Chapter 2

Through the glamour of the Colonial we are forced to acknowledge the classic charm shown in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century window designs. Developed, as they were, by American carpenters who were stimulated by remembrance of their early impressions of English architecture received in the mother land, there is no precise or spiritless copy of English details; rather there is expressed a vitality that has been brought out by earnest effort to reproduce the spirit desired. Undoubtedly the lasting success of early American craftsmanship has been due to the perfect treatment of proportions, as related one to the other. That these are not imitations is proved by an occasional clumsiness which would be impossible, if they were exact copies of their more highly refined English prototypes.

The grasp of the builder's mind is vividly revealed in the construction of these windows, for while blunders are often made, yet successes are much more frequent. They are evolved from remembered motives that have been unified and balanced, that they might accord with the exterior and be knitted successfully into the interior trim. Some of these windows still grace seventeenth century houses, and are found not only on old southern plantations, but all through New England, more especially along the sea coast. True products are they of Colonial craftsmanship, brought into existence by skilled artisans, who have performed their work so perfectly that today they are found unimpaired, striking a dominant note in accord with the architectural feeling of the period.

There is no question but that windows such as these lend character to any house, provided, of course, that they coincide with the period. Doubtless the designing of modified Colonial houses is responsible, in part, for the present-day revival of interest, not solely in windows of the Colonial period, but also in that which immediately preceded and followed it.

The first ornamental windows were of the casement type, copied from English cottage homes. Like those, they opened outward, and were designed with small panes, either diamond or square shaped. As they were in use long before glass was manufactured in this country, the Colonists were forced to import them direct from England. Many were sent ready to be inserted, with panes already leaded in place. Proof of this is afforded by examples still in existence. These often show strange patches or cutting. The arrangement of casements varies from single windows to groups of two or three, and they were occasionally supplemented by fixed transoms. Surely no phase of window architecture stands out more conspicuously in the evolution of our early designs than the casement with its tiny panes, ornamented with handwrought iron strap-hinges which either flared into arrow heads, rounded into knobs, or lengthened into points. That they were very popular is shown from the fact that they withstood the changes of fashion for over a century, not being abolished until about the year 1700.

Little drapery is needed in casement windows where they are divided by mullions. The English draw curtain is admirable for this purpose. It can be made of casement cloth with narrow side curtains and valance of bright material. A charming combination was worked out in a summer cottage. The glass curtains were of black and white voile with tiny figures introduced. This was trimmed with a narrow black and white fringe, while the overdrapery had a black background patterned with old rose.

In the field of architectural progress, more especially during the last few years, there have arisen vast possibilities for the development of odd windows. These, if properly placed, showing correct grouping, are artistic, not only from the outside, but from the inside as well. The artistic woman, realizing the value of color, will fill a bright china bowl with glowing blossoms and place it in the center of a wide window sill, where the sun, playing across them, will carry their cheerful color throughout the room. She also trains vines to meander over the window pane, working out a delicate tracery that is most effective, suspending baskets of ferns from the upper casement, that she may break the length of her Colonial window. Thus through many artifices she causes her simple room to bloom and blossom like a rose.

The progress made in window architecture is more apparent as we study the early types. Then small attention was paid to details, the windows placed with little thought of artistic grouping. Their only object to light the room, often they stood like soldiers on parade, in a straight row, lining the front of the house.

Out of the past has come a vast array of period windows, each one of which is of interest. They display an unmistakable relationship to one another, for while we acknowledge that they differ in detail and ornamentation, yet do they invariably show in their conception some underlying unity. There is no more fascinating study than to take each one separately and carefully analyze its every detail, for thus only can we recognize and appreciate the links which connect them with the early American types.

We happen upon them not only in the modified Colonial structures, but in houses in every period of architecture. It may be only a fragment, possibly a choice bit of carving; or it may be a window composed in the old-fashioned manner of from nine to thirty panes, introduced in Colonial days for the sake of avoiding the glass tax levied upon them if over a certain size. A charming example of a reproduction of one of these thirty-paned windows may be seen in a rough plaster house built in Salem, after the great fire. The suggestion was taken from an old historic house in a fine state of preservation in Boxford, Mass.

The first American homes derived their plans and their finish from medieval English tradition. They were forced to utilize such materials as they were able to obtain, and step by step they bettered the construction and ornamentation of their homes. As increasing means and added material allowed, they planned and executed more elaborately, not only in size and finish, but in the adding of window casings, caps, and shutters.

The acme of Colonial architecture was reached with the development of the large square houses with exquisitely designed entrances and porticos. These often showed recessed and arched windows, also those of the Palladian type. At the Lindens, Danvers, Mass., a memory-haunted mansion, may be seen one of the finest examples of these recessed windows. This famous dwelling, the work of an English architect, who built it in about 1770, is linked with American history through its use by General Gage as his headquarters during the Revolution.

