• 
 

/Jo 
 
■ 
 
 
o-^S* 
 
 The Key to a Nobler Life. 
 
 BY 
 
 C. E. SARGENT. A. B. 
 
 WITH LETTER OF INTRODUCTION 
 BY 
 
 MRS. LUCRETIA R. GARFIELD. 
 
 ILLUST^A 
 
 TED. 
 
 W. a Ki\(r cG CO., Publishers, 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, MASS. 
 
 Lewiston, Me. Indianapolis, Ind. 
 
 Columbus, Ohio. Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 1883. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by 
 
 Will. C. King, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 
 
 May peace be in thy home and joy within thy heart. 
 
 M* 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 )|HE reader will notice that we have confined 
 ourselves in the treatment of this work almost 
 exclusively to what is termed the "scientific 
 method." We have not only regarded home 
 itself as an institution of nature, but in t lie 
 treatment of almost every subject we have 
 tried to involve the exposition of some related 
 natural law, because every relation of the 
 home life is the outgrowth of some law of 
 our nature or of our surroundings. It has been 
 our aim to make this book a scientific treatise on the vari- 
 ous phases of the home, and in this respect, so far as we 
 know, it stands alone. 
 
 We have chosen to consider the various relations of the 
 home life from this standpoint, from a conviction that so- 
 cittv has come to need something more substantial than 
 those mere expressions of sentiment, which, for the most 
 part, constitute the books of this kind that heretofore have 
 been given to the public. Many very entertaining books, 
 however, have thus been produced, but the undisputed fact 
 that all the while the old-time home love has been slowly 
 but surely fading away, is sufficient proof that they have not 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 accomplished the object for which they were written. It 
 is true that the word " home " is one of the most poetic 
 in human language, that the institution of home itself owes 
 its origin to an innate sentiment, and that this emotion 
 like all others grows and develops by its own action, 
 so that such expressions of sentiment have their use ; and 
 the great number of those beautiful prose poems, that dur- 
 ing the past few years have been offered to the public, 
 show how deep and insatiable is this home sentiment. Yet 
 in spite of all this, the street and the public hall are usurp- 
 ing the kingdom of the fireside, and the dark monster of 
 Communism is creeping upon us. The restoration and pres- 
 ervation of the old home love and reverence by a more ra- 
 tional and scientific conception of the home relations, we 
 believe, is all that can save society from wreck. 
 
 The home life is to the social life what the unvarying 
 movement of the water wheel is to the clashing and discord- 
 ant motion of the great factory. When the machinery stops 
 or moves fitfully and unreliably the experienced machinist 
 does not think, by merely lubricating the bearings, to re- 
 move the difficulty, but with lantern and wrench and ham- 
 mer descends into the pit to see what ails the M great wheel." 
 
 There are certain diseases whose symptoms are chiefly or 
 wholly local, but which, nevertheless, must be cured by 
 constitutional remedies. Such is the character of most of 
 those moral diseases that affect human society, and the 
 remedies we have tried to point out are constitutional rem- 
 
PREFACE. v 
 
 edies. The one organ we have aimed to reach is that 
 which is the most central and vital of any in the living 
 body of society — the home. 
 
 Society is agitated to-day over the startling problem of 
 divorce, and yet, with all its attendant evils, divorce must 
 be regarded only as a symptom of a fatal disease that is 
 preying on the vitals of society. Intemperance and licen- 
 tiousness are symptoms of diseases that can be reached 
 only through the organ of home. 
 
 What the home is, society will be. The moral corrup- 
 tion and the dark vices of the city would perish in a single 
 night did not their cancerous rootlets reach down into the 
 foulness of perverted homes. 
 
 Still, what a worlfl would this be were it not for the in- 
 stitution of home! How would the streets of the great 
 city be turbulent with lawless outcries at midnight did not 
 the Great Father, through the kindly shepherd of a natural 
 law, send his children at night, to the fold of home ! How 
 its divine protection hovers over the slow-breathing multi- 
 tude like the shadow of a great wing ! 
 
