The Howadji, or the Hajii, us people called his sort in the days of Home as Found, was prompt to the hour when his month's absence was up, and he began without a moment's delay: "But of course the lion in the way of my thesis that New York is comparatively cheap is the rent, the rent of flats or houses in the parts of the town where people of gentle tastes and feelings are willing to live. Provisions are cheap; furnishings of all kinds are cheap; service, especially when you mainly or wholly dispense1 with it, is cheap, for one maid here will do the work of two abroad, and if the mistress of the house does her own work she can make the modern appliances her handmaids at no cost whatever. It is ridiculous, in fact, leaving all those beautiful and ingenious helps in housework to the hirelings who work only twice as hard with them for more wages than the hirelings of countries where they don't exist."
"Don't be so breathless," we interposed. "You will only be allowed to talk three thousand words, whether you talk fast or slow, and you might as well take your ease."
"That is true," the Howadji reflected. "But I am full of my subject, and I have the feeling that I am getting more out, even if I can't get more in, by talking fast. The rent question itself," he hurried on, "has been satisfactorily solved of late in the new invention of co-operative housing which you may have heard of."
We owned that we had, with the light indifference2 of one whom matters of more money or less did not concern, and our friend went on.
"The plan was invented, you know, by a group of artists who imagined putting up a large composite dwelling3 in a street where the cost of land was not absolutely throat-cutting, and finishing it with tasteful plainness in painted pine and the like, but equipping it with every modern convenience in the interest of easier housekeeping. The characteristic and imperative4 fact of each apartment was a vast and lofty studio whose height was elsewhere divided into two floors, and so gave abundant living-rooms in little space. The proprietorial5 group may have been ten, say, but the number of apartments was twice as many, and the basic hope was to let the ten other apartments for rents which would carry the expense of the whole, and house the owners at little or no cost. The curious fact is that this apparently6 too simple-hearted plan worked. The Philistines7, as the outsiders may be called, liked being near the self-chosen people; they liked the large life-giving studio which imparted light and air to the two floors of its rearward division, and they eagerly paid the sustaining rents. The fortunate experience of one ?sthetic group moved others to like enterprises; and now there are eight or ten of these co-operative studio apartment-houses in different parts of the town."
"With the same fortunate experience for the owners?" we queried8, with suppressed sarcasm9.
"Not exactly," our friend assented10 to our intention. "The successive groups have constantly sought more central, more desirable, more fashionable situations. They have built not better than they knew, for that could not be, but costlier11, and they have finished in hard woods, with marble halls and marbleized hall-boys, and the first expense has been much greater; but actual disaster has not yet followed; perhaps it is too soon; we must not be impatient; but what has already happened is what happens with other beautiful things that the ?sthetic invent. It has happened notoriously with all the most lovable and livable summer places which the artists and authors find out and settle themselves cheaply and tastefully in. The Philistines, a people wholly without invention, a cuckoo tribe incapable12 of self-nesting, stumble upon those joyous13 homes by chance, or by mistaken invitation. They submit meekly14 enough at first to be sub-neighbors ruled in all things by the genius of the place; but once in, they begin to lay their golden eggs in some humble15 cottage, and then they hatch out broods of palatial16 villas17 equipped with men and maid servants, horses, carriages, motors, yachts; and if the original settlers remain it is in a helpless inferiority, a broken spirit, and an overridden18 ideal. This tragical19 history is the same at Magnolia, and at York Harbor, and at Dublin, and at Bar Harbor; even at Newport itself; the co-operative housing of New York is making a like history. It is true that the Philistines do not come in and dispossess the autochthonic groups; these will not sell to them; but they have imagined doing on a sophisticated and expensive scale what the ?sthetics have done simply and cheaply. They are buying the pleasanter sites, and are building co-operatively; though they have already eliminated the studio and the central principle, and they build for the sole occupancy of the owners. But the cost of their housing then is such that it puts them out of the range of our inquiry20 as their riches has already put them beyond the range of our sympathy. It still remains21 for any impecunious22 group to buy the cheaper lots, and build simpler houses on the old studio principle, with rents enough to pay the cost of operation, and leave the owners merely the interest and taxes, with the eventual24 payment of these also by the tenants25. Some of the studio apartments are equipped with restaurants, and the dwellers26 need only do such light housekeeping as ladies may attempt without disgrace, or too much fatigue27."
