it had a "front porch" and a "back porch"; often a "side porch," too.
There was a "front hall"; there was a "side hall"; and sometimes a
"back hall." From the "front hall" opened three rooms, the "parlour,"
the "sitting room," and the "library"; and the library could show
warrant to its title--for some reason these people bought books.
Commonly, the family sat more in the library than in the "sitting
room," while callers, when they came formally, were kept to the
"parlour," a place of formidable polish and discomfort. The
upholstery of the library furniture was a little shabby; but the
hostile chairs and sofa of the "parlour" always looked new. For all
the wear and tear they got they should have lasted a thousand years.

Upstairs were the bedrooms; "mother-and-father's room" the largest; a
smaller room for one or two sons another for one or two daughters;
each of these rooms containing a double bed, a "washstand," a
"bureau," a wardrobe, a little table, a rocking-chair, and often a
chair or two that had been slightly damaged downstairs, but not enough
to justify either the expense of repair or decisive abandonment in the
attic. And there was always a "spare-room," for visitors (where the
sewing-machine usually was kept), and during the 'seventies there
developed an appreciation of the necessity for a bathroom. Therefore
the architects placed bathrooms in the new houses, and the older
houses tore out a cupboard or two, set up a boiler beside the kitchen
stove, and sought a new godliness, each with its own bathroom. The
great American plumber joke, that many-branched evergreen, was planted
at this time.

At the rear of the house, upstairs was a bleak little chamber, called
"the girl's room," and in the stable there was another bedroom,
adjoining the hayloft, and called "the hired man's room." House and