where Donald's old school-books had stood this | sands of dollars, have surprised us, His exhibit, many a year: they were such sacred oracles in her eyes.

Now "the boy" had been a man these twenty years, with boys of his own.

Taking down an old tattered arithmetic, she produced a folded note and came hobbling with it to me.

"I thought it had gone by the boy; but now I'm glad you dropped in, Christie, for here it

gained. The splendid banner he has hung upon | Mrs. Jenkins opposite, who kept her carriage his outer wall passes with the casual observer for a proof of the strength within. The more thorough reconnoissance of the inevitable tax-gatherer, however, will penetrate the showy semblance of prosperity, and probably reveal the reality of a starving garrison.

and was of course a desirable acquaintance, had called twice upon Mrs. Higgins next door, who had only moved there last May, while she had never called upon herself though she had been nearly two years in the neighborhood, began to be uncomfortable. The little house, which she had The big and costly house being accepted as at first pronounced to be "a perfect bijou—just the the visible sign of wealth has naturally become, place for us, so neat, so comfortable, so delightin a land where riches alone give rank, a mark fully easy to keep in order”-now became "an of social distinction. A city dame, whose hus- old rickety barn, so old-fashioned, so impossiband's fortune had expanded enormously by vir- ble to make decent, though she and Bridget tue of Government contracts, was heard lately worked their arms off with sweeping and scrubto boast that she had none but "brown-stone" bing from morning until night." The children, houses on her visiting list. We need not re- too, were no longer satisfied; for Tom had been mind our fashionable readers that it is the house, called a poor boy by Master Augustus Jenkins, and not the occupant, which is visited. Friend- and told by that young aristocrat that his moship and hospitality, the veritable household gods ther had forbid him playing with "them peoof our ancient simple homes, have forsaken a ple's children which lived in the old two-story faithless generation, and the gilded idols of fash- | house opposite." Miss Sophronia Jenkins, too, ion have taken their places. The visitor-we had grossly insulted little Mary at school, by saydo not say friend, for the name is hardly heard ing that "her father was not respectable; for he nowadays by ears polite-never fails of her fash-lived in nothing but a two-story house, and her ionable devotion, wherever a sufficiently fine mother had told her so." temple invites her worship. The whole structure commands her ceremonious reverence; she bows down before the lofty walls and columns of stone, and on entering, while muttering the formula of the breviary of fashion, fixes her eyes in pious ecstasy upon the rose-wood and ormolu idols of her adoration.

So prevalent is the association of a big and costly house with the idea of social distinction that the very children confound the two. The school girls and boys, in their worst moments, when, forsaking their natural childhood, they become unnaturally like men and women, will boast a superiority over their comrades on the score of the magnitude and expensiveness of their parents' houses. In the earlier days of New York a three-story house was the badge of the aristocrat, and a two-story one the mark of the pariah. Now, girls and boys, we are told, are nobodies at a fashionable school, if their parents don't live in four or five story houses with brownstone fronts.

A friend of ours, a man of moderate income and simple but refined tastes, finding a small house with a rent proportionate to his means, took it. The domicile was substantially and even handsomely constructed, and in every respect suitable to the decorous and prudent household which occupied it. Though sufficiently capacious for all the requirements of such a family, it chanced to be the smallest house in the street. It had been left in its original two-story diminutiveness, while its modest contemporaries had been either ambitiously elevated, or torn down to make way for more imposing structures, which now rose high above on either side and opposite the comparatively humble residence of our friend. Cheered by the genial warmth of his own happy fireside, his comfort was not chilled by the shadow thrown upon his little house by its lofty neighbors. His wife, however, was more sensitive; and finding that

Our friend, beset by these domestic complaints, began to be uneasy himself, and therefore readily consented to his wife's proposition to move. He was for going to the eastern part of the city, where there are still enough of those old-fashioned two-story houses, occupied by some sturdy ancient citizens or resolute Quakers, to keep a prudent man in countenance. His wife, however, resisted, and finally her husband was forced to give in, and take a three-story house, where he pines away solitary in a basement, having been forced, in consequence of his increased rent, to give up his friends, his sherry, and cigars.

Mothers who have marketable daughters to dispose of hold that a large house in a fashionable quarter is indispensable as a show-place for the exhibition of them and the attraction of good bidders. There is many an otherwise prudent paterfamilias who, unable to resist his wife's argumentative eloquence on this point, has stretched his income to its utmost elasticity, in order to give his darling Mary Anne the advantage of a "bringing out" under the favorable influence of a brown-stone front. We advise the unwary youth to be on his guard against the showy mansions of Fifth Avenue and Madison Square as so many marriage-traps to catch the uxoriously disposed; or, at any rate, we would recommend him, before he ventures to freely nibble at the savory beauties within, to consult the income-tax book, and find out whether the bait is as substantial as it would seem to be.

