperately pans taking, conscientious
sort of women whose very blood, as they
grow older, is devoured with anxiety, and she
came of race of women in whom house
keeping was more than art or science-it was,
so to speak, a religion. SOphie's mother,
atoms back, were known to be celebrated
hOusekeepers. They might have been gen
uine descendants of the inhabitants of that
Hollandic town of Brock, celebrated by
Washington Irving, where the cows tails are
kept tied up with unsullied blue ribbons, and
tne ends of the firewood are painted white
He relates how celebrated preacher, visiting
this town found il impossible to draw these
housewives from their earthly views and EN-
pigments, until he took to preaching on the
neatness of the celestial city, the unsulied
crystal of its walls and the polish of its golden
pavement, when the face of ali the housewives
were set Zionward at once.
Now this solemn and earnest view of house
keeping is onerous enough when a poor CIR
first enters on the care of a moderately fur
nished house where the articles are not toe
expensive to be reasonably renewed as time
and use wear them; but il is infinitely worse
when a cataract of splendid furniture is heap
ed upon her care,-when splendid crystals
cut into her conscience, and mirrors reflect
her duties, and moth and rust stand ever ready
TO devOur and sully in every room and pass
age way.
Sophie was solemnly warned and instructed
by all the mothers and aunts-she was warn
ed of moths, warned of cockroaches, warned
of flies, warned of dust all the articles Of
furniture had their covers, made of cold Hol
land linen, in which they looked like bodies
laI5 out, even the curtain-tassels had each its
little shroud-lnd bundles of receipts and OF
rites and ceremonies necessary for the pres
ervation and publication and care of all these
articles were stuffed into the poor girls head
before guiltless of cares as the feathers that
hOated above it.
Poor Bill found very soon that his house
and furniture were kept at such an ideal point
of perfection that he needed another house
TO live in, for, poor fellow, he found the diff
ference between having house and a home.
1t was only a year or two after that my wife
and / started our MENACE on very different
principles, and Bill would often drop in upon
US, wistfully lingering in the cozy armchair
between my writing table and my wife's sofa,
and saying with sigh how confoundedly
pleasant things looked there-so pleasant to
have a bright open fire and geraniums and
roses and birds, and all that sort of thing,
and to dare 70 stretch out ones legs and move
without thinking what one was going TO hit.
Sophie is good GIRL" he would say and
wants to have everything right, but you see
they won't let her. They've loaded her with
40 many things that have to be kept in laven-
dar that the poor girl is actually getting thin