All the neighborhood is in his interest, and
if the traveller ask how far to a tavern, he receives some such answer as
this: "Well, sir, there's a house about three miles from here, where they
haven't taken down their sign yet; but it's only ten miles to Slocum's,
and that's a capital house, both for man and beast." At three miles he
passes a cheerless barrack, standing desolate behind its sign-post,
neither public nor private, and has glimpses of a discontented couple
who have mistaken their calling. At ten miles see where the Tavern
stands,--really an _entertaining_ prospect,--so public and inviting that
only the rain and snow do not enter. It is no gay pavilion, made of bright
stuffs, and furnished with nuts and gingerbread, but as plain and sincere
as a caravansary; located in no Tarrytown, where you receive only the
civilities of commerce, but far in the fields it exercises a primitive
hospitality, amid the fresh scent of new hay and raspberries, if it be
summer time, and the tinkling of cow-bells from invisible pastures; for it
is a land flowing with milk and honey, and the newest milk courses in a
broad, deep stream across the premises.
In these retired places the tavern is first of all a house--elsewhere,
last of all, or never,--and warms and shelters its inhabitants. It is as
simple and sincere in its essentials as the caves in which the first men
dwelt, but it is also as open and public. The traveller steps across the
threshold, and lo! he too is master, for he only can be called proprietor
of the house here who behaves with most propriety in it. The Landlord
stands clear back in nature, to my imagination, with his axe and spade
felling trees and raising potatoes with the vigor of a pioneer; with
Promethean energy making nature yield her increase to supply the wants of
so many; and he is not so exhausted, nor of so short a stride, but that he
comes forward even to the highway to this wide hospitality and publicity.
Surely, he has solved some of the problems of life. He comes in at his
backdoor, holding a log fresh cut for the hearth upon his shoulder with
one hand, while he greets the newly arrived traveller with the other.
Here at length we have free range, as not in palaces, nor cottages, nor
temples, and intrude nowhere. All the secrets of housekeeping are
exhibited to the eyes of men, above and below, before and behind. This is
the necessary way to live, men have confessed, in these days, and shall he
skulk and hide? And why should we have any serious disgust at kitchens?
Perhaps they are the holiest recess of the house. There is the hearth,
after all,--and the settle, and the fagots, and the kettle, and the
crickets. We have pleasant reminiscences of these. They are the heart, the
left ventricle, the very vital part of the house. Here the real and
sincere life which we meet in the streets was actually fed and sheltered.
Here burns the taper that cheers the lonely traveller by night, and from
this hearth ascend the smokes that populate the valley to his eyes by day.
On the whole, a man may not be so little ashamed of any other part of his
house, for here is his sincerity and earnest, at least. It may not be here
that the besoms are plied most,--it is not here that they need to be, for
dust will not settle on the kitchen floor more than in nature.
Hence it will not do for the Landlord to possess too fine a nature.