The recessed windows that are found here reveal delicate mouldings in the classic bead and filet design, and are surmounted by an elaborate moulded cornice, which lends great dignity to the room. This is supported by delicate pilasters and balanced by the swelling base shown below the window seats. Such a window as this is no mere incident, or cut in the wall; on the contrary, it is structural treatment of woodwork. Another feature of pronounced interest may be noted on the stair landing, where a charming Palladian window overlooks the old-fashioned box-bordered garden that has been laid out at the rear.

We have dwelt, perhaps, too much on the old Colonial types, neglecting those of the present day, but it has been through a feeling that with an intimate knowledge of their designs we shall be better able to appreciate the products of our own age, whose creators drew their inspiration from the past. A modern treatment of windows appears in our illustration.

The Tiny House

By Ruth Merton

(_Concluded from October_)

If, some fine day, all housewives awoke to the fact that most of the trouble in the world originates in the kitchen, there would shortly be a little more interest in kitchen problems and not so much distaste for and neglect of this important part of the house.

Of course, women will cry out that we have never in our lives been so intent on just that one subject, kitchens, as we are today.

I admit that there is a good deal of talk going on which might lead one to believe that vacuum cleaners and electric-washing machines, etc., are to bring about the millennium for housekeepers; and there is also a good work going forward to make of housework a real profession.

But, until in the average home there comes the feeling that the kitchen--the room itself--is just as much an expression of the family life and aims and ideals as the living room or any other room, we shall be only beating about the bush in our endeavor to find a remedy for some of our perplexing troubles.

Nowadays, women who are doing much work out in the big world--the so-called "enfranchised" women--are many of them proving that they find housework no detriment to their careers and some even admit that they enjoy it.

But so far most of them have standardized their work and systematized it, with the mere idea of doing what they have to do "efficiently" and well, with the least expenditure of time and energy. And they have more than succeeded in proving the "drudgery" plea unfounded.

Now, however, we need something more. We need to make housework attractive; in other words, to put charm in the kitchen.

There is one very simple way of doing this, that is to make kitchens good to look at, and inviting as a place to stay and work.

For the professional, scientifically inclined houseworker, the most beautiful kitchen may be the white porcelain one, with cold, snowy cleanliness suggesting sterilized utensils and carefully measured food calories.

But to the woman whose cooking and dishwashing are just more or less pleasant incidents in a pleasant round of home and social duties, the kitchen must suggest another kind of beauty--not necessarily a beauty which harbors germs, nor makes the work less conveniently done, but a beauty of kindly associations with furniture and arrangements.

Who could grow fond of a white-tiled floor or a porcelain sink as they exist in so many modern kitchens! And as for the bulgy and top-heavy cook stoves, badly proportioned refrigerators, and kitchen cabinets--well, we should have to like cooking _very_ well indeed before we could feel any pleasure in the mere presence of these necessary but unnecessarily ugly accompaniments to our work.

We have come to think of cleanliness as not only next to godliness, but as something which takes the place of beauty--_is_ beauty.

This attitude is laziness on our part, for we need sacrifice nothing to utility and convenience, yet may still contrive our kitchen furniture so that it, also, pleases the senses. With a little conscientious reflection on the subject we may make kitchens which have all the charm of the old, combined with all the convenience of the new; and woman will have found a place to reconcile her old and new selves, the housewife and the suffragist, the mother-by-the-fireside and the participator in public affairs. The family will have found a new-old place of reunion--the kitchen!

Granted then that our tiny house has a kitchen-with-charm, and an "other room," the rest of the available space may be divided into the requisite number of bed and living rooms, according to the needs of the family.

There is only one other very important thing to look out for; that is the matter of closets. There is no rule for the number of closets which will make the tiny house livable, but I should say, the more the merrier. If there is ever question of sacrificing a small room and gaining a large closet, by all means do it, for absolute neatness is the saving grace of small quarters, and storage places are essential, if one does not wish to live in a vortex of yesterday's and tomorrow's affairs with no room to concentrate on the present.

Inside and outside the tiny house must conform to one law--elimination of non-essentials; and the person who has a clear idea of his individual needs and has also the strength of will to limit his needs to his circumstances, will find in his tiny house a satisfaction more than compensating for any sacrifices he may have made.

No one doubts that it _is_ a sacrifice to give up a lesser pleasure even to gain the "summum bonum" and that it _does_ take will power to keep oneself from weakly saying in the face of temptation, "Oh, well! what does it matter! My little house would perhaps be better without that, but I have grown accustomed to it, let it stay!"

