Home as Found - James Fenimore Cooper (moboreader TXT) 📗

plain old structure, built with great solidity, and of excellent materials, and in that style of respectable dignity and propriety, that was perhaps a little more peculiar to our fathers than it is peculiar to their successors, our worthy selves. In addition to the entrance tower, or porch, on its northern front, John Effingham had also placed a prettily devised conceit on the southern, by means of which the abrupt transition from an inner room to the open air was adroitly avoided. He had, moreover, removed the "firstly" of the edifice, and supplied its place with a more suitable addition that contained some of the offices, while it did not disfigure the building, a rare circumstance in an architectural after-thought.

Internally, the Wigwam had gradually been undergoing improvements, ever since that period, which, in the way of the arts, if not in the way of chronology, might be termed the dark ages of Otsego. The great hall had long before lost its characteristic decoration of the severed arm of Wolf, a Gothic paper that was better adapted to the really respectable architecture of the room being its substitute; and even the urn that was thought to contain the ashes of Queen Dido, like the pitcher that goes often to the well, had been broken in a war of extermination that had been carried on against the cobwebs by a particularly notable housekeeper. Old Homer, too, had gone the way of all baked clay. Shakspeare, himself, had dissolved into dust, "leaving not a wreck behind;" and of Washington and Franklin, even, indigenous as they were, there remained no vestiges. Instead of these venerable memorials of the past, John Effingham, who retained a pleasing recollection of their beauties as they had presented themselves to his boyish eyes, had bought a few substitutes in a New- York shop, and a Shakspeare, and a Milton, and a Cæsar, and a Dryden, and a Locke, as the writers of heroic so beautifully express it, were now seated in tranquil dignity on the old medallions that had held their illustrious predecessors. Although time had, as yet, done little for this new collection in the way of colour, dust and neglect were already throwing around them the tint of antiquity.

"The lady," to use the language of Mr. Bragg, who did the cooking of the Wigwam, having every thing in readiness, our party took their seats at the breakfast table, which was spread in the great hall, as soon as each had paid a little attention to the toilette . As the service was neither very scientific, nor sufficiently peculiar, either in the way of elegance or of its opposite quality, to be worthy of notice, we shall pass it over in silence.

"One will not quite so much miss European architecture in this house," said Eve, as she took her seat at table, glancing an eye at the spacious and lofty room, in which they were assembled; "here is at least size and its comforts, if not elegance."

"Had you lost all recollection of this building, my child?" inquired her father, kindly; "I was in hopes you would feel some of the happiness of returning home, when you again found yourself beneath its roof!"

"I should greatly dislike to have all the antics I have been playing in my own dressing-room exposed," returned Eve, rewarding the parental solicitude of her father by a look of love, "though Grace, between her laughing and her tears, has threatened me with such a disgrace. Ann Sidley has also been weeping, and, as even Annette, always courteous and considerate, has shed a few tears in the way of sympathy, you ought not to imagine that I have been altogether so stoical as not to betray some feeling, dear father. But the paroxysm is past, and I am beginning to philosophize. I hope, cousin Jack, you have not forgotten that the drawing-room is a lady's empire!"

"I have respected your rights, Miss Effingham, though, with a wish to prevent any violence to your tastes, I have caused sundry antediluvian paintings and engravings to be consigned to the--"

"Garret?" inquired Eve, so quickly as to interrupt the speaker.

"Fire," coolly returned her cousin. "The garret is now much too good for them; that part of the house being converted into sleeping-rooms for the maids. Mademoiselle Annette would go into hysterics, were she to see the works of art, that satisfied the past generation of masters in this country, in too close familiarity with her Louvre- ized eyes."

" Point du tout, monsieur ," said Mademoiselle Viefville, innocently; " Annette a du gout dans son metier sans doute , but she is too well bred to expect impossibilités. No doubt she would have conducted herself with decorum."

Every body laughed, for much light-heartedness prevailed at that board, and the conversation continued.

"I shall be satisfied if Annette escape convulsions," Eve added, "a refined taste being her weakness; and, to be frank, what I recollect of the works you mention, is not of the most flattering nature."

"And yet," observed Sir George, "nothing has surprised me more than the respectable state of the arts of engraving and painting in this country. It was unlooked for, and the pleasure has probably been in proportion to the surprise."

