I do not know of a political economist, not excepting Henry George, who has had “the nerve,” shall I say, to attribute any of the blessings of civilization to war, pestilence and catastrophes. Yet, as nearly as a spectator may judge by effects, these direful things are all conducive to the greatest amount of comfort and ease of those who do not dwell too close to the points of friction. The swifter is dissolution, up to a certain ratio, at least, with the number of births, the greater the wealth, per capita, for the survivors. The survivors of the civil war who lived in the undevastated territory of the Northern States were largely a happy lot. It began to look for them as though God had decided to abolish the odds in favor of the bank, so to speak, and that life would be, henceforward, a square game affording everybody a chance to nibble at the crust of prosperity, not each one subject to gain only as another is bereft. Some inexorable condition appeared to have given way, for, at last, there was enough to go ’round--yes, more than enough; and with their surplus funds mounting higher and higher, these alarmingly prosperous people were much addicted to the erection of houses with “coopilows.”
In the books of published designs which circulated at the period, dwelling-houses of this class were called “Italian villas,” although as we have come to know the Italian villa, especially since the art of photography has brought it to our intimate acquaintance, we fail to
[Illustration: “I think that Dante’s more abstruse ecstatics meant to personify the mathematics,”--DON JUAN.]
see any actual resemblance. The house with the cupola in America was, in effect, a newly-invented style or architecture of its era, no doubt suggested by the sumptuous villas of the Italian Renaissance, since they have always suggested prodigious opulence, and would naturally attract a people who had suddenly become rich. Besides, in no other style of building that I have seen could a dollar be made to make more show than in the cupola-house of our Reign of Terror. The art of pretentiousness was never better understood, and no art has responded more quickly to a popular demand.
The photograph of a house, which I have not the heart to publish, recalls to memory the story of an old gentleman, now some years deceased, who at the height of his career started out to build the most fanciful house that anybody could possibly imagine. “Fanciful” was the word he used, and appears to have been the favorite adjective of Jacobinical builders. It seemed to me that he succeeded marvelously well, as I cannot picture to myself a greater number of odd conceits in a limited area than he achieved, nor do I see how the scroll-saw could be made to perform greater wonders; but I knew not the resources of those clever artificers. A still more fanciful house, he told me, which he afterwards discovered, caused the ambitious builder of whom I write to grow somewhat dissatisfied; for after all his pains his own house had failed to capture the prize. He had not made it fanciful enough. His property, however, advanced so rapidly in value upon his hands, and was considered so beautiful withal by those of the ultra-Jacobin party, that about the year 1869 he was enabled to dispose of his disappointment for $50,000. And I do not want to leave you to suppose that in this sale there were considerations of exchange or mortgages entailing a modicum of equity as the only cash transaction happening so frequently in the difficult real estate deals we effect to-day. No, the $50,000 represented all cash, which ample fortune, together with, perhaps, as much again, this remarkable person managed to lose in the national liquidation of the early seventies. Fancy $100,000 getting away very easily from any one in his right senses now!