[Illustration: WATKINSON HOUSE, MIDDLETOWN, CONN. EPOCH 1810.]
[Illustration: BENEFIT STREET, PROVIDENCE.]
the kitchen, the odors of the culinary operations, and the plumbing is a splendid economic scheme. I should think that the system of plumbing of the old houses would need to be renewed by this time, which I have no doubt is being attended to, as I believe, according to the latest social canons, one may not better establish himself in Philadelphia than by reclaiming one of these ancient domiciles in what has, perhaps, become a somewhat problematical neighborhood.
Certainly, it must be lots of fun to rehabilitate the paneled shutters, to tie them with ribbons run through the rings, to restore the marble steps to immaculate whiteness once more, to make the smiling fan-top doors smart again with new paint, to brighten the windows with curtains that may be often re-laundered, and lastly, to go to Wanamaker’s for a new busybody.[4]
Then comes the happy day when we may set up our household gods in a way infinitely to our liking, and reëstablish in business that ever willing, all ’round faithful servant--the back-building, which Philadelphians assure us has cured the case of many a _malade imaginaire_, with almost human instinct, by unexpectedly taking fire. (See Plate XLII.)
The trick enigmatical nature sometimes plays the gentlest parents by an offspring who, notwithstanding their constant solicitude--the constant bending of the twig--turns out to be a disappointment, not to say a positively black sheep, has its analogy in art. And of such curious analogy no more picturesque example exists than that supplied by what has come to be known as our “Transitional period”--a hopelessly ordinary offspring of a civilization highly cultivated and refined.
To see the Transitional period in its popular aspect, which is its worst aspect, no better spectacles may be borrowed than those once worn by Charles Dickens, the novelist, to write his “American Notes” and “Martin Chuzzlewit.” Only, it will not do to pass final judgment from a scathing arraignment of crimes to the extent of burlesquing the subject, as happens at times in Dickens’ books. There is the documentary evidence to be sifted and examined which, I am very sure, will lessen and correct the scandal materially. And if I have hitherto neglected to avail myself of such evidence, permitting the scandal of the Transitional period to appear as common gossip in these articles, it was for dramatic effect and for contrast. In the present article I propose to make reparation, and direct the magnifying power mainly upon that which is good.