Owning the House

He that holds fast the golden mean,
And lives contentedly between
The little and the great,
Feels no the wants that pinch the poor,
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door.
Cowper's Translation of Horace.

        It is not always easy to own a house there; not only because large holders of property there are unwilling to part with it, but because the first expense is too much for the light purse. If it is the want of funds that oblige one to forego the happiness of owning the house, it is not impossible to practice a strict economy till enough money is laid by for a first payment, if the house is purchasable; and then a mortgage is easily to be negotiated at any savings bank or with any money-lender, and the house is practically ours. We find then that there is something to live up to in laying by money each year that otherwise we should have wasted in uncourted and unthinking ways; and it gives us presently a great pleasure to do this, and almost before we know it the mortgage is wiped out. But if that may not be, it is our best interest to obtain a long lease of the house, not only that the rent may not rise upon us, but that we may not lose it at a landlord's caprice or at the wish of another tenant, and also and more important than either, that we may secure permanence and establish the idea of home. For when our children have to note the years of their lives "when we lived in the Blank Street house," and "when we were living in the Naught Square house" and the rest, it is impossible that they should have the idea of home that a permanent stay in any one spot gives. The house is a residence then and not a home. As it is, moving from house to house has become a sort of habit with us, and one of the first signs of advancing spring among us is a certain restlessness beginning to be apparent in every house holder, together with an anxious inspection of those placards that are then blossoming out in the windows, and in the advertising columns of the daily news, with more unerring instinct as to season than the dandelions have in the parks. As the days grow longer, and the robins are seeking us out again, and the swallows are flitting round the eaves, these other migratory beings are also on the wing running from house to house in search of a proper place for their nests; that is to say, judging whether or not their furniture will look better in this house than it does in that, and if all other things are equal, not to say a trifle superior. It is a singular commentary upon the insufficiency of our builders that this is so.

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