That House I Bought

A LITTLE LEAF FROM LIFE

BY
HENRY EDWARD WARNER

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1911, by
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY

That House I Bought

DEDICATION

Why a dedication? Why a preface—a foreword? Why any comment, save the title and the price mark?

Simplicity itself! The preface, foreword, dedication—what you may term it—gives opportunity to apologize for the liberality with which the author betrays his egotism, in the thickly sprinkled perpendicular pronoun.

And yet this plain young tale of plain things could not be told in the third person, since it is a mere setting down of real experience, painfully truthful and laboriously pruned where imagination was tempted to stray into fields of fiction. There is but one confession of romantic mendacity—and it shall not be made, for it might have happened! Quien Sabe?

And now this little story is dedicated to all who have bought or intend to buy homes, who have lost or expect to lose them; to the bird of passage and to the homing, and to all who love their fellowmen—but very especially to you who read it.

H. E. W.

CONTENTS

That House I Bought

FIRST PERIOD

Thirty-three years ago I formed a box of blocks into a castle and then kicked it down in disgust because I didn't like the chimney. Mother said I displayed temper.

Birds build nests in tree-tops with horse-hair and straw, and odd bits of stuff; but my wife and I aren't birds. Far from it. And we've been going along for fifteen years without a regular nest. All that time I've been building a house with blocks and kicking it down.

The other day we went out to Mont Alto to take dinner with our friends, and on the way we saw a new house numbered "3313." The number stuck out in letters of silver, burnished into brilliancy by a noonday sun.

"That's an odd number," I remarked. "Anyway you look at it, it's unlucky—3313. And I'm not superstitious."

"Let's go in and examine it," she said.

That's where it all started. We bought the house after dinner. It took fifteen minutes to decide, and in that time, of course, we didn't notice the place on the dining-room ceiling where the plumbing—but let it pass. The Duke of Mont Alto would fix it up. We had great faith in the Duke. The point is, we owned a house at last. That is, we had started to own it. We were tickled to death—also scared to death. There are two emotions for you, both fatal!

Coming into possession of a castle with ten rooms and large open plumbing, fronting fifty feet and going back one hundred and fifty-three feet to the company's stable, is a thrilling experience. My first thrill was in connection with the initial terms of the contract, which called for certain financial daring. Up to this time I had laid to my soul the happy thought that a clean conscience is more than money; but believe me, friend, a silver quarter began to look like a gold eagle. Change that in other days went merrily across the table without thought for the morrow, I found myself wearing to a frazzle, counting the cracks in the milled edges affectionately, hopefully, and yet with certain misgivings.

Naturally, we first paced off our yard, to see whether it was 50 by 153 feet, more or less, as shown in the plot. Every man who buys a house paces off his yard. So does his wife. My wife made seventy-eight steps of it and I made fifty-one, on the length. By deducting for my long legs and adding for her confining skirt we came to the conclusion that mathematics was an inexact science, and decided to do it later with a tape measure.

But for the purpose of this narrative we must get inside the house and look about. We found a wide hall with a grand staircase; a roomy parlor connecting by