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        THE COMFORTS OF HOME

        OTHER ATLANTIC BOOKS

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       THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS

               BOSTON




_The_
COMFORTS _of_ HOME

BY

RALPH BERGENGREN

[Illustration: colophon]

The Atlantic Monthly Press

Boston

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS, INC.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




CONTENTS


Thoughts While Getting Settled        1

Praise of Open Fires                 16

Furnace and I                        29

No Stairs--No Attic                  41

Concerning Kitchens                  56

The Plumber Appreciated              68

The Home of the Porcelain Tub        81

At Home in the Guest Chamber         95




THOUGHTS WHILE GETTING SETTLED


PROPERLY speaking, the new house was old. A hundred years and more had
gone over its chimney,--down which, as we were to discover later, a
hundred flies and more would come when the open fires had warmed
it,--and within doors it would have charmed any amateur of the Colonial
by the antiquity of its furnishings. Temporarily it belonged to me, my
executors, administrators, and assigns. But there were limits to our
possession. None of us might 'permit any hole to be drilled or made in
the stone or brick-work of said building'; no'sign or placard' might we
place upon it; we might not 'over-load, damage, or deface' it; nor might
we 'carry on any unlawful, improper, noisy, or offensive trade' in it.
We had admitted that the glass was whole and in good order, and bound
ourselves to keep it good, unless broken by fire, with glass of the same
kind and quality. In case I became bankrupt I had agreed that the owner,
the owner's executors, the owner's administrators, and the owner's
assigns should treat me with every form of ignominy that the law has yet
invented to make bankruptcy more distressing. Nor could I hold them
responsible if our guests fell down the cellar stairs; although there I
think they would be morally responsible, for a steeper flight of cellar
stairs I simply cannot imagine.

Of all documents there is hardly another so common as a lease, or more
suspicious. Observe the lessor--a benevolent, dignified, but cautious
person! Observe the lessee--a worm with criminal tendencies! Perhaps he
is a decent sort of worm, but the lessor had better look out for him.
Very likely he will commit murders in the dining-room, read the _Contes
Drolatiques_ in the library, play bass-drum solos in the parlor, and
start a piggery in the cellar. One suspects that possibly the great army
of hoboes is partly recruited from among supersensitive men who read
their leases before signing them and preferred vagabondage to insult.
But some of us control our sensitiveness. I, for example, read my lease;
and when, having agreed mentally to post no placard myself, I discovered
a clause allowing the lessor to decorate my residence with the
information that it was

     FOR SALE

_I crossed that clause out!_

Observe the worm turning!

It was the dining-room that had won us, formerly the kitchen and still
complete--with the brick oven; the crane; the fat, three-legged pots and
spider; a thing that, after much debate, we think must have been a
bread-toaster; and a kind of overgrown curry-comb with which, so we
imagine, the original dwellers were wont to rake the hot ashes from the
brick oven. Also a warming-pan. And although these objects charm me, and
I delight to live with them, I cannot but wonder whether a hundred years
from now there may not be persons to furnish their dining-rooms with
just such a stove as stands at present in my real kitchen; and perhaps
to suspend beside it one of those quaint contraptions with which the
jolly old chaps in the early twentieth century used to kill flies. I
hear in imagination the host of that period explaining the implement to
his wondering guests,--being expert in such matters, he will produce