 This book is the product of one not hoary with experi- 
 ence, but of one who has tasted a little of the bitter water, 
 and who has written from the depths of conviction. We 
 hope that the public and the critics will receive his effort 
 with feelings as kindly as those with which it is offered, and 
 he will feel that from his soul a burden has been lifted. 
 
 S. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Preface, iii 
 
 Introduction, xi 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Nature of Home 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Influences of Home, 27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Buds of Promise, 35 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Childhood, 42 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Home Training, 49 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Rewards and Punishments, 73 
 
 chapter vn. 
 Amusements for the Home, 81 
 
 CHAPTER viii. 
 
 Home Smiles, 91 
 
COXTENTS. vii 
 
 Page. 
 
 < iiaktkk ix. 
 
 Joys of Home, , . . . . 97 
 
 I 11 aitim: \. 
 
 Education of Our Girls, 105 
 
 « IIAKTKK XI. 
 
 Education of Our Boys 119 
 
 CHAlTKi: xii. 
 
 Books for the Home, 127 
 
 < IIAI'IKK Mil. 
 KVKNINCS AT IIo.Mi: 135 
 
 I IIAI'IKK XIV. 
 
 Si if Culture, . » 145 
 
 CELL] 
 
 Sundays at Home, 159 
 
 CBAPTSB xvi. 
 
 Resolutions and Individual Rules of Life, . 109 
 
 I HAITI. K XVIK 
 
 Correspondence and Forms, 175 
 
 ( IIAKTKK XVIII. 
 
 Manners at Home, 193 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Family Secrets, 213 
 
 OHAPTSB XX. 
 
 I) r ties of Home, 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Contentment at Home, 231 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Visiting, 237 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Unselfishness at Home, 246 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Patience, 252 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Temperance, 261 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Economy of Home, 272 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Home Adornments, 285 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Dignity at Home, 291 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Success or Failure Foreshadowed at Home, 297 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Fallacies about Genius, 306 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 Courage to Meet Life's Duties, 317 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 The Important Step, 324 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 Page. 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 Leaving Home, 338 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 Memories of Home, 347 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Tbials of Home, 352 
 
 | BAFTBI xxw i. 
 
 Sorrow and its Meaning, 359 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 Tin-: Widow's Home, 371 
 
 < HAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 Homeless Orphans, 37tJ 
 
 < HAPTER XX 
 II(»MES OF THE POOR, 383 
 
 « II AFTER XL. 
 
 Homes of the Rich, 390 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 Tin: Old-Fashioned Home, 401 
 
 OH AFTER XLI I. 
 
 On: Last Farewell of Home, 412 
 
 CHAPTER XLI 1 1. 
 
 Heaven Our Home, 421 
 
PUBLISHERS' NOTICE. 
 
 Springfield, Mass., July 2, 1883. 
 
 O THE READER : 
 
 Perhaps a word from the publishers of 
 this volume would be appropriate right here. 
 Since the date of the following introduction 
 our author has graduated from college with 
 high honors, and truly can we say that rarely 
 does any institution of learning bestow its 
 diploma upon one whose faculties are so 
 broadly developed, or who has been more earnest in prep- 
 aration for a life work in the service of mankind. Believ- 
 ing that the ministry of the following pages will ennoble 
 the heart, purify the mind and elevate that sacred spot 
 around which cluster our joys and our woes, we are 
 
 Most sincerely yours, 
 
 W. C. KING & CO. 
 
 S*S 
 
THE FOLLOWING 
 
 LETTER OF INTRODUCTION 
 
 WAS ADDRESSED TO 
 
 Rev. 0. B. Cheney, D. D., Pres. of Bates College, Me. 
 
 zrfte^ fc&c &£&/ 0jtc a^a£t^^ 
 

 
 
 
 
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 's~*r £c^C /U^^ 
 
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AN'S life's a book of history; 
 The leaves thereof are days ; 
 The letters, mercies closely joined ; 
 The title is God's praise. 
 
