CHAPTER VIII.

The Back Door.

HE careful housekeeper is very particular about her back door. That, of course, is not in evidence to the public gaze as is the front door, and she of careless habit and nature indisposed to exertion does not mind whether that part of her domain which comes only under the eye of her family is trim and well-ordered or the reverse. One may set the stamp of capability and niceness exactly by looking at a person's back door. Where one finds a general air of disarray about the back yard, where odds and ends from the kitchen, refuse of various kinds, loose papers, and the flotsam and jetsam of the house are allowed to accumulate around the back steps, it is a sign manual of inefficiency on the part of her who is queen of the house.

Also the health of the family is greatly affected by the care which is taken to keep everything around the back door as it should be. In many country places, where there is nothing in the environment to suggest anything but perfect health, we discover mysterious illnesses breaking out. Often we may trace these to some thoughtless lack of supervision on the part of householders. Who has not seen around wood piles and about the chicken houses and the various barns and outhouses belonging to a house, proofs of absolute neglect? A little daily care given to everything which has to do with the environment of a house means the difference between keeping things as they should be and letting them go to hopeless waste and disorder.

It is hardly fair that the care of the back door, and of all that the back door means, should lie as a burden upon one person's hands. The most fastidious housekeeper in the world may be very much hampered by husband and children and domestics who do not second her efforts. Still, it is worth while for the same care to be given to the back of the house as to the front. Then, too, there is a moral side which presents itself here. Most of us are very careful about our company dress and manners. We like to appear well to the outside world. But are we always as conscious and as heedful in our demeanor to those of our own families? Do we invariably remember that there is a side presented to people who live with us which is not discovered by those who are merely our visitors or our outside friends? We cannot too carefully watch the back doors of life, we cannot too constantly

guard ourselves against any heedlessness in that which is generally unseen, but which has to do with the very foundations of good living and high morality.

It is well for each child in a family to have some special duty about the house. In a large family where I am sometimes a guest, I have often been struck with the wonderful celerity with which the daily tasks are accomplished. There seems to be no jarring, no particular effort, no hurry on the part of any one concerned, and yet everything is done. One boy goes at a regular hour either before or after breakfast, or before or after supper, and attends to certain work which he is held responsible for. Another has perhaps the care of the lawn. One sees to the pump, keeping the tank supplied with water. Still another weeds the garden. One feeds the chickens. Each child in the large family moves with almost military precision to his appointed task. I once asked the father of the family how

I take it for granted that each of my children will do what he is told to, and should there be any failure to perform a task at the allotted time, that child is sure to hear from me; not in the way of severity, but in a surprise and reproof which he feels. Forgetfulness is not accepted as an excuse, but should a child forget to do something which I had told him, I would expect that he would make it up before going to school or to play. The fact is, Madam, that any place which is governed by law is a happy place, and our home is under the dominion of law even in so small a matter as our back door."

Mats and scrapers save a world of work, and careless boys may learn to use them. The mother builds better than she knows, who brings up her lads to be tidy about the house, and save her needless work and needless steps. The years are flying fast and the boys of to-day will be the husbands of to-morrow. A man's mother trains him for all his life in those early years when he is plastic in her hands as the soft yielding clay. Let her impress on his mind in boyhood the value of seeming trifles, even to the wiping of his feet at the back door.

CHAPTER IX.

An Open Fire.

E lost a great deal from our lives when in the march of modern improvements many of us found that we could dispense with a fire on the hearth. A furnace in the cellar or steam pipes diffusing warmth through the house are certainly very comfortable arrangements for the Arctic cold of our American winters, and where one cannot have these for actual defence against the rigors of the severest January and

February weather nothing surpasses a good old-fashioned stove.

But for cheer, for brightness, for making the home alive with sparkle and glow, nothing is equal to an open fire. It may be just a handful of pine knots, or a lump or two of soft coal, or, best of all, a bundle of fagots made of driftwood which has tossed about on the sea and been thrown on the shore, and which is full of all sorts of poetical associations and suggestions of storm and stress outside as it lends itself to comfort within.

