Show poetry of house building BY SEV HENRY WARD beechek BEECHER A house is the shape which a mans thoughts take when he be imagines how he should like to olive live its interior is the measure of his social and domestic nature its exterior of his esthetic and artistic nature it interprets in material forms his ideas of home of friendship of comfort a word which signifies in the main the happiness which we derive from pleasant intercourse with friends every man roan is is in in a small way a creator we seek to embody our fancies and thoughts in some material shape to give them an incarnation nation born in our spirit invisible and man Wan intangible gible aible we are always seeking to thrust them forth so that they shall return to us through some of the cal senses thus speech brings back our ima lma imaginings I 1 to the ear writing brings them back to the tre eye ye painting brings out the thoughts and feelings in in forms and color colors addressed through the eye to several reveral inward taste tastes and building build inc inz presents pie pre to our senses our thoughts of home bome life ilfe but ones dwelling is not always to be taken as a the fair index of his mind any more than the richness of ones mind is judged by ones fluency in speech or skill in writing the conceiving power may be greater in us than the creative or express expressive inc ina power but there are other considerations which usually have more to do with building especially in america than a mans inward fancies ancius anci ancl ps in tact in the greatest num berof instances a mans house may be regarded as the measure of his purse it is a compromise between bis his heart and his pocket it is a memorial of his ingenuity in procuring the utmost possible convenience convenience and room from the least possible meant for on young men ninety nine in a hundred are happily born that is born poor but bit determined to be e rich this gives birth to industry fru frugality galit ingenuity perseverance and success inward and outward for for while making his fortune the man is making himself he is extracting tr manly qualities out of those very labors or by which he be achieves material h now in the career of every such young man his little accumulations have to perform three function to carry on his business to meet the annual expense of bis his little but growing family I 1 and to build and beautify their home thus his is property slender at best even if it all rose in one ehan eban channel nef net must move in a threefold channel to carry three mills the portion set apart for building therefore must be very little indeed it is to be doubted doubled whether one in a hundred knows how he shall pay for more than half his house when he tie be begins gins i and he is seldom much wiser when he ends he draws upon hope and when in five or ten years the house is paid 1 d for it would puzzle him to zay say how bow he be hadbo had done ne it now under such circumstances it would be absorb to look for what are called architectural effects there must be if possible 0 1 ible ibie a kitchen and a bed room in pioneer life ife ite even these must come together and one room serve every purpose but usually a man roan can afford a kitchen a dining room which is also p after meals a parlor and a bedroom bed room these three rooms are the seed and type of all other rooms which can be built for all apartments ments must erve serve our bodily wants our social domestic wants and our social public wants the kitchen and dining dinine room and all appurtenances thereof are for the animal nature our pur bedroom bed room and sitting room are for tor our home social wants and our parlors halls balls etc for our more public social necessities while one is yet poor one room must serve several uses in the old fashioned country houses the kitchen was also aiso the dining room and an never will saloon how admirably be to so pleasant as our remembered hours in the great broad hospitable kitchen the door opened into the well room on one side whence came the pitcher all dripping pin and be dewed another door opened into the cheese ae se room rich with rows of yellow cheeses while the front door wide open in in summer attracted often hens bens and chickens who cocked an eye eve at you tour or even ventured across the threshold after a astray stray crumb ne sitting room and parlor too must often be one and the same and inthe luthe in the same space must be the library if it such a thing is known in the dwelling bedrooms bed rooms are more independent and aris socratic than anything else cultivating very ex c elusive habits yeta yet ev even e r bedrooms bed looms rooms must contrive to be ingenious and curtained corners cloth partitions trundle beds and sofa beds that disappear appear r bv by day and like some flowers unfold at night isu ti these hese are the necessities of bed bedrooms rooms but in proportion as ones means increase the rooms like branches in a plant grow out of each other kitchen and dining room have to separate and live by themselves the sitting room withdraws from the parlor taking all the ease and comfort with it and leaving all ail alithe the