"Or distraction28 from their duties to society," we suggested.
"It depends upon what you mean by society; it's a very general and inexact term. If you mean formal dinners, dances, parties, receptions, and all that, the lightest housekeeping would distract from the duties to it; but if you mean congenial friends willing to come in for tea in the afternoon, or to a simple lunch, or not impossibly a dinner, light housekeeping is not incompatible30 with a conscientious31 recognition of society's claims. I think of two ladies, sisters, one younger and one older than the other, who keep house not lightly, but in its full weight of all the meals, for their father and brother, and yet are most gracefully33 and most acceptably in the sort of society which Jane Austen says is, if not good, the best: the society of gifted, cultivated, travelled, experienced, high-principled people, capable of respecting themselves and respecting their qualities wherever they find them in others. These ladies do not pretend to 'entertain,' but their table is such that they are never afraid to ask a friend to it. In a moment, if there is not enough or not good enough, one of them conjures34 something attractive out of the kitchen, and you sit down to a banquet. The sisters are both of that gentle class of semi-invalids whose presence in our civilization enables us to support the rudeness of the general health. They employ ?sthetically the beautiful alleviations with which science has rescued domestic drudgery35 from so much of the primal36 curse; it is a pleasure to see them work; it is made so graceful32, so charming, that you can hardly forbear taking hold yourself."
"But you do forbear," we interposed; "and do you imagine that their example is going to prevail with the great average of impecunious American housewives, or sisters, or daughters?"
"No, they will continue to 'keep a girl' whom they will enslave to the performance of duties which they would be so much better for doing themselves, both in body and mind, for that doing would develop in them the hospitable37 soul of those two dear ladies. They will be in terror of the casual guest, knowing well that they cannot set before him things fit to eat. They have no genius for housekeeping, which is one with home-making: they do not love it, and those ladies do love it in every detail, so that their simple flat shines throughout with a lustre38 which pervades39 the kitchen and the parlor40 and the chamber41 alike. It is the one-girl household, or the two-girl, which makes living costly42 because it makes living wasteful43; it is not the luxurious44 establishments of the rich which are to blame for our banishment45 to the mythical46 cheapness of Europe."
We were not convinced by the eloquence47 which had overheated our friend, and we objected: "But those ladies you speak of give their whole lives to housekeeping, and ought cheapness to be achieved at such an expense?"
"In the first place, they don't; and, if they do, what do the one-girl or the two-girl housekeepers48 give their lives to? or, for the matter of that, the ten or twenty girl housekeepers? The ladies of whom I speak have always read the latest book worth reading; they have seen the picture which people worth while are talking of; they know through that best society which likes a cup of their tea all the ?sthetic gossip of the day; they are part of the intellectual movement, that part which neither the arts nor the letters can afford to ignore; they help to make up the polite public whose opinions are the court of final appeal."
"They strike us," we said, stubbornly, "as rather romantic."
"Ah, there you are! Well, they are romantic—romantic like a gentle poem, like an idyllic49 tale; but I deny that they are romanticistic. Their whole lives deal with realities, the every-other-day as well as the every-day realities. But the lives of those others who make all life costly by refusing their share of its work dwell in a web of threadbare fictions which never had any color of truth in this country. They are trying to imitate poor imitations, to copy those vulgar copies of the European ideal which form the society-page's contribution to the history of our contemporary civilization."
We were so far moved as to say, "We think we see what you mean," and our friend went on.
