title: Home Life: A Journey Through Rooms and Recollections
author:  Suzanne Fox 
description: This is a memoir, but don't be put off. Fox has organized her memories around a witty and beguiling conceit: rooms, homes, and spaces she has stayed in or, in the case of the Bordeaux room at the Metropolitan Museum, been enchanted by. Fox has a concrete and sensual appreciation of the resonance of the objects in a room--the light from a window, the comforts of a particular space--and she writes about them with care. While some memoirs reek of self-involvement, this one invites the reader in: to her parents' suburban home in New Jersey; to an artistically shabby <i>pensione</i> in Paris; to a friend's sun-drenched California guest room where there was, almost literally, a monster hidden. Good writing sometimes comes cheap, but here the writing is lapidary without being overly precious. Welcome and thoughtful as a night-light in a dark hall. <i>GraceAnne A. DeCandido</i>
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  Standard Household Effect Co.
  
    
    
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  This page copyright © 2003 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
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  # Standard Household Effect Co.
  
  
  ### William Dean Howells
  
  
  This page copyright © 2003 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
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      This etext was produced by David Widger  widger@cecomet.net
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## LITERATURE AND LIFE—The Standard
  
  
  Household-Effect Company
  
  
  by William Dean Howells
  
  
  
  
  
  THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT COMPANY
  
  
  My friend came in the other day, before we had left town, and looked
  
  
  round at the appointments of the room in their summer shrouds, and
  
  
  said, with a faint sigh, “I see you have had the eternal-womanly with
  
  
  you, too.”
  
  
  ### I.
  
  
  “Isn't the eternal-womanly everywhere? What has happened to you?” I
  
  
  asked.
  
  
  “I wish you would come to my house and see. Every rug has been up
  
  
  for a month, and we have been living on bare floors. Everything that
  
  
  could be tied up has 