Such weakness is fatal in a tiny house. But how much more fatal in a tiny garden!

Oh! the waste lands which lie beneath the sun trying to call themselves gardens! Oh! the pitiful little plots, unfenced, unused, entirely misunderstood by people who stick houses in the middle of them and call them "gardens"!

No amount of good grass seed, or expensive planting, or well-cared-for flowers and lawns will ever make the average suburban lot anything but a "lot," and most of them might as well, or _better_, be rough, uncultivated fields for all the relation they bear to the houses upon them or the use they were intended for.

It is to be supposed that when a man gives up the comforts of town apartments and hies him to the country, it is the garden, the outdoors, which lures him.

Why is it, then, that he seems to take particular pains to arrange his garden so that it is about as much his own as Central Park is?

It might give the average man a great deal of pleasure to be able to say to all the passersby on the Mall, "This little bit of the Park belongs to me! I cut that grass, I weed those flower beds in the evening when I come home from the office; and every Saturday afternoon I take the hose and thoroughly soak that bit of lawn there, you may see me at it any week in the summer."

But then, we are not dealing with the fictitious average man, and we firmly believe that many "commuters" wonder deep down in their hearts why it is they get from their gardens so little of the pleasure they anticipated when they came to live out of the city.

Any one who has traveled abroad, has admired and perhaps coveted the gardens of England, France, and Italy. Their charm is undeniable, and thought to be too elusive for reproduction on American soil without the aid of landscape gardeners and a fair-sized fortune.

Just why we, as a nation, are beset by the idea of reproducing instead of originating beautiful gardens is a question apart from this discussion. But as soon as we try to develop, to their fullest extent, the advantages of our climate, and soil, in combination with our daily life as a people, we shall produce gardens which will equal, without necessarily resembling, those of other countries.

In every case we must, however, follow the same procedure which every successful garden is built upon, whether it be in Mesopotamia or in Long Island City. That is, we must study the place, the people, and the circumstances.

The most general fault in American gardens is their lack of privacy.

No one claims that the high walls of Italy and France or the impenetrable hedges of England would invariably suit the climate here. But there are many ways to obtain seclusion without in any way depriving us of much-needed air in summer and sun in winter. One way is by placing the house rationally upon its lot. Our custom has been to invariably build so that we had a "front yard," "back yard," and two side yards, all equally important, equally uninteresting, unbeautiful and useless.

Of course, we have the porch which in a way takes the place of the outdoor living room, always so attractive in foreign gardens. And recently some laudable efforts are being made to incorporate the porch into the house, where it belongs, as a real American institution, instead of leaving it disconsolately clinging to the outside and bearing no resemblance to the house either in shape or detail.

But after all, a porch is a porch, and a garden is a garden, and one does not take the place of the other.

Especially is this true of the tiny property.

If you have only ten feet of ground to spare outside your tiny house, plan it so that every foot contributes to your joy at being in the country. Arrange it so that on a warm summer evening when the porch seems a bit close and dark, you wander out into your garden and sit beneath the stars in quiet as profound as on the Desert of Sahara. And in the winter, let your garden provide a warm corner out of the wind, where on a bright Sunday morning you may sit and blink in the sun.

Once you have got the desire for a room outdoors, a real garden, which is neither flower beds, nor lawns, nor hedges, nor trees, but a place for your comfort, with all these things contributing to its beauty, you will know as by divine inspiration where to put each flower and bush and path. Your planting will be no longer a problem for landscape architects, but a pleasant occupation for yourself and family.

So then will your successful tiny house stand forth in its real garden, an object of pride to the community and a tribute to one man who has refused to be the impossible average, and has dared to build and plant for his own needs.

May he live forever and ever happy in his tiny house!

"You're Not Supposed To, Jimmie"

By Eva J. DeMarsh

"Huh!" exclaimed Jennie, "there comes Aunt Rachel! Wonder what she wants now? Last time it was--no, it wasn't--that was the time when Jimmie Upson and his wife were here. How scandalized Aunt Rachel looked! Said I'd ruin my husband, and a lot of such tommyrot. As though Jimmie and I couldn't afford a spread now and then! I didn't, and I won't, tell Aunt Rachel that it was a special party and a special occasion. Of course, I know Jimmie isn't a millionaire, but--it's none of Aunt Rachel's business, so there!" she finished defiantly.

Aunt Rachel plodded blissfully up the walk. "Jennie'll be glad to see me, I know," she mused. "She's high-headed, but she knows a good thing when she sees it, and I help her a lot."