 MASON. 
 
THE NATURE OF HOME. 
 
 UR home is the one spot on earth where is 
 concentrated the largest per cent, of our 
 earthly interest. There are few human be- 
 ings without a home or the memory of one. 
 The vast multitude that surges through the 
 streets of the great city is made up of indi- 
 vidual souls, each of which to-night will seek 
 some place it calls home. There are those 
 who roll through* the streets with golden 
 y to palaces where brilliant lights and 
 gorgeous tapestry and plushy carpets await 
 their coming. 
 
 There are those who walk the frosty pave- 
 ment with cold and bleeding feet, whose 
 homes are in damp and dreary cellars, or in 
 the rickety garrets of vrorn and wretched 
 hovels. No lights, no music, no feasts await 
 tin in, nothing but a crust and a bed of 
 straw. And yet these places in all their 
 I wretchedness are the homes of human beings. 
 
 There is still another class of homes, where has been 
 Answered the human heart's best prayer, "give us neither 
 
16 OUR HOME. 
 
 poverty nor riches ; " where peace and joy and love and 
 contentment dwell; where industry and frugality, with 
 sunbrown hands and healthful appetite, sit at the board of 
 plenty. But whether the home be a palace, a cottage, or 
 a garret, it is home. 
 
 Home is in the soul itself; and, to a certain extent, is 
 independent of outward circumstances. Of this inward 
 home the outward is but the expression ; and yet it is doubt- 
 ful if the outward is ever a true expression of the inward, 
 inasmuch as men's ideals always transcend their experience. 
 Neither the wretched hovel where vice and hunger dwell, 
 nor the palace where lies the gilded corpse of love can be 
 a true home. 
 
 " Home is the resort 
 Of love, of joy, of peace and plenty, where 
 Supporting and supported, polished friends 
 And dear relations mingle into bliss." 
 
 Next to religion, the home sentiment is the strongest in 
 the human heart. At the name of home the better impulse 
 of every heart awakens. As the chord of the instrument 
 is dead to every sound until its own harmonic chord is 
 struck, when it vibrates and taking up the sound prolongs 
 it as if it could not let it die, so many a darkened mind is 
 dead to every appeal save that magic sound, " home ! " The 
 lives of thousands who have been snatched as brands from 
 temptation's fire will testify to the magic power of a sister's 
 early love, while the sudden remembrance of a mother's 
 "good night kiss" has stayed the assassin's dagger. In 
 
THE NATURE OF HOME. 17 
 
 the dark and loathsome dens of iniquity there are those 
 whose lips have, for years, acknowledged their Creator only 
 in oaths ; whose eyes have shed no tears, and whose ears 
 have heard only the blasphemies of drunken revelry. 
 And yet could an unseen hand write upon those walls the 
 words "Home" and "Mother's Love," lips would quiver, 
 eyes would swim, and from the depths of many a soul in 
 which the germs of truth and love had long since seemed 
 dead, would burst the heart-rending confession, — 
 
 " One© I was pore as the snow, bat I fell, 
 Fell like a snow-flake from heaven to hell, 
 Fell to be trampled as filth of the street, 
 Fell to be scoffed at, be spit on and beat; 
 Pleading, cursing, begging to die, 
 Selling my soul to whoever would buy; 
 Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread, 
 Hating the living and fearing the dead." 
 