The obvious effect of people living in houses too expensive for their means, provided their establishments are proportionably sustained, is bankruptcy. The fine city mansions are probably the most frequent causes of the ruin of the merchant and tradesman. They are responsible too, undoubtedly, for much fraud and crime. Those of small income, living in large and fine houses, who contrive to strike a balance

pants. The chief floor of most of these man-
sions is merely kept as a store-room, for a stock
of upholstery too fine and costly for use, for which,
in truth, it never was intended.
The possess-
ors do not know or believe

between their credit and debit accounts and es- | only without a diminution but with an increase cape disgrace and dishonor, are, however, forced in fact of the comfort of the pretended occuto such shifts as they would blush to own. The large rent can only be paid by a reduction of other expenses of living. The builder or landlord receives that which should go to the butcher; and in many an expansive mansion there is but a lean larder. If the beef and mutton are not 'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense, curtailed the more refined necessities of life must And splendor borrows all her rays from sense." be forgone. Literature, taste, hospitality, and The gilt, damask, and rose-wood, and the spafriendship are thus shut out by those great walls cious apartments which they set off so garishof stone. Books, pictures, friends-not merely, are for no other purpose than to excite the visitors-and all such purifying influences and admiration and envy of an occasional fool of sweeteners of life, are given up for the possession of a senseless mass of so many feet of brick and mortar, brown-stone or marble, as it may be.

fashion during a half hour's visit, or to loan once a year or so to some thousand young debauchees of both sexes, who do us the honor of danIcing and feasting, and otherwise holding their nightly revels in our houses, in the course of each fashionable season.

Pope, in one of his letters, speaks of a fashionable woman who "visits those whom she would hang in her passion or beggar in her play." Our fashionable women may not be so actively wicked, but we believe them so passively obdurate that they would not care if those whom they visited were either hanged or beggared. How can they be otherwise than indifferent to the fate of those whom they do not know, see but rarely, and only recognize by the pass-words and badges of fashion? Yet it is for such that our Mrs. Smiths and Joneses, othwise sensible and prudent housewives, sacrifice so much of their domestic comfort. In order to have a mansion sufficiently lofty to rise to the standard of fashionable height, and rooms spacious and resplendent enough to hold the swell

The big house and small income present an incongruity which is no less offensive to taste than opposed to all economy and comfort of life. How often do we find an imposing mansion only half occupied by the family which possesses it! With the larger part of the annual revenue absorbed by the rental, there is but little left for household expenses. The number of servants is reduced to a minimum, and the care of the four stories of brick and brown-stone left to the hard-tasked energies of a couple of raw Irish girls or of a single maid-of-all-work. Such establishments, of however imposing an exterior, are easily detected even by those upon whom they are designed to impose. You've only to ring the bell, when-as Mary the cook is up to her shoulders in soap-suds, and Bridget, her only coadjutor, is minding the baby, or peeling the potatoes, or setting the table, or making Master Tom's bed in the fourth story back-rooming importance and catch the fastidious eye of -you are left so long to the contemplation of the resplendent portal of the magnificent structure, that you suspect at once that the domestic affairs within are not so prosperous as the show without would indicate. Your suspicion is confirmed when Mary, by a scrutinizing peep from the area below, and Bridget from the garretwindow above, having satisfied themselves that you are neither the expected chimney-sweep nor the daily beggar, the palatial door is finally opened. This, however, is not effected until after a severe and protracted domestic commotion discernible even by the visitor at the door, from the reiterated cries of, "Bridget! Mary! Mary! Bridget! there's some one at the door!" the clanging of dropped sauce-pans, the emptying of coal-scuttles, the suppressed squalling of baby, and the slamming of doors. When the grand portal is finally opened, and you might naturally expect to face some venerable seneschal or liveried porter, or at least a decent Patrick or a tidy Bridget, you find yourself-with a very perceptible odor of soap-suds or babysuddenly plunged into a cloud of steam or dust, through which smutty cook or disheveled maid is dimly visible.

In nine-tenths of the large and showy city houses the main stories might be cut out, and the garrets let down upon the basements not

the modish, they restrict themselves and their families to the narrowest quarters and the shortest commons. In order to sustain the big house with a limited income, the family is kept in the basement, that the wear and tear of the superfine parlors may be avoided, the splendor of which is so easy to tarnish and too expensive to renew. These show-places have been known to retain their original odor of new carpet and fresh varnish for years, so carefully have they been closed to daily human habitation. We know of nothing so repellent of all good fellowship as this smell of the upholsterer, which, by its predominance, is a sure indication of a want of the free atmosphere of hospitality. A whiff from the kitchen, or even a blast from a pipe or a cigar, would be savory in comparison. They would be satisfactory proofs, however gross, of some life in the house.

