so from the road, with a gate and a railing, and a patch, perhaps two
feet wide, of gravel between its front and the pavement. This is the
last pathetic vestige of the preliminary privacies of its original
type, the gates, the drive-up, the front lawn, the shady trees, that
gave a great impressive margin to the door. The door has a knocker
(with an appeal to realities, "ring also") and it opens into a narrow
passage, perhaps four feet wide, which still retains the title of
"hall." Oak staining on the woodwork and marbled paper accentuate the
lordly memory. People of this class would rather die than live in a
house with a front door, even had it a draught-stopping inner door,
that gave upon the street. Instead of an ample kitchen in which meals
can be taken and one other room in which the rest of life goes on,
these two covering the house site, the social distinction from the
servant invades the house space first by necessitating a passage to a
side-door, and secondly by cutting up the interior into a "dining-room"
and a "drawing-room." Economy of fuel throughout the winter and economy
of the best furniture always, keeps the family in the dining-room
pretty constantly, but there you have the drawing-room as a concrete
fact. Though the drawing-room is inevitable, the family will manage
without a bath-room well enough. They may, or they may not,
occasionally wash all over. There are probably not fifty books in the
house, but a daily paper comes and _Tit Bits_ or _Pearson's
Weekly,_ or, perhaps, _M.A.P.,_ _Modern Society,_ or some
such illuminant of the upper circles, and a cheap fashion paper, appear
at irregular intervals to supplement this literature.

The wife lives to realize the ideal of the "ladylike"--lady she resigns
to the patrician--and she insists upon a servant, however small. This
poor wretch of a servant, often a mere child of fourteen or fifteen,
lives by herself in a minute kitchen, and sleeps in a fireless attic.