 The powerful influence which the home sentiment 
 exerts over the minds of men was shown in a striking 
 manner a few years ago at Castle Garden, New York. 
 Some ten thousand people had gathered there to listen to 
 that sweet-voiced singer, Jenny Lind. She began with 
 the sublime compositions of the great masters of song. 
 Her audience applauded her with a respectful degree of 
 appreciation. But at length, with sweetness ineffable, 
 born of the holy parentage of genius and passion, she 
 poured forth that immortal song, "Home, Sweet Home." 
 At once the irrepressible contagion of sympathy spread 
 through that vast audience. Peal on peal of thunderous 
 
 2 
 
18 OUR HOME, 
 
 applause resounded, until the song was stopped by the 
 very ecstasy of those who listened; and when the soft 
 refrain was heard again, that mass of humanity was 
 melted into tears; the great masters were all forgotten, 
 while ten thousand human hearts knelt at the shrine of 
 a poor and obscure outcast. Why was this? Was Howard 
 Payne a greater genius than they? Must these mighty 
 names yield their places to one whom the world has for- 
 gotten ? No ; it was simply because when sorrow laid his 
 iron hand on the heart of Howard Payne, in his cruel 
 grasp he chanced to strike that chord which vibrates to a 
 lighter touch than any in the human heart save that alone 
 swept by the master's hand. 
 
 " Home of our childhood! how affection clings 
 And hovers 'round thee with her seraph wings! 
 Dearer thy hills, though clad in autumn brown, 
 Than fairest summits which the cedars crown." 
 
 The rough experiences of the roaring, toiling, stormy 
 world, may blot out all other images from the mind, but 
 the picture of our early home must hang forever on the 
 walls of memory, until "the silver cord be loosed or the 
 golden bowl be broken." 
 
 The old man may not recall all the experiences, all the 
 struggles and triumphs of his early manhood ; but every 
 feature of his childhood home, every little play-house that 
 he helped his sister build, is photographed upon his heart's 
 tablet and can never fade away. Perchance the golden 
 light of eternity will not dim the brightness of that pic- 
 
THE NATURE OF HOME. 19 
 
 ture. Whatever else the heart may forget, it cannot for- 
 get the place of its birth; it cannot forget the little 
 broken cart, the sled and the kite, the sister's fond caress, 
 the brother's generous aid, the father's loving counsel, and 
 the mother's anxious prayer. 
 
 It cannot forget the clay when a chastening hand drew 
 still closer the chords of love and bound the little circle 
 in a common sorrow ; the day when hushed footsteps were 
 in the house, and the silent rooms were filled with the 
 odor of flowers, and the garden gate swung outward to let 
 a little casket through. 
 
 " That hallowed word is ne'er forgot, 
 No matter where we roam ; 
 The purest feelings of the heart 
 Still cluster 'round our home. 
 
 " Dear resting place where weary thought 
 May dream away its care, 
 Love's gentle star unveils its light 
 And shines in beauty there." 
 
 But the ministry of home consists not alone in its fond 
 memories and hallowed associations. It is the great con- 
 servator of good, the "seeding place of virtue." It is 
 the origin of afcLcivilization. The laws of a nation are but 
 rescripts of its domestic codes. The words uttered and 
 the doctrines taught around the fireside are the influences 
 that shape the destinies of empires. 
 
 It is the influences of home that live in the life of king- 
 doms, while parental counsel repeats itself in the voices of 
 republics. We would impress upon the minds of our 
 
20 OUR HOME. 
 
 readers this grand truth, and would that we might 
 thunder it into the ears of all mankind, that a nation is 
 but a magnified home. Parliament and Congress are but 
 hearthstones on a grander scale. Those great and noble 
 characters who have left a deathless impress upon the his- 
 tory of nations were not fashioned on battle fields, but in 
 the cradle and at the fireside. They are those, moreover, 
 who at every period of life, at every turn of fortune or ad- 
 versity, have never forgotten the old home. 
 
 A mother breathes, under the canopy of a cradle, a 
 prayer that her darling boy may be a conqueror in life's 
 battle ; that the hosts of sin may flee before the sword of 
 his manly virtue, and from that cradle there arises a youth 
 with that same prayer upon his lips, and in virtue's coat 
 of mail he goes forth to battle. Harmless as the fall of 
 snow-flakes, from his helmet drop the broken arrows of 
 temptation's besieging armies. Fearlessly he marches 
 through the dismal swamps of poverty and hunger and 
 cold. With sweating brow he toils up the rugged steep 
 of knowledge, 
 
 Till full upon his vision gleams 
 The prophecy of early dreams. 
 