"Speaking of civilization, do you know what a genial29 change the tea-room is working in our morals and manners? There are many interesting phases of its progress among us, and not the least interesting of these is its being so largely the enterprise of ladies who must not only save money, but must earn money, in order to live, not cheaply, but at all. Their fearlessness in going to work has often the charm of a patrician50 past, for many of them are Southern women who have come to New York to repair their broken fortunes. The tea-room has offered itself as a graceful means to this end, and they have accepted its conditions, which are mainly the more delicate kinds of cookery, with those personal and racial touches in which Southern women are so expert. But there are tea-rooms managed by Western women, if I may judge from the accents involuntarily overheard in their talk at the telephone. The tea of the tea-room means lunch, too, and in some places breakfast and dinner, or rather supper, on much the plan of the several Women's Exchanges; but these are mostly of New England inspiration and operation, and their cooking has a Northern quality. They, as well as the tea-rooms, leave something to be desired in cheapness, though they might be dearer; in some you get tea for fifteen cents, in others a no better brew51 for twenty-five. But they are all charmingly peaceful, and when at the noon hour they overflow52 with conversation, still there is a prevailing53 sense of quiet, finely qualified54 by the feminine invention and influence. Mere23 men are allowed to frequent these places, not only under the protection of women, but also quite unchaperoned, and when one sees them gently sipping55 their Souchong or Oolong, and respectfully munching56 their toasted muffins or their chicken-pie, one remembers with tender gratitude57 how recently they would have stood crooking58 their elbows at deleterious bars, and visiting the bowls of cheese and shredded59 fish and crackers60 to which their drink freed them, while it enslaved them to the witchery of those lurid61 ladies contributed by art to the evil attractions of such places: you see nowhere else ladies depicted62 with so little on, except in the Paris salon63. The New York tea-rooms are not yet nearly so frequent as in London, but I think they are on the average cosier64, and on the whole I cannot say that they are dearer. They really cheapen the midday meal to many who would otherwise make it at hotels and restaurants, and, so far as they contribute to the spread of the afternoon-tea habit, they actually lessen65 the cost of living: many guests can now be fobbed off with tea who must once have been asked to lunch."
"But," we suggested, "isn't that cheapness at the cost of shabbiness, which no one can really afford?"
"No, I don't think so. Whatever lightens hospitality of its cumbrousness makes for civilization, which is really more compatible with a refined frugality66 than with an unbridled luxury. If every à-la-carte restaurant, in the hotels and out of them, could be replaced by tea-rooms, and for the elaborate lunches and dinners of private life the informality and simplicity67 of the afternoon tea were substituted, we should all be healthier, wealthier, and wiser; and I should not be obliged to protract68 this contention69 for the superior cheapness of New York."
"But, wait!" we said. "There is something just occurs to us. If you proved New York the cheapest great city in the world, wouldn't it tend to increase our population even beyond the present figure, which you once found so deplorable?"
"No, I imagine not. Or, rather, it would add to our population only those who desire to save instead of those who desire to waste. We should increase through the new-comers in virtuous70 economy, and not as now in spendthrift vainglory. In the end the effect would be the same for civilization as if we shrank to the size of Boston."
"You will have to explain a little, Howadji," we said, "if you expect us to understand your very interesting position."
"Why, you know," he answered, with easy superiority, "that now our great influx71 is of opulent strangers who have made a good deal of money, and of destitute72 strangers willing to help them live on it. The last we needn't take account of; they are common to all cities in all ages; but the first are as new as any phenomenon can be in a world of such tiresome73 tautologies74 as ours. They come up from our industrial provinces, eager to squander75 their wealth in the commercial metropolis76; they throw down their purses as the heroes of old threw down their gantlets for a gage77 of battle, and they challenge the local champions of extortion to take them up. It is said that they do not want a seasonable or a beautiful thing; they want a costly thing. If, for instance, they are offered a house or an apartment at a rental78 of ten or fifteen thousand, they will not have it; they require a rental of fifteen or twenty thousand, so that it may be known, 'back home,' that they are spending that much for rent in New York, and the provincial79 imagination taxed to proportion the cost of their living otherwise to such a sum. You may say that it is rather splendid, but you cannot deny that it is also stupid."
"Stupid, no; but barbaric, yes," we formulated80 the case. "It is splendid, as barbaric pearls and gold are splendid."
"But you must allow that nothing could be more mischievous81. When next we go with our modest incomes against these landlords, they suppose that we too want rentals82 of fifteen thousand, whereas we would easily be satisfied with one of fifteen hundred or a thousand. The poor fellows' fancy is crazed by those prodigals83, and we must all suffer for their madness. The extravagance of the new-comers does not affect the price of provisions so much, or of clothes; the whole population demands food and raiment within the general means, however much it must exceed its means in the cost of shelter. The spendthrifts cannot set the pace for such expenditures84, no matter how much they lavish85 on their backs and—"
"Forbear!" we cried. "Turning from the danger we have saved you from, you will say, we suppose, that New York would be the cheapest of the great cities if it were not for the cost of shelter."
