" It requires a high
degree of culture to use slang with elegance and effect; and we are yet
very far from the Greek attainment.

IV

The fireplace wants to be all aglow, the wind rising, the night heavy
and black above, but light with sifting snow on the earth, a background
of inclemency for the illumined room with its pictured walls, tables
heaped with books, capacious easy-chairs and their occupants,--it needs,
I say, to glow and throw its rays far through the crystal of the broad
windows, in order that we may rightly appreciate the relation of the
wide-jambed chimney to domestic architecture in our climate. We fell to
talking about it; and, as is usual when the conversation is professedly
on one subject, we wandered all around it. The young lady staying with
us was roasting chestnuts in the ashes, and the frequent explosions
required considerable attention. The mistress, too, sat somewhat alert,
ready to rise at any instant and minister to the fancied want of this or
that guest, forgetting the reposeful truth that people about a fireside
will not have any wants if they are not suggested. The worst of them,
if they desire anything, only want something hot, and that later in the
evening. And it is an open question whether you ought to associate with
people who want that.

I was saying that nothing had been so slow in its progress in the
world as domestic architecture. Temples, palaces, bridges, aqueducts,
cathedrals, towers of marvelous delicacy and strength, grew to
perfection while the common people lived in hovels, and the richest
lodged in the most gloomy and contracted quarters. The dwelling-house
is a modern institution. It is a curious fact that it has only improved
with the social elevation of women. Men were never more brilliant in
arms and letters than in the age of Elizabeth, and yet they had no
homes. They made themselves thick-walled castles, with slits in the
masonry for windows, for defense, and magnificent banquet-halls for
pleasure; the stone rooms into which they crawled for the night were
often little better than dog-kennels. The Pompeians had no comfortable
night-quarters. The most singular thing to me, however, is that,
especially interested as woman is in the house, she has never done
anything for architecture. And yet woman is reputed to be an ingenious
creature.

HERBERT. I doubt if woman has real ingenuity; she has great
adaptability. I don't say that she will do the same thing tw