 Humble and modest as a maiden he receives a nation's 
 benediction with its crown. And when death's untimely 
 visit drops the veil over life's grandest triumph, fifty mil- 
 lion human hearts bow in the dust before the sable ban- 
 ners of a nation's sorrow. 
 
THE NATURE OF HOME. 21 
 
 When, think you, were fashioned the pillars of that 
 colossal character? Did they spring up to meet the emer- 
 gencies of fame and power ? No ! they were sculptured in 
 the sacred quarry of the cradle with that chisel which 
 only a mother's hand can wield. When we stand in the 
 presence of art's grandest achievements we feel like bow- 
 ing before that genius which can take from the hand of 
 nature a block of marble and hew away the chips that 
 hide a waiting angel. But the mother of Garfield took 
 from the hand of God the unformed elements of a human 
 character and shaped them into something it were blas- 
 phemy to compare with the proudest creation that ever 
 leaped from the brain of genius — a God-like man. 
 
 " O wondrous power! how little understood! 
 Entrusted to a mother's mind alone, — 
 To fashion genius from the soul for good." 
 
 No argument is necessary to convince us of the potency 
 of home influence in shaping character. There are cer- 
 tain truths to which it is only necessary to call attention, 
 and minds instinctively assent to them, and to this class, 
 we believe, h^Jong those general truths concerning home 
 which we have mentioned. Indeed, they are recognized 
 and taught in the trite maxims of every-day life. Napo- 
 leon understood well the nature of home and its mission 
 when he said, "The great need of France is mothers." 
 An old Scotch proverb says, "An ounce of mother is 
 worth a pound of clergy." Mohammed said, " Paradise is 
 at the feet of mothers." 
 
ft OUR HOME. 
 
 Might not some American statesman say, " The throne 
 of freedom's goddess is the hearthstone "? Our government 
 is a grand experiment. Its ship is on an unknown sea and 
 sails through unsounded waters. It is true that other 
 governments have styled themselves republics, but with 
 all of them there have been reservations that have made 
 them republics only in name. Ours is the first experiment 
 with a true republic. If we fail in this experiment, if our 
 government falls, the world will hear the echo of that fa.ll 
 till the end of time as a dismal, warning sound. The vic- 
 torious shout of error is the most dangerous sound that 
 can fall upon the human ear. Rest assured that our 
 government is no trifle. That ever restless spirit of 
 liberty that to-day confronts the troubled principalities of 
 Europe, is looking anxiously to the issue of our experi- 
 ment. Mothers and fathers, that issue rests with you. 
 
 Your boys are soon to take the reins of this high met- 
 tled steed, America. A nation's only hope is in them, and 
 their only hope is in you ; and the instruments which God 
 has put into your hands with which to fit them for this 
 high office, are the influences of home. You to-day are 
 writing on the yielding tablets of their hearts and minds 
 the preface to the next volume of our nation's history. 
 America should fear the disloyalty and contention of the 
 fireside more than the nefarious plots of scheming politi- 
 cians. 
 
 If your boys wrangle and contend at home, if they can- 
 
THE NATURE OF HOME. 23 
 
 not discuss with dignity the little questions that arise in 
 their daily intercourse with one another, be sure they will 
 not honor the nation when they take their places in senate 
 halls to discuss the great problems that confront the civil- 
 ization of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Now, if home may be so powerful an influence for good, 
 how important becomes the cultivation of the home senti- 
 ment. To be destitute of this sentiment is almost as great 
 I misfortune as to be destitute of the religious sentiment. 
 Indeed, we believe that one cannot possess a true and ex- 
 alted love of home while there is wanting in his character 
 that which when awakened may yield the fruit of a godly 
 life. What a mighty responsibflity rests upon him who 
 essays to make a home, for the founding of a home is as 
 sacred a work as the founding of a church. Indeed, every 
 home should be a temple dedicated to divine worship, 
 where human beings through life should worship God 
 through the service of mutual love — the highest tribute 
 man can pay to the divine. 
 
