Palpably the nearest to us of all our physical surroundings is our clothing. Philosophers do not agree whether man originally adopted some covering for his body out of the desire of warmth, the sense of modesty, or the love of decoration. Enough that at present all these motives are operative, and all are to be respected.
The first purpose of clothing is to preserve the health by keeping out the cold. There is more in this than mere comfort. Warm clothing economizes nervous energy, which otherwise has to be expended on the extremities of the nerves to maintain the capillaries in activity. A man when comfortably warm can think more clearly than when he feels chilly. Mind and body are alike benumbed by extreme cold. Exposure to even a moderately low temperature is dangerous to the aged and the frail. Those who have studied the meteorology of health have established the maxim,—“Waves of cold are waves of death.”
In his clothing the sensible man will conform to the customs and station of society in which he moves. He will leave to his tailor the cut of his coat. It is a sign of greater weakness to affect a fashion of one’s own than to follow that of others. He will not be without a dress suit in civilized lands, and will not wear top boots in drawing rooms, as did in London a semi-celebrated American poet.
A century or two ago the dress of men was far more costly and significant. That they have now adopted a simple and uniform style shows that higher interests are occupying their minds. The first sign that women are approaching the same level will be their enfranchisement from the slavery of dress and fashion, to which so many of them devote the best part of their lives. To woman, clothing will always be more a question of art than utility. But most of the modes which she now follows are caricatures of art. For them, however, she will sacrifice not only good taste but good morals. Vanity in dress, not the deception of men, leads the majority of fallen women to their life. They feel more degraded by an unbecoming costume than by a tarnished reputation.
A man changes his character with his garments. Dirty clothes excuse dirty actions. I heard of a carpenter who was at a fire where he could easily have carried off articles; but he explained that he had on his best clothes, and that prevented him. The reason why sermons have so little effect is that we lay aside our Sunday suits on Monday morning. This is the value of uniform. Dress a hundred men alike, and they will think alike. The character is subdued to what ’tis clothed in. Outward, develops inward conformity. The world recognizes this, and accepts the clothing as the index of the mind. A well-dressed man is supposed to be a gentleman, and an officer with sword and epaulettes is regarded as a tactician and a hero. Would you change the current of your thoughts, change your raiment, and you will at once feel the effect. Would you assuage your grief, lay aside your mourning.
Next to our clothing, our immediate surroundings are the room and its furniture. A third of our lives is passed in our sleeping apartment, and most of the remainder in sitting-room, library, or office. It is well worth while, therefore, to give it attention. How much pleasure it can be made to render! The genial Xavier de Maistre consumed a month in making his celebrated Voyage autour de ma Chambre, and then regretted his time was so short. What harmonies of light and color, shade and perspective, even the humblest adornment of a room is capable of yielding! How each article of furniture comes to take its place in our lives and memories! The clock, the desk, the lounge, these are what make up the sense of Home. Even the noble sentiment of patriotism is founded upon them. To defend our hearth is its intimate purpose, and love of our easy-chair is a large share of our love of country. To all women and many men the most constant happiness of life is centred in the room and its furniture. Here is the temple of the Goddess of the Household, and her name should be Lætitia.
How much, therefore, depends on the selection of our living rooms! They should be light, bright, dry, airy, well-ventilated, equably warmed, appropriately furnished, free from bad odors, far from brutal noises, screened from impertinent curiosity. All these requirements ought to be easily obtained and at no great cost. But so little does modern architecture consider the true comfort and the real happiness of house-dwellers that it is rare that one can find all combined.
If he can, therefore, the wise man will prefer to build his own house. Some will question this. Somewhere in his works—they are too voluminous for me to look up the reference—Rousseau argues that a philosopher will not desire a house of his own, but will prefer to live in one that is rented. He will thus consult his independence, be free to come and go, not engage his affections on inanimate objects, find his fatherland wherever he may be, and the like.
For myself, I incline rather to the opinion of Abraham Cowley, less of a philosopher than Rousseau but more in sympathy with the general sentiments of mankind. I agree with him that “the pleasantest work of human industry is the improvement of something which we may call our own.” There is something in itself delightful in the mere sense of ownership of a part of the surface of the earth. It was not mere greed in Cosmo de Medici, who, when asked why he preferred his villa in the Apennines to his palace in Florence, replied,—“Because there, every foot of land I see is my own.” No prospect is quite so pleasing as that of our own acres, and those governments are strongest which base their institutions on the personal tenure of land.
The old proverb prescribes the chief duties of a man to be to build a house and beget a child. The character of his child he can but slightly control; the plan of his house is in his own hands, and his health and happiness are deeply involved in it. “He that builds a fair house on an ill site,” observes Bacon, “committeth himself to prison;” and I may add, he that builds an ill house on any site, sends himself and family to a hospital. One half of the deaths in England are from preventable causes, and one-half of these are causes connected with defective house building. The most perfect buildings are the gaols. Both in England and America the best care is taken of the worst men. The chances of life for the convict who is in prison is seven times better than when he is at liberty. If health is the highest good, we had better all apply to be sent to gaol.
The principal foes to fight are dampness, darkness, chilliness, draughtiness, insufficient ventilation, sewer-gas or other poisonous effluvia, contaminated or scanty water supply, and unhealthful situation. Architects know little about these matters. Decorative effects rather than sanitary perfection are what occupy their attention. Every house-builder should be his own architect to the extent of clearly knowing what he wants, and seeing that it is looked after in the plans.
A beautiful feature of American life is the ease with which every one can acquire his own home. Rapid transit facilitates this even for those who dwell in great cities.
The possession of his own house is within the reasonable ambition of every man, and should ever form a part of it. What if it must be a small house? He can say with Socrates—“Lucky me, if I have friends enough to fill it!”