"In that you are very right, Sir George Templemore," John Effingham answered; "but the improvement is of very recent date. He who remembers an American town half a century ago, will see a very different thing in an American town of to-day; and this is equally true of the arts you mention, with the essential difference that the latter are taking a right direction under a proper instruction, while the former are taking a wrong direction, under the influence of money, that has no instruction. Had I left much of the old furniture, or any of the old pictures in the Wigwam, we should have had the bland features of Miss Effingham in frowns, instead of bewitching smiles, at this very moment."

"And yet I have seen fine old furniture in this country, cousin Jack."

"Very true; though not in this part of it. The means of conveyance were wanting half a century since, and few people risk finery of any sort on corduroys. This very house had some respectable old things, that were brought here by dint of money, and they still remain; but the eighteenth century in general, may be set down as a very dark antiquity in all this region."

When the repast was over, Mr. Effingham led his guests and daughter through the principal apartments, sometimes commending, and sometimes laughing, at the conceits of his kinsman. The library was a good sized room; good sized at least for a country in which domestic architecture, as well as public architecture, is still in the chrysalis state. Its walls were hung with an exceedingly pretty gothic paper, in green, but over each window was a chasm in the upper border; and as this border supplied the arches, the unity of the entire design was broken in no less than four places, that being the precise number of the windows. The defect soon attracted the eye of Eve, and she was not slow in demanding an explanation.

"The deficiency is owing to an American accident," returned her cousin; "one of those calamities of which you are fated to experience many, as the mistress of an American household. No more of the border was to be bought in the country, and this is a land of shops and not of fabricants . At Paris, Mademoiselle, one would send to the paper- maker for a supply; but, alas! he that has not enough of a thing with us, is as badly off as if he had none. We are consumers, and not producers of works of art. It is a long way to send to France for ten or fifteen feet of paper hangings, and yet this must be done, or my beautiful gothic arches will remain forever without their key- stones!"

"One sees the inconvenience of this," observed Sir George--"we feel it, even in England, in all that relates to imported things."

"And we, in nearly all things, but food."

"And does not this show that America can never become a manufacturing country?" asked the baronet, with the interest an intelligent Englishman ever feels in that all-absorbing question. "If you cannot manufacture an article as simple as that of paper-hangings, would it not be well to turn your attention, altogether, to agriculture?"

As the feeling of this interrogatory was much more apparent than its logic, smiles passed from one to the other, though John Effingham, who really had a regard for Sir George, was content to make an evasive reply, a singular proof of amity, in a man of his caustic temperament.

The survey of the house, on the whole, proved satisfactory to its future mistress, who complained, however, that it was furnished too much like a town residence.

"For," she added, "you will remember, cousin Jack, that our visits here will be something like a villeggiatura ."

"Yes, yes, my fair lady; it will not be long before your Parisian and Roman tastes will be ready to pronounce the whole country a villeggiatura! "

"This is the penalty, Eve, one pays for being a Hajji," observed Grace, who had been closely watching the expression of the others' countenances; for, agreeably to her view of things, the Wigwam wanted nothing to render it a perfect abode. "The things that we enjoy, you despise."

"That is an argument, my dear coz, that would apply equally well, as a reason for preferring brown sugar to white."

"In coffee, certainly, Miss Eve," put in the attentive Aristabulus, who having acquired this taste, in virtue of an economical mother, really fancied it a pure one. "Every body, in these regions, prefers the brown in coffee."

" Oh, mon père et ma mère, comme je vous en veux, " said Eve, without attending to the nice distinctions of Mr. Bragg, which savoured a little too much of the neophyte in cookery, to find favour in the present company, " comme je vous en veux for having neglected so many beautiful sites, to place this building in the very spot it occupies."

"In that respect, my child, we may rather be grateful at finding so comfortable a house, at all. Compared with the civilization that then surrounded it, this dwelling was a palace at the time of its erection; bearing some such relation to the humbler structures around it, as the château bears to the cottage. Remember that brick had never before been piled on brick, in the walls of a house, in all this region, when the Wigwam was constructed. It is the Temple of Neptune of Otsego, if not of all the surrounding counties."

Eve pressed to her lips the hand she was holding in both her own, and they all passed out of the library into another room. As they came in front of the hall windows, a party of apprentice-boys were seen coolly making their arrangements to amuse themselves with a game of ball, on the lawn directly in front of the house.

"Surely, Mr. Bragg," said the owner of the Wigwam, with more displeasure in his voice than was usual for one of his regulated mind, "you do not countenance this liberty?"

"Liberty, sir!--I am an advocate for liberty wherever I can find it. Do you refer to the young men on the lawn, Mr. Effingham?"

"Certainly to them, sir; and permit me to say, I think they might have chosen a more