Los Angeles herald., 1890-11-01
REOPENlNG THE HOUSE.

An Ordeal That Confronts Everybody
Who Goes Away for the Summer.
Unless one is of the millionaires who
have housekeeper and a retinue of SER
wants in every house, or of those who.
at any rate, have housekeeper to send
before and make the city house ready
for occupancy after it has been left all
summer. to the invasion Of dust and
showers and possible thieves, and all the
other contingencies of vacancy, the re-
turn to the city house has an element of
discomfort and dreariness that makes
one feel for day or two as if the winter
pleasures were being purchased at too
dear rate, and as if, after all, the pos
session of two homes were a doubtful
blessing.
Perhaps the man left in sort Of gen.
eral charge of that and dozen others
has taken down the wooden shutters and
doors, if such were put up, and has
swept the area and the sidewalk, and
has turned on the water; but that is
about all that has been done, unless you
have been able to send some servants in
advance-a difficult thing to do in the
midst Of shutting up the seaside or
mountain house you are just leaving,
and of course a nearly impossible thing
If you have been merely boarding.
One has the alternative of doing this,
or of making arrangements with some
trusty charwoman to take off the first
dust and throw the house open, or else
one turns the key and goes in to meet a
scene of desolation that is depressing, to
say the least. A dull, dead air awaits
you, too dead to salute you, but which
has about it a sense Of its having taken
refuge from the million lungs Of the city
in the empty halls and parlors, for fear
that if it were breathed once more there
would be nothing left of it.
Dust-fine dust-has filtered through
the solid walls, it would seem, for it has
overlaid everything; you can hardly see
through the windows; the bare floors
and walls give great lonely echoes; the
bare windows, the carpets rolled away,
the shrouded chandeliers, the covered
furniture, all make such scene Of DESC
lation that you wonder if this could
ever have been the happy home you re-
member here. You wander from room
to room; nothing is familiar; all is a
desert, ruin it is the sheeted ghost of
your home.
If it were not for the exhilaration and
expectancy that almost always comes
with change you could sit down and cry
in the first chair that offers it's kindly
arms to you. But you do not. You call
your nerves to the front and make de-
mand upon all your executive powers;
scrub women are sent for, servants are
marshaled, busters, mops and brooms
are brought into use.
Workmen appear not by magic but
by previous arrangement; carpets are
rolled into place, windows are washed,
walls are wiped, pictures are uncovered
and rehung, fires are lit, beds are made;
there is something to eat; one room
emerges from chaos into likeness of its
old self; but you go to bed wishing you
had but one residence and had staid
in it.
With the morning, however, you wake
refreshed, all your aids about you, the
poles changed, and by nightfall again
you are half inclined to wonder if you
really have been away all this summer.
Even if you have sat in your easy chair
and ordered all this it is a nervous strain,
full Of fatigue, and you and all about
you realize that home is not even kept,
to say nothing of it's being won, without
ever recurring exertion. n.-Harper's Bazaar