stateliness and frigid dignity all the books walk off hilna a little black walnut room by themselves where they stand in patient splendor and silent wisdom b behind their glass door doors the flowers abandon the windows and inhabit a formal conservatory bedrooms multiply each one standing in ringle blessedness the house is full grown alas just then all its comfort goes just as when the rose is is fully grown it is ready to drop its leaves how ro many ani ant persons from out of their two story framed awe dwellings lings have sighed across the way for the log cabill how many dersons persons persons have moved from a home into a house f from arn low ceilings narrow halls rooms of multifarious uses into splendid apartments whose chief effect was to make them homesick but blit this is because pride or vanity was the new architect for a large house is a grand and almost indispensable element to our fullest idea ilea of comfort but it must be social largeness the broad halls must seem to these that enter like open arms holding out a welcome not like the aisles of a chirch lifted up out of reach of human sympathy the staircase should be so broad and gentle in inclination that its very looks incite vite you to try it but then a large house ought to have great diversity some rooms should have a ceiling higher than others doors should come upon you vou in unexpected places little co cosy sy r rooms should s surprise in in ever every r direction where you expected a cupboard there thare should be a little confidential entryway entry way where vou you expected the door to open into the yard you should discover a perfect nest of a room that no one ever built thereon there on purpose all sorts of closets and queer cupboards should by degrees be found out now such a house never sprang full grown from an architects brain as did the fabled deit delt deity delty y from Ju head each room must have been needed for tor fora a long time and when they could no longer be done without they will come into bei bel a decided character impressed 1 upon n them they will have been aimed at some r real I 1 want ant and it will take talc tae tal c their thir th ir air and character from it thus one by one the rooms will be born into the house as children are into the family and as our affections have undoubtedly doubted doubled ly a certain relation to form color and space so our rooms will in their forms dimensions d imen and hues indicate the faculties which most wrought in their production we all know what is meant in painting V in music and anil in writing by convention conventionalism conventionalist alis alls in men write or fashion not to give ease to an impulse in them that struggles for a birth but because they have kave an outside knowledge that such and such th things in would be proper and customary so do domen men build buld conventional houses they put in all the customary rooms in the customary manner they express themselves in this room as kitchens are usually expressed they fashion parlors as they remember that parlors have been made they go to their books their plans and portfolios of what haq has been done and selecting here a thing and here there a thing they put a house together as girls do patchwork bea bedspreads spreads a piece out of every dress in the family for the last year ear or two these are conventional houses suz such are almost all city houses the he original type of which was a ladder from each round of which rooms issue in Mc ending order and the perpendicular stairs still retaining the peculiar properties of the type such too are almost all ambitious country hoti houses ses aes built in conspicuous places in the most intrusive and come and look at me manner painted as brilliantly as flash wagons or parron wings in a pr practical point of view this method of building gh houses au es by the architects plans ami and not by the owners disposition must prevail and it is not the worst of earths imperfections but a genuine houge howe an original house that expresses the builders inward idea of life in its social and domestic aspect cannot be planned for hilnor him nor ean can fan he all at once sit down and plan it it must be a result of his own growth it must first be wanted each room and each nook but us RS we come to ourselves little by little and gradually so a house should either be built by successive additions or it should be built when we are old enough to put together the accumulated ideas of our life alas when we are old enough for that we are read ready to die dire or time hath dealt so rudely with rear bear our hearts that like trees at whose boughs tempests have ight we are not anxious anxious to give expression to ourselves the best way to build therefore is to build as trees grow season by season and all af after ter branch edwith a symmetrical sympathy with older ones in lif this way too one may secure that mazy diversity sit y that most unlooked for intricacy in a dwelling p 0 9 and that utter variation of lines in the exterior lor which please the eye or ought to please it if it be trained in the absolute school of nature and which few could ever invent at once and 0 on 1 purpose |