The newspaper is probably responsible for making current many words with which the general reader is familiar, but which he rises to in the flow of conversation, and strikes at with a splash and an unsuccessful attempt at appropriation; the word, which he perfectly knows, hooks him in the gills, and he cannot master it.  The newspaper is thus widening the language in use, and vastly increasing the number of words which enter into common talk.  The Americans of the lowest intellectual class probably use more words to express their ideas than the similar class of any other people; but this prodigality is partially balanced by the parsimony of words in some higher regions, in which a few phrases of current slang are made to do the whole duty of exchange of ideas; if that can be called exchange of ideas when one intellect flashes forth to another the remark, concerning some report, that “you know how it is yourself,” and is met by the response of “that’s what’s the matter,” and rejoins with the perfectly conclusive “that’s so.”  It requires a high degree of culture to use slang with elegance and effect; and we are yet very far from the Greek attainment.

IV

The fireplace wants to be all aglow, the wind rising, the night heavy and black above, but light with sifting snow on the earth, a background of inclemency for the illumined room with its pictured walls, tables heaped with books, capacious easy-chairs and their occupants,—­it needs, I say, to glow and throw its rays far through the crystal of the broad windows, in order that we may rightly appreciate the relation of the wide-jambed chimney to domestic architecture in our climate.  We fell to talking about it; and, as is usual when the conversation is professedly on one subject, we wandered all around it.  The young lady staying with us was roasting chestnuts in the ashes, and the frequent explosions required considerable attention.  The mistress, too, sat somewhat alert, ready to rise at any instant and minister to the fancied want of this or that guest, forgetting the reposeful truth that people about a fireside will not have any wants if they are not suggested.  The worst of them, if they desire anything, only want something hot, and that later in the evening.  And it is an open question whether you ought to associate with people who want that.

I was saying that nothing had been so slow in its progress in the world as domestic architecture.  Temples, palaces, bridges, aqueducts, cathedrals, towers of marvelous delicacy and strength, grew to perfection while the common people lived in hovels, and the richest lodged in the most gloomy and contracted quarters.  The dwelling-house is a modern institution.  It is a curious fact that it has only improved with the social elevation of women.  Men were never more brilliant in arms and letters than in the age of Elizabeth, and yet they had no homes.  They made themselves thick-walled castles, with slits in the masonry for windows, for defense, and magnificent banquet-halls for pleasure; the stone rooms into which they crawled for the night were often little better than dog-kennels.  The Pompeians had no comfortable night-quarters.  The most singular thing to me, however, is that, especially interested as woman is in the house, she has never done anything for architecture.  And yet woman is reputed to be an ingenious creature.