Strangers are surprised to find how chary we Americans, who inhabit such large houses, are of our hospitality. They naturally think that with all this expansiveness of space there must be largeness of entertainment. The foreign visitor is therefore disappointed that Mr. Jones who so pressingly when in London or Paris invited him to call upon him-" Smith and Jones, 1000 Park Place"-never asks him to dine at his fine mansion up town. The fact is, how

ever, that Jones finds that his big house costs him so much to possess that he can not afford to live in it himself, much less entertain strangers. Every thing but the structure itself, which is at a maximum, is reduced to a minimum. He has but two servants, or three, if you count his wife, as you may well do, for the big house keeps her as busy as the rest. He can never dine at home, except on Sundays, for it is too troublesome and expensive to prepare a regular dinner each day. He has neither a choice bit in his larder, nor a bottle of wine in his cellar, nor any thing else wherewith to entertain a friend, unless it may be the conversation of Mrs. Jones, who is more copious than interesting upon her favorite subject of gentility. So he lives without friends, as he probably does without books and pictures, for he can not afford them. We can conceive of nothing more miserable than such an existence, and we can not imagine a more absurd act than to raise tall monuments of stone to our vanity at a cost which beggars us for life. Let us look for a moment at another picture.

The big town-house to which every citizen aspires, and for the possession of which he is willing to make such sacrifices, has really, after all, but little to commend it on the score of taste. The division of the land into oblong parallelograms, which may be necessary for the convenience of city building, is not favorable to the picturesque. This original disadvantage is increased by the passion of our aspiring citizens for big houses. Unable from the narrowness of the lot to expand the structure laterally, they raise it longitudinally to such an excess that it becomes so disproportionately high as to appear to be in danger of toppling over, which it probably would do were not its equilibrium sustained by its equally lofty neighbors. The taste and sense of proportion of our architects are constantly outraged by the inordinate demands of their ambitious patrons for height. What care they for taste and proportion? They want magnitude and show. The largest possible visible manifestation of expense is their object. They consequently insist that as much stone shall be piled up as a lot twenty-five feet by a hundred can possibly hold; "the whole a labored quarry above ground." The laws of proportion are of course forced to yield to the laws of trade, and such houses are supplied as the market demands. Thus our cities are shadowed by long rows of disproportionately high houses, which remind us of those gawky, overgrown youths who have expended so much of their vigor in the excessive increase of their height that they have none left for the due expansion of their girth.

Sydney Smith had a church-living bestowed upon him somewhere in Yorkshire, so far out of the way that "it was actually," as he humorously remarked, "twelve miles from a lemon." As there was no parsonage-house he was obliged to build one. "I sent for an architect," he says; "he produced plans which would have ruined me. I made him my bow: 'You build for glory, Sir; I, for use.' I returned him his plans, with five-and-twenty pounds, and sat down in my thinking-chair, and in a few hours Mrs. Sydney and I concocted a plan which has A man's character, it is often said, is repreproduced what I call the model of parsonage- sented by the house he builds. If this saying houses." Although some people called the house be true a wondrous uniformity of character must ugly, all agreed that it was the most convenient prevail among our citizens.. Almost all the of residences, and certainly none ever contained large city-houses are alike, but each has, nota merrier and happier family. "Economy," withstanding, a very decided and significant exwrote his daughter, "in the estimation of com- pression. "We cost ever so many thousand mon minds, often means the absence of all taste dollars," they all say as emphatically as the and comfort; my father had the rare art to com- owners themselves would declare if they had bine it with both. For instance, he found it your ear. The prevailing sentiment in their added much to the expense of building to have construction has been the show of expense, and high walls; he therefore threw the whole space this is expressed in every foot of the superfine of the roof into his bedrooms, coved the ceil- structure from foundation to chimney. The inings and papered them, and thus they were all ordinate height, the elaborately-worked surface, airy, gay, cheap, and pretty. Cornices he found the floridness and superfluity of ornamentation, expensive; so not one in the house; but the the great impending cornice, the lofty windows paper border thrown on the ceiling, with a line of plate-glass, the heavily-embossed door, the of shade under it. This relieved the eye and columnar portal, and the ambitious elegance atoned for their absence. Marble chimney- of the whole front are all, and were meant to pieces were too dear; so he hunted out a cheap, be, so many visible items of cost. You can see warm-looking Portland stone, had them cut aft- the dollars all over, and no one ever passes our er his own model, and the result was to produce fine houses without instinctively estimating the some of the most cheerful, comfortable-looking price in so much money. "What a fine house fire-places I remember, for as many shillings as Mr. Jenkins has; it must have cost thirty or the marble ones would have cost him pounds." forty thousand dollars!" as it may be, is the orIn his humble home in Yorkshire Sydney dinary remark of the observer, as the sum he Smith spent some of his most happy and re-paid for it is the first announcement of Mr. Jenspected years. He had always a welcome for kins himself, to an admiring guest. his friends, among whom were great lords and statesmen, and entertained them simply but tastefully and substantially.