"Something like that," he assented.
"But as we understand, that difficulty is to be solved by co-operative, or composite, housing?"
"Something like that," he said again, but there was a note of misgiving86 in his voice.
"What is the 'out'?" we asked.
"There is no 'out,'" he said, with a deep, evasive sigh.
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收听单词发音
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1
dispense
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| vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施 | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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3
dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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4
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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proprietorial
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| adj.所有（权）的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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philistines
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| n.市侩，庸人( philistine的名词复数 )；庸夫俗子 | |
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queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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sarcasm
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic） | |
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assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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costlier
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| adj.昂贵的( costly的比较级 )；代价高的；引起困难的；造成损失的 | |
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incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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13
joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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meekly
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| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
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15
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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16
palatial
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| adj.宫殿般的，宏伟的 | |
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villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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18
overridden
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| 越控( override的过去分词 )； （以权力）否决； 优先于； 比…更重要 | |
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tragical
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| adj. 悲剧的, 悲剧性的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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impecunious
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| adj.不名一文的，贫穷的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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eventual
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| adj.最后的，结局的，最终的 | |
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tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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dwellers
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| n.居民，居住者( dweller的名词复数 ) | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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incompatible
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| adj.不相容的，不协调的，不相配的 | |
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conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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32
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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gracefully
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| ad.大大方方地；优美地 | |
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conjures
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| 用魔术变出( conjure的第三人称单数 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现 | |
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drudgery
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| n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作 | |
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primal
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| adj.原始的；最重要的 | |
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hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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lustre
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| n.光亮，光泽；荣誉 | |
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pervades
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的第三人称单数 ) | |
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parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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42
costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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43
wasteful
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| adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的 | |
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44
luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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45
banishment
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| n.放逐，驱逐 | |
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46
mythical
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| adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的 | |
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47
eloquence
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| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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48
housekeepers
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| n.（女）管家( housekeeper的名词复数 ) | |
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49
idyllic
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| adj.质朴宜人的，田园风光的 | |
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50
patrician
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| adj.贵族的，显贵的；n.贵族；有教养的人；罗马帝国的地方官 | |
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51
brew
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| v.酿造，调制 | |
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52
overflow
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| v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出 | |
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53
prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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54
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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55
sipping
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
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56
munching
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| v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的现在分词 ) | |
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57
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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58
crooking
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| n.弯曲（木材等的缺陷）v.弯成钩形( crook的现在分词 ) | |
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59
shredded
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| shred的过去式和过去分词 | |
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60
crackers
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| adj.精神错乱的，癫狂的n.爆竹( cracker的名词复数 )；薄脆饼干；（认为）十分愉快的事；迷人的姑娘 | |
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61
lurid
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| adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的 | |
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62
depicted
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| 描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述 | |
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salon
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| n.[法]沙龙；客厅；营业性的高级服务室 | |
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64
cosier
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| adj.温暖舒适的( cosy的比较级 )；亲切友好的 | |
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65
lessen
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| vt.减少，减轻；缩小 | |
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66
frugality
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| n.节约，节俭 | |
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67
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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68
protract
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| v.延长，拖长 | |
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69
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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70
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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71
influx
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| n.流入，注入 | |
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destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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73
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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74
tautologies
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| n.同义反复，赘述( tautology的名词复数 )；恒真命题 | |
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75
squander
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| v.浪费，挥霍 | |
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76
metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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gage
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| n.标准尺寸，规格；量规，量表 [=gauge] | |
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78
rental
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| n.租赁，出租，出租业 | |
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79
provincial
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| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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80
formulated
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| v.构想出( formulate的过去式和过去分词 )；规划；确切地阐述；用公式表示 | |
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81
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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82
rentals
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| n.租费，租金额( rental的名词复数 ) | |
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83
prodigals
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| n.浪费的( prodigal的名词复数 )；铺张的；挥霍的；慷慨的 | |
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84
expenditures
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| n.花费( expenditure的名词复数 )；使用；（尤指金钱的）支出额；（精力、时间、材料等的）耗费 | |
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85
lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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86
misgiving
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| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕 | |
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