The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1879-06-13
Our Front ParIors.

The average American parlor is not tt
be lived in, It is solely for " company.
1t may be sat in occasionally and respect
| fully gazed at, but no familiarities may
be taken with the furniture It confers
little sense of ease. The chairs are
always on dress parade. They never
stray an inch from their places The
books on the table are likewise accu
rately and regimentally disposed. Every
thing bears the impress of the las
funeral. It is sad, solemn, and otter
gloomy place. The front blinds are
seldom opened. A dim, sepulchral ight
struggles through them. The sun is an
unwelcome intruder. If allowed to en-.
ter, he would cheer up matters and
disperse some of the poison of dampness
which slowly gathers day by day-but he
would fade the carpet. Health, cheer
light and even life, in the housekeeper's
estimation, are trifes when compared
with the perpetuity of the colors on he1
carpet.
The front parlor is well-furnished
family sepulchre. It is a costly shrine
consecrated to gloom, silence and obscu-
rity. The family live, move, and endure
being in the kitchen. The furniture ac-
quires no individuality through use.
shiny as when they came from the uphol-
sterers. They have no character. In
the comparatively few parlors which are
develops certain features, the result of
use and usefulness. The armchair of
pater fun1ili0s has dignity worn upon
it; the maternal rocking chair looks easy,
gracious and accessible; the table covered
with opened books and papers seems
endowed with mental activity and vigor;
the pictures on the wall look as if imbued
with satisfaction as a source of constant
pleasure to human eyes; the remaining
chairs scattered about, even when not
occupied, seem on social terms with each
other, and the opened piano suggests the
hospitality of harmony
But for the parlor which is not lived in
the shut piano suggests screwed-down
coffin. The ever empty chair seems a
well-dressed chief mourner, the other
chairs are pall-bearers. The pictures are
without heart-soul, and the table might
as well be pulpit. Everything seems
eternally sitting, wrapped in sombre con-
temptation and meditating dreadful
judgment on somebody. Company can
never warm up ana be enlivened in such
a place. The influence of days and days
and weeks and weeks of sad, gloomy,
brooding solitude is too strong. Skele-
tons and ghouls haunt the room. You
cannot see, but you do feel them. Jokes
only weakly fzzle there, wit splutters
and dies out, humor is frightened and
fees because the room and its furniture
have not been educated in their parts. It
is an upholsterer's show.
Thousands of these domestic tombs are
superstitiously kept up in our city.
They may be known at once by the long
rows of closely-shut green blinds on the
outer walls. Occasionally they are lit
up, like the little tomb chapels in Pere
La Chaise on All Souls Day. Men and
women buy from time to time out of
their hard earnings some new ornament,
and gloomy front parlor. In this they
realize sort Of gloomy pleasure. Bat
they live in the kitchen. The kitchen is
the stokehole in which much of the work
is performed to man the dignity of the
|sepulchre upstairs. The family lives in
an atmosphere and rattle of stoves,
pokers, scuttles, tongs, pumps, suds,
frying pans, peeled potatoes and buck
wheat batter. The entire family mind is
ever crammed full of these things. Be
cause, even when away from the stoke
hole for limited period, the stoves,
pokers, tongs, scuttles, peeled potatoes,
suds, frying-pans and buckwheat batter
are still in mbrance-ever present
realities.
The real use of front parlor is that of
a cheerful refuge and rest from these
things. But prevalent custom has con-
verted it into tomb. These parlors
need only gravestone erected in the
center to make them consistently COM
plete. On it should be inscribed SIN
memory of Life, Light and Cheerful
ness, who starved to death in this place
long ago!"