Another class of cottage may come within the farm enclosures, half
poetical, and half economical, such as Milton describes:
"Hard by a cottage chimney smokes,
From betwixt two aged oaks;"
and occupied by a family pensioner and his infirm old wife--we don't
think _all_ "poor old folks" ought to go to the alms-house, because they
cannot work _every_ day of the year--of which all long-settled families
of good estate have, now and then, one near to, or upon their premises.
Thousands of kind and liberal hearts among our farming and planting
brethren, whose impulses are--
"Open as the day to melting charity,"
are familiar with the wants of those who are thus made their dependents;
and in their accommodation, an eye may be kept to the producing of an
agreeable effect in locating their habitations, and to rudely embellish,
rather than to mar the domain on which they may be lodged.
In short, cottage architecture, in its proper character, may be made as
effective, in all the ornament which it should give to the farm, as that
of any other structure; and if those who have occasion for the cottage
will only be content to build and maintain it as it should be, and leave
off that perpetual aspiration after something unnatural, and foreign to
its purpose, which so many cottage builders of the day attempt, and let
it stand in its own humble, secluded character, they will save
themselves a world of trouble, and pass for--what they now do not--men
possessing a taste for truth and propriety in their endeavors.
HOUSE AND COTTAGE FURNITURE.
This is a subject so thoroughly discussed in the books, of late, that
anything which may here be said, would avail but little, inasmuch as our
opinions might be looked upon as "old-fashioned," "out of date," and "of
no account whatever,"--for wonderfully modern notions in room-furnishing
have crept into the farm house, as well as into town houses. Indeed, we
confess to altogether ancient opinions in regard to household furniture,
and contend, that, with a few exceptions, "modern degeneracy" has
reached the utmost stretch of absurdity, in house-furnishing, to which
the ingenuity of man can arrive. Fashions in furniture change about as
often as the cut of a lady's dress, or the shape of her bonnet, and
pretty much from the same source, too--the fancy shops of Paree, once,
in good old English, Paris, the capital city of France. A farmer, rich
or poor, may spend half his annual income, every year of his life, in
taking down old, and putting up new furniture, and be kept uncomfortable
all the time; when, if he will, after a quiet, good-tempered talk with
his better-half, agree with her upon the list of _necessary_ articles to
make them _really comfortable_; and then a catalogue of what shall
comprise the _luxurious_ part of their furnishings, which, when
provided, they will fixedly make up their mind to keep, and be content
with, they will remain entirely free from one great source of "the ills
which flesh is heir to."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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