1. My Papa

During the winter of 1887 Papa read Ben Hur to us. It was the first full-length novel I had encountered and it made a deep impression on me. Whether that may have had something to do with my later interest in first-century pastoral Palestine and the contrasting blare of brass in Rome I do not know. Perhaps not. I tried to reread Ben Hur when I was plotting The Robe and found it slow going. (However, I have had the same experience with other famous books which I have come back to after a lapse of many years.) When I was about sixteen I read Innocents Abroad with whoops of merriment. I had another go at it when I was fifty and found its humor decidedly corny. I could be jailed for the remark I am tempted to add here: Mark Twain had only a couple of tricks on which his wit depended, enormous exaggeration and self-deprecation.

But any man who has earned a reputation for being funny must find himself in a frightful predicament. Being consistently funny is a very serious occupation. (Usually the comedian settles down to reworking the old jokes that had won him his ribbons. He contents himself with making fun of his own bald head or his big red nose or his frugalities.)

A moment ago, before being interrupted, I was recalling those delightful winter evenings when my papa read stories to us in the cosy warmth of the big base burner.

In those days the typical American family of modest means was held together by the fireplace or the huge coal stove in the living room. All the other rooms were cold. The conditions were not ideal. The family was huddled together: those nearest the heat were too warm, the others had cold feet. Frequently there was only one lamp fit to read by. About half past eight the little kids undressed before the fire and scampered off to bed exhaling clouds of steam as they climbed the stairs.

When central heating came in and the whole house was made habitable in winter, revolutionary changes were wrought in family life. Everybody agreed that the invention was a godsend. Instead of being bunched together uncomfortably through the entire evening the family promptly scattered after supper. Now everyone had his own room, his own lamp, and could amuse himself in his own way. It was a long step toward the freedom of the individual.

But there’s something to be said in defense of the fireplace and the dirty old coal stove. They kept the family intact. The arrival of the furnace in the cellar was the first hard blow struck at the American Home.

Throughout my childhood and youth we never lived in a house heated by a furnace in the cellar, nor did we ever have a cellar. Most of our better-off neighbors had cellars for the winter storage of potatoes, beets, parsnips, onions and canned fruits and vegetables, but evidently it was not considered necessary for the village parsonage to be thus equipped.

However, my papa never complained about this. Upon our arrival in a new parish, a husky country boy was engaged to dig a square hole, about four feet deep, in a shaded spot behind the kitchen where we kept milk, cream and butter in summer. Every day the ground around this hole was well watered. You might be amazed to know how cool it was down there, even in the hottest weather.