Whatever it is, the open fire gives the last touch of domesticity to a home. It is worth the little extra expense it costs to have its daily beauty and brightness, and no one who has ever been able to compass it will ever again do without its joy. In localities where wood is plenty and to be had for the trouble of getting it, people may indulge themselves in rousing fires with a big black log, or a roaring blaze which goes joyously up the chimney and diffuses warmth through a large room.

That is for the dweller in the country. We of the town sometimes have to be satisfied with a mere imitation blaze in the shape of a gas log, and this is better than nothing, but best of all is the real thing itself. An open fire disposes one to pleasant low-toned conversation, to telling stories in the firelight, to sitting with a child cuddled up in one's arms, to retrospection, to all sorts of pleasant dreamings and musings.

Our life is so active, so filled with excitement, that we are much too little given in these days to quiet thought. Anything which tempts one to repose is a great boon. Indeed, there are very few of us who would not be the better for sitting down every day for a half hour, with folded hands, simply for the purpose of thinking, or of letting the mind lie fallow without much effort at consecutive meditation.

I know how many women will smile when they read this, and will say, "This writer does not know what she is talking about;" but indeed I do. I have led for many years an intensely occupied life myself, and I never in the world would have gotten through one-half or one-quarter of the necessary things if I had not made a point of quite often sitting down, folding my hands, and doing

just nothing at all.

BEFORE THE FIRELIGHT.

One acquires a habit of restlessness if one never rests, and deep lines come in the forehead and the voice grows querulous, and the nerves rebel unless one can sometimes rest. Therefore, if possible, have not only the open fire, but what the open fire stands for: a home centre around which pleasant memories may gather as the years go by

As for the fuel to be burned in your fireplace, the question will be naturally between hickory and pine and birch and other woods, and the relative merits of soft and hard coal. You will decide upon that according to your purse, and according to the part of the country in which you live. But do not at once condemn the open fire as an extravagance. When your day comes for canvassing expenses, see if there is not something else which you can do without and indulge yourself in this. All winter long this fire will furnish your room in a way that nothing else can. It will take the place of fine furniture, it will second the welcome you give your guests, it will add greatly to the real elegance of your home, as well as to its comfort, and it will convey to all beholders, as well as to the family itself, an impression of luxury. An open fire, a few books, a few flowers, a lounge, an easy chair or two-and a room is well equipped for the ordinary uses of life.

Besides, on the mere score of health a good deal is to be said for a fireplace in the room. It insures absolutely good ventilation. There are mornings and evenings in the spring and fall when a blaze on the hearth means safety from taking cold, and when you do not at all need a warm fire in the furnace or in the stove; when, indeed, a large fire would mean that the house should be inconveniently heated.

In the sick-room a little fire is very much to be desired. Often the invalid needs only enough warmth to take away the chill from the room. Do not be in your house one of those tyrannical people who never has a fire lighted until a certain day in the fall, and who never keeps fire in after a certain day in the spring. In our changeable climate we cannot have hard and fast regulations of this kind. If we are wise we will not be bowed down in any such iron fashion as this, but we will do what is for the comfort of ourselves and our children.

You know how the baby loves to toast its little toes before the fire! What pleasure the boys and girls take in roasting apples themselves, seeing them sputter, and finally reach the right turn in the genial warmth! What a delight to eat apples and potatoes which one cooks one's self by the fire! The best cooking, let me say in passing, which I have ever eaten in my life was done wholly before a great open fire in a Southern city. Old Aunt Hannah, stately as an African queen, carrying herself with the erectness and aplomb of a woman in society, her bright turban on her head, her little checked shawl over her shoulders, her blue apron around her waist, would make and cook beside this open fire such rolls and corn bread and wheaten loaves as I never expect to taste again in this world. A duck or a piece of meat roasted in this way retained all the juices, and far surpassed anything which our finest modern inventions can show. It seemed hard for Aunt Hannah to lift the heavy pots from the crane, to rake the ashes over her spiders, and to bend as she had to above this great fireplace which cast its eerie redness over the dark kitchen in which it was placed, but she laughingly made light of all