“Cosiness!” how much that word implies! What pictures of intimate delights it brings before the mind! But who can imagine it in great, straggling mansions, or in “palace chambers far apart”? In the vast and gloomy palace of the Escorial, the only rooms I saw which would not induce an attack of melancholia to live in were a suite not larger than those in an ordinary American house, in which the royal family sought escape from the pressure of their own magnificence in their occasional visits to this famous pile. Happiness dwells not in spacious halls and stately apartments, and he who seeks it will not envy their possessors.
Has a house ever been built with an eye solely to the highest happiness of its inmates? to their health, sometimes; to their comfort, occasionally; to the parade of their riches, constantly; but to their happiness? I doubt. Conveniences, sanitary arrangements, agreeable vistas, balconies, porches, fireplaces, these would not be omitted, but would be merely the beginning of the plan. How to conciliate isolation with social relations, how to promote harmony between those serving and those served, how to provide that the employments of one do not jar with those of others, these would be some of the questions to consider. How many family troubles could be avoided by a properly built house! Faulty architecture is more frequently the ruin of family felicity than is heterodox doctrine.
The Greeks called man the “earth-born,” and the love of his native place is ever one of the most responsive of his heartstrings. Some say it is lacking in Americans, because they are so restless, but this is an error. The poor boy who wanders away from his native village to make his fortune does not forget the scenes of his childhood, and should his dreams be realized, returns to the old familiar places to leave at least some token of his affection. More than half the public libraries in New England towns have been given wholly or in large part by those who were to the manor born, but who had found fortune under strange skies.
The scenery of our dreams is generally that with which we were first familiar, and the dying old man babbles of the green fields of his boyhood. We may admire grand views from foreign belvederes, but those which we first saw remain unsurpassed. I crossed the ocean with an intelligent woman returning from the Rhine and the Alps; but her longing was for the vast, treeless prairies of Illinois, her girlish home, where sky meets earth all round the horizon, and the soul feels no confinement of mountains or forests.
Love of place rather than love of persons leads to the unhappy condition of homesickness. As “nostalgia,” it becomes an actual disease of body and mind, and men will die of it, unless allowed to return to their native land. Haunting, imperious thirst of the soul for the scenes of its early pleasures! Heaven cannot be imagined without them.
The thoughtful writer, Herder, who was the first to cultivate history as the seed-field of philosophy, was of opinion that it is less the earth on which we tread, than the air we breathe, which gives the peculiar charm to the scenes of childhood; meaning that it is the climate, and the sequence of the seasons which leave the chief impress on the budding observation of our surroundings. The eternal summer of the tropics becomes monotonous to the native of temperate latitudes, and the Eskimo or the Laplander in the more genial climes pines for the short, hot summer and bitter winter to which he has been accustomed. The desire, therefore, for more favorable climates, except for purposes of health, is an illusion. The “summer isles of Eden” would fatigue with their monotony and enervate by their excellence. The enjoyment of life is independent of the thermometer, if we determine it shall be. Sunshine within more than compensates for its absence without.
By climate we usually mean the weather, and this unquestionably exerts a powerful influence on human happiness. That of most portions of the United States keeps the character which William Penn gave it two hundred years ago—“constant in nothing but inconstancy.” Many a project of pleasure does it mar, and many a discomfort does it create! but in its very changeableness there is something attractive, as always lurks in the unexpected. If we travel the same road every day in the year, on no two are sky and landscape the same. Daily, new scenes are offered to our sight, each with its peculiar charm, if we take the trouble to look for it. Almost can one reason himself into an equality with that unapproachable philosopher, the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, who, when asked what the weather would be on the morrow, replied that it would be just what he preferred; and on further inquiry as to what this might be, triumphantly answered, “Whatever the Lord sends.”
On some temperaments, a low barometer produces a peculiarly depressing effect. The advice often given them is to make renewed exertion at their customary employments, and combat the disinclination with the Will. My advice would be more agreeable; they should lay aside the customary routine, if possible, and seek in change, recreation, and amusements the cheerfulness which their ordinary employment refuses them. Do not spur the jaded horse, but rather offer repose and variety of motion.
The pressure of the atmosphere as indicated by the barometer has a great deal to do directly with health and spirits, and therefore with happiness. Those with a tendency to heart disease should seek a residence at the sea level, while many who have weak lungs will improve where the air is rarefied by a high altitude. What the Swiss call le mal des montagnes is a general sense of discomfort which some feel a few thousand feet above the sea, and which even prolonged residence does not entirely banish. An asthmatic can have no pleasure in life unless he finds the climate where he can breathe with comfort.
Worst of all for personal happiness is a malarial climate, and, unfortunately, they are very common in this country. The miasmatic poison is peculiarly depressing to the mind, and is always associated with debility and despondency. Malarial regions cannot be left uninhabited, but those whose evil fortune it is to be condemned to dwell in them have a heavy additional burden laid upon them in life.
We are all more or less like those lower animals whose colors change with their surroundings.
Seek the open air; the fruits which grow outdoors are alone those which ripen in season.
He who loves his country more than he does his kind, loves himself more than either.
To die for our country is truly noble, when our country is the world and our fellow-citizens all mankind.
Love of country is sometimes a fine phrase for love of comfort.
Woman, like the Emperor Tiberius, is smothered with clothes.
Woman is philocosmic because she is philanthropic.
Fine clothes are the stilts to individuality.
A new suit is a new sensation.
We do not wholly leave our bed-room all day long.
Make the places you must occupy as pleasure-giving as possible.
Frugality is never better displayed than in furnishing.
Outdoors, let Action rule in the ascendant; indoors, Repose.
Houses used to be built to protect from foes without; the need now is more protection for friends within.