Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/174

1 68 BEDS AND TABLES, STOOLS AND CANDLESTICKS. BEDS AND TABLES, STOOLS AND CANDLESTICKS. V. EN ROUTE FOR THE DINING-ROOM. THE suggestion made in the first of these articles, that, in general, there is no need for a separate parlor, but that one room, the No. i. "UNLESS THE KETTLE BOILING BE!" living-room, may be easily and comfortably made to serve all the social needs of the family, a place of meeting for themselves, and a place in which to receive the visits of their friends, was not meant to include the dining-room. There ought always, if possi- ble, to be a separate room for meals, though I have known cases in plenty where there was no distinction between the dining-room and the living-room. But in all these cases the living-room was an exceptionally large apartment, and no confusion resulted, as is apt to be the case where the experiment is tried, from the appearance of Betty at the door with the announcement, " Please, ma'am, I want to set the table, ma'am." As a rule, our rooms, especially in our cities, are too small to make this double employ- ment possible, or at best convenient, and, as provision is almost always made for a separate dining-room in our houses, we may as well accept the arrangement as being, on the whole, the better one, considering the complicated ways of modern life. I wish we had not twisted and bound ourselves up so inextricably in these complicated ways. More than we think, or are willing to allow, of the difficulty that surrounds housekeeping in America, the trouble with servants that makes such a mean tragedy in so many women's lives, comes from the labor imposed upon the servants and upon the employers by the unnecessary fuss we make about living. The root of the difficulty is in the separation between our two lives, the domestic one and the social one, and the social one has been allowed to become so formal, ostentatious, and exacting, that in too many families it is by far the more important of the two ; it regulates and con- trols the domestic life. It is hardly possible to dispute the proposition : that if the do- mestic life were made the leading one in any family, that is, if the whole household order, and all the arrangement and furnish- ing of the house, were made to accommo- date and develop the family life, the social element being obliged to suit itself to the family arrangements, and take them just as it found them, life would be tenfold easier and tenfold happier than it is in America, where there is less domestic life and less domestic happiness than in any other country. This is the only land known to geographers where the greater part of the No. 2. OAK DINING-TABLE, LOUIS XIV ROOM FOR FOUR. population lives to please its neighbors, and to earn their approval by coming up to their social standard. We all do it, rich and