friends. The young ladies were all in. The eldest
was engaged with some embroidery at the window.
I had therefore an opportunity, as I leant over the
frame, to whisper:
“S. S. is not punctual.”
The crimson in her face and neck was now so deep, that a sceptic himself would no longer doubt. I need say no more; that evening in her father’s garden, she confessed that she and her sisters had conspired to bring me up to G on a fool’s errand, never meaning, of course, to keep the engagement.
“Then,” said I, “since you designed to take me in, you must consent to make me happy!“
“And what did she say, papa?” asks my second daughter, who is now looking over my shoulder as I write.
“Why, you little goose, she promised to be your mamma, and she has kept her word.“
HOME OR HOSPITAL.
Among the whole range of human enterprises, there is scarcely perhaps a pleasanter one for ordinary people than building a house. Building a house to live in, or to put some friend into, I mean; for there is nothing particularly interesting in the speculator’s business of erecting houses by the dozen, or the row, or the block, without knowing who will inhabit them.
There is all the difference in the world between the two methods. I need not describe the dreary spectacle of the rows of unfinished or empty houses in and near London — places where the damp is spreading through for want of the warmth of life within; where vagabonds get in for shelter, know- ing that nobody is likely to come there but people like themselves; and where all the cats, rats, and mice of the neighbourhood can make as much racket as they please. The police may look in occasionally in pursuit of thieves, or at the request of some timid resident in the nearest house; but nobody has really any business there, and certainly nobody any pleasure. There is no gratification in such house-building as this.
The case is no better in those manufacturing towns where it was the rage, at one time, to speculate in dwellings for a rapidly-increasing operative population. It was enough to sink anybody’s heart to see the builders' men at work upon a dozen or a score of cottages in a block. The main object seemed to be to save land, bricks, and money. The dwellings were all alike, stand- ing back to back, so that one wall, without an inch of opening, formed the back -wall of the whole lot. Only the end houses could ever have openings on the side, and each of them on only one side. The others had a door and two or more windows in front; and that was all the ventilation provided. Living there was being shut up in a box like a baby-house, with only a bit of the front moveable. Only one chimney to each; win- dows not made to open, or with perhaps one small pane turning on a hinge; and no fire-place in any bed-room: such was the provision made for the breathing of a whole family. The families themselves were too little aware that it is a poisonous practice to live even in large and lofty rooms which have not openings for the perpetual renewal of the air. They did not understand that their wretched feelings in sleep, and on waking, were owing to their having breathed poisonous air during the night; and so the tenants made no objection to the cottages on that score.
They were more aware of the injury done them by the absence of a proper foundation for the houses. The walls were scarcely inserted in the clay soil, which was left just as it was, undrained, untouched, with the brick-floors slightly rammed down into it, or a wooden flooring merely laid upon it. The damp which crept up the walls and kept the bricks wet, or the boards rotten, was a palpable evil enough; and the tenants lamented it; but they did not see, nor their landlord either, how anything could be done; and there the place rotted, and the people in it. The houses were built to last only a few years, and to be going to pieces during the whole interval; but the people decayed so much faster, that there was a long series of funerals from the doors before the roofs fell in and the walls crumbled down.
That was a long time ago. The subject happily is better understood now. From ricketty dwellings run up to serve a single generation, let us turn to houses which will last a thousand years.
By houses which will last a thousand years, I do not mean any great baronial castle, or even the most substantial manor-house that any ancestor of our generation ever erected. I am thinking of the dwellings, for gentle and simple, which are built every year in those districts of the country in which stone is the material. In the mountainous parts of the kingdom, very few ruins of human dwellings are seen; and such as there are would be sound and substantial houses again if they were roofed and fitted up. The wadis are two or three feet thick, and there seems to be no reason why they should not stand for ever, if the foundation is good. The principle of building is the same for the most part in regard to the handsomest and the humblest abodes and the pleasure, I suppose, is much the same, both in kind and degree, of seeing the future dwelling rising from the ground, and assuming the appearance which it is to have for generations to come. In districts where the land is level, the soil clay, and the houses of brick, the highest policy of building is to emulate, as nearly as possible, the advantages and virtues of the stone regions; and the towns and villages of our mountain districts ought therefore to be models of the art of healthy living in respect of habitation.
In such places there is usually an express aim in building a house, large or small. It is built, not for the chance of letting or selling, but for some particular inhabitant, or class of inhabitant. There is probably a scarcity of dwellings, and the new one is meant to accommodate somebody who is waiting, or any one of a dozen families who are
knowm to be wretchedly crowded. In such a case, the first stage is of hope and fear about getting ground to build on. This is a sore point in many rural districts, and a very expensive part of the business in the towns. It is a painful