Part One The Story of the House
Reading edition
ILLUSTRATIONS
I—The Entrance Gates Page 3
II—Ye Hospitable Porch 5
III—The Hall Fire-place 7
IV—An Ingle-Nook 9
V—The Library Window 13
VI—My Lady’s Casement 15
VII—Amid Gables and Dormers 17
VIII—Among the Chimney-tops 19
IX—The Loggia and Terrace 21
X—The Garden Sun-dial and Exedra 23
1
O fortunate, O happy day,
When a new household finds its place
Among the myriad homes of earth,
Like a new star just sprung to birth,
And rolled on its harmonious way
Into the boundless realms of space.
“The Hanging of the Crane”
Longfellow.
2Met, where the guardian wall is wound,
So subtly are our eyes beguiled
We see not nor suspect a bound.
No more than in some forest wild;
The sight is free as air—or crost
Only by art in nature lost.
“A Flower Garden”
Wordsworth.
3
4“To thy cool shadows, and to thee,
When thou to birds dost shelter give,
Thou music dost from them receive;
If travellers beneath thee stay
Till storms have worn themselves away,
That time in praising thee they spend,
And thy protecting power commend.”
Lady Winchilsea
5
6“How beautiful is this house! The atmosphere
Breathes rest and comfort and the many chambers
Seem full of welcomes.”
“The Masque of Pandora”
Longfellow.
7
8“Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed,
9
10The house dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;
And for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andiron’s straddling feet,
11
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.”
“Snow-Bound”
Whittier.
12“Oh for a booke and a shadie nooke,
Eyther in doore or out;
With the grene leaves whispering overhead
Or the streete cryes all about.
Where I maie read all at my ease,
Both of the newe and old;
For a jollie goode booke whereon to looke,
Is better to me than golde.”
Old English Song
13
14“In yon red gable,
Which the rose creeps round and o’er, your casement shines
Against the yellow west.”
“Good-night in the Porch”
Owen Meredith.
15
16“It was a pleasant mansion, an abode
Near and yet hidden from the great highroad,
Sequestered among trees, a noble pile,
Baronial and colonial in its style;
Gables and dormer-windows everywhere.”
“Lady Wentworth”
Longfellow.
17
18“First in the dusky dawn he sends abroad
His early scout, his emissary, smoke,
The earliest, latest pilgrim from his roof,
To feel the frosty air;”—
Thoreau
19
20“The sunbeams dropped
Their gold, and, passing in porch and niche,
Softened to shadows, silvery pale, and dim,
As if the very Day paused and grew Eve.”
“Light of Asia.”
Edwin Arnold.
21
22“Horas non nurmero nisi serenas.”
“Only the sunny hours
Are numbered here,—
No winter-time that lowers,
No twilight drear.
But from a golden sky
When sun-beams fall,
Though the bright moments fly,—
They’re counted all.”
“The Sun Dial”
Stedman.
23
24
25