Jennie received her aunt with cordiality, but not effusiveness. To be discourteous was something she could not be. Besides, she liked Aunt Rachel and pitied her idiosyncrasies. "Why can't she be as nice when she goes to people's houses as she is when she is at home?" she mused. "I love to go there, and everything is just perfect, but the minute she steps outside the door--well, we all know Aunt Rachel! And she doesn't go home early either. Jimmie'll be furious. She always calls him 'James' and asks after his health and--and everything. I do so want him to like her, but I'm afraid he never will. I do wish I could get her interested in something. I have it!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "The very thing!"

Aunt Rachel looked up in surprise. "What's the matter, Jennie?" she inquired.

"Oh, nothing much, Auntie! I was just thinking aloud."

"Don't!" said Aunt Rachel. "It's a bad habit, Jennie--though I do do it myself, sometimes."

"Sometimes!" Jennie turned away to hide her smile. Why, Aunt Rachel made a business of talking aloud!

As luck would have it, the dinner went off to Aunt Rachel's satisfaction. It was good, but conservative.

"Jennie is learning," thought the old lady to herself. "After I've been here a few times more, she'll get along all right."

Aunt Rachel hadn't noticed that every idea Jennie has used was, strictly, either Jennie's own or her mother's.

"How long does your aunt expect to stay?" asked Jimmie, casually, while Jennie was clearing the table. Aunt Rachel was in the kitchen. She prided herself on never being "a burden on any one." Doubtless, some of her friends would have preferred that she be. Most of us have a skeleton we do not wish to keep on exhibition.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe a week or two," said Jennie, mischievously. "She hasn't told me yet."

"Oh!" replied Jimmie, in a disappointed voice. "Business down town"? "Dinner at the Club"? No, he couldn't keep that up indefinitely. Besides, what did a man want of a home, if he wasn't going to live in it? Covertly, Jennie watched him. She knew every expression of his face. It amused her, but she was sorry, too. "Jimmie wants awfully to flunk--and dassent," was her mental comment.

"Anything on for this evening, Jimmie?" inquired Jennie, sweetly, too sweetly, Jimmie thought. He had heard those dulcet tones before.

"Yes--no!" stammered Jimmie. How he wished he had! However, as Jennie said no more, he dismissed the subject from his mind. She probably didn't really mean anything, anyway.

When James Atherton reached home that evening, he found the house lighted from top to bottom. Beautifully dressed women were everywhere, and in their midst--Aunt Rachel, at her best!

"Ladies," she exclaimed, and Jimmie paused to listen, "I am honored--more so than you can guess--at the distinction conferred upon me. This afternoon you have seen fit to make me one of your leaders in a most important movement for civic betterment--an honor never before accorded a woman in this city--and I need not assure you that you shall not regret your choice. As a member of the Civic Betterment Committee of Loudon, I shall do my duty." ("I bet she will!" commented Jimmie, _sotto voce_.) "Again I thank you!" went on Aunt Rachel. "There's a work for you and for me now to do, and--" she paused impressively, "we will do it." ("I'll bet on you every time, Auntie," commented Jimmie to himself.)

"Jimmie Atherton, what in the world are you doing?" whispered an exasperated voice. "Hurry, Jimmie, hurry--do!" urged Jennie. "Dinner is almost ready to serve, and you haven't even made the first move to dress. Hurry, Jimmie, please!" And Jimmie did. He fairly sprinted into his clothes, appearing presently fully clad and good to look upon.

"Bet you a nickel Jennie couldn't have done that," he reflected, complacently. "Women never can get a move on them, where clothes are concerned."

That was the best evening Aunt Rachel had ever spent. She was the center of attraction; she had found a mission--not a desultory one, but one far-reaching in scope, so it seemed to her; and like a war-horse, she was after the charge.

Jennie's plans went through without a hitch. Aunt Rachel became, not only a member of the Committee on Civic Betterment, but, as well, its head and, in due season, mayor of the little city itself. Under her active management, Loudon became noted as a model city of its size, one good to look upon and good to live in. Crime fled, or scurried to cover, and Aunt Rachel blossomed like a rose. One day when Jimmie came home something seemed to please him greatly.

"What do you think, Jennie," he said, "Aunt Rachel is going to be married! Yes, she is! I've got it on the best of authority--the groom himself."

"Who?" gasped Jennie. "Why, Jimmie, she just HATES men! She's always said they were only a necessary evil."

"Yes, I know," smiled Jimmie, "that's what she used to say, but she'd never met Jacob Crowder then."

"Jacob Crowder!" exclaimed Jennie. "Why, Jimmie, he's as rich as Croesus, and he's always hated women as much as Aunt Rachel has hated men!"

"Yes," said Jimmie, "but that was before he met Aunt Rachel. He has been her righthand man for some time now, and they've seemed to hit it off pretty well. Guess they'll get along all right in double harness."