Where the intention of the architect, in sympathy with his ostentatious employer, is to impress upon his structure the idea of expense he

seldom fails. The gross sentiment is readily made manifest; for he has only to exhibit extent of work and quantity of costly material, or the appearance of them, to produce the desired effect. With the predominating motive for constructing the superfine houses of the city we do not expect to find grace, beauty, or fitness, and we are not disappointed.

as any in the world. We allude more particularly to the conveniences for heating, supplying water, and facilitating labor. The furnace was never a favorite of ours, for it generally keeps the house too hot and dry; but the severity of the past winter has reconciled us almost to the highest degree possible of artificial temperature. It is, moreover, one of the necessities of a big mansion with a comparatively poor occupant, for without the furnace he must either freeze or ruin himself by a multiplicity of fires. Ordina

These should be compulsory, for if left to the will of the chilly tenants of the house they are sure not to avail themselves of them.

The American rage for facilitating labor has induced various contrivances which are more favorable to the ease of the servants than to the comforts of their employers. The call-pipes and dumb-waiters are our abomination; but perhaps they are indispensable where people of

Most of our large city houses have especially ugly cornices. They are disproportionately heavy, and repel us like the frown of some beetle-browed churl. The roofs, too, were univers-rily there is deficiency of means of ventilation. ally unbecoming until the late introduction of the French top. Our great houses, tall as they are, look for the most part only like unfinished structures. Viewed from a height, the whole city appears to be composed of a confused mass of buildings which had been irregularly sawed off above. The French roof gives a completeness to each house that secures its individuality and impresses greater dignity upon the whole. Our street views, particularly in the fashion-moderate means live in big houses. They may able quarters, are exceedingly sombre, though our city atmospheres are remarkably clear and favorable to brilliancy of effect. This is owing to the ponderous uniformity of our long rows of large houses, which shadow the causeways without relief from diversity of character or individuality of expression. If we can not have the endless variations of grace and beauty, let each man at least give us his own idea, absurd as it may be, and not that of all his neighbors. A diversified grotesqueness would be better than a dull uniformity.

There is, moreover, about most of our grand houses an aspect of desertion, or want of life, which is by no means enlivening to the thoroughfare. This is owing to the fact that the habitable parts of the house are either in the rear or the basement, and that the main portions facing on the street are devoted to the show-rooms, which are kept closed except on rare occasions. At night, especially, whole rows of the finest mansions, in the best squares and streets, are hid in a lugubrious cloud of darkness, without a glimmer hardly of light, except where, here and there, a house may be illuminated by the glare of a fashionable revel. We suspect that the occupants are, for the most part, in the basements on a severe regimen of restricted fire and gas, doing penance for the high cost or rents of their fine houses.

Many striking street effects are lost for want of tasteful adaptation of the house to its site. The corners, which afford such fine opportunities for architectural display, are generally terminated by sharp angles, with ugly bare walls of brick or stone. The house rows thus often look as if they had been sawed off to make way for the street. In European cities the corners are studiously enriched with curved and sculptured balconies, statues, monuments, fountains, and other elaborate and graceful works of art.

The internal arrangements of our houses are for the most part ingeniously contrived, for America mechanics are as cunning artificers

be necessary to relieve the overtasked arms and legs of the scanty service of the establishment; but they approximate too closely the society of the kitchen and that of the parlor, and have too many jars, shrieks, and other noises of their own to be favorable to domestic repose.

The inevitable parallelogram of the lot necessitates straight lines, and the aspiring loftiness of our big houses induces a disproportionate height, which deprive the apartments of that snugness and comfort found in rooms of lower ceilings and less regular sides. The halls and other useful parts of the house are often sacrificed for the show-rooms, to which we can not allude without condemning them. The decorations of the interior of our fine houses, like those of the exterior, are generally excessive, heavy, and unmeaning, but further remark upon them and the furniture may be left to a future occasion.

That the occupants of such houses as we have described should have but little affection for them is not surprising. The readiness with which they part with them, so characteristic of our fellow-citizens, shows how slight is their attachment. In other countries, and so it was in earlier times in our own, the house is deemed a sacred place. Law, so authoritative every where else, confesses itself powerless before the closed door of the citizen. This is a precinct that it considers too holy to violate, even for the ends of justice. An American or an Englishman within his own house bids defiance to the sheriff and all his officers. "An Englishman's house is his castle," is John Bull's proudest boast; and from our common inheritance of civil rights, might be our own if we cared to make it. The great Earl of Chatham said: "Every man's house is called his castle. Why? Because it is surrounded by a moat, or defended by a wall? No. It may be a straw-built hut; the wind may whistle around it, the rain may enter it, but the king can not."

We might suppose, apart from the reverential