 If the home sentiment be one of the strongest passions 
 of the humafr*soul it was made such for a wise purpose. 
 The affections of the heart all have their corresponding 
 outward objects. We possess no power impelling us to 
 love or desire that which does not exist as a genuine insti- 
 tution and necessity of nature. So this strong home senti- 
 ment only proves to us that the institution of home was 
 divinely born. It is based in the very constitution of 
 
24 OUR HOME. 
 
 human nature, and so vital is the relation which it sus- 
 tains to our needs, that every heart must have a home. It 
 may not be of brick or wood or stone. It may not have a 
 14 local habitation and a name." But if not, out of the airy 
 timbers of its own fancy the heart will rear the structure 
 which it demands as a necessity of its being. We are 
 aware that there are thousands who are called homeless ; 
 but their hearts' demand is at least partially met by the 
 possession of an ideal home. The body may exist without 
 a home, but the heart, never. The world called Howard 
 Payne a homeless wanderer, yet kings and peasants have 
 implored entrance at the vine-wreathed threshold of that 
 home which he reared in the airy dreamland of poesy. 
 
 Another evidence of the divine origin of the institution 
 of home is found in its obvious adaptation to the end it 
 serves, and in the striking analogies which we detect be- 
 tween its functions and the general methods of nature. 
 
 Every growth in nature is nurtured and sustained 
 through its early existence by a pre-existing guardian. 
 The germ of the oak is nourished and protected by the 
 substance of the acorn until it is strong enough to draw 
 its food directly from the earth, and to withstand the tem- 
 pest and the scorching sun. So it must be with the germ 
 of that oak which is to wave in the forest of human soci- 
 ety. And if we wish it to become a grand and noble oak, 
 and not a hollow hearted deformity, we should look well 
 to the protection and nourishment of its early years. We 
 
THE NATURE OF HOME. 25 
 
 should see that there is the proper spiritual soil from 
 which the little human germ may gather wholesome and 
 strengthening food when it puts forth its tender rootlets 
 into the great world without. The relation which the 
 acorn sustains to the germ is precisely that- which the 
 home sustains to the child. If we were to suppose the 
 germ endowed with intelligence, we should still suppose it 
 ignorant of everything but the environments of the acorn. 
 It would, of course, be all unconscious that there is a 
 world without full not only of germs like itself, but of 
 giant oaks. So the child is ignorant of the great outward 
 world. The home is its little world and it knows no 
 other. • 
 
 Precious thought, that it never quite outgrows the bliss- 
 ful ignorance ! We take on higher and broader views of 
 life, but we are compelled by a law of our being to look 
 forever upon our home as in some way the grand center 
 from which radiate all other interests. 
 
 When the mother shades the windows of the nursery, 
 she but unconsciously imitates the Creator of her child, 
 who through flbe institution of home has shut from his 
 feeble and nascent mind the flashing colors of the too bril- 
 liant world. 
 
 But not alone for childhood is the sacred ministry of 
 home. It is the guardian of youth, a consolation amid 
 the weary toils of manhood and a resting place for old age, 
 where he, who is soon to lay off the armor, may find lov- 
 
2C> OUR HOME. 
 
 ing hearts and tender hands to guide his tottering steps to 
 the water's edge. 
 
 Again, the mature mind is only that of a developed in- 
 fant. It is still infantile with reference to the universe in 
 its entirety. Nor can it ever fully comprehend the signifi- 
 cance of life in the aggregate. Were we to attempt to 
 dwell in the great temples of the world, we should become 
 lost in its vast halls and mighty labyrinths. Hence it be- 
 comes necessary to reduce the scale of the world ; to iso- 
 late the human mind, as it were, from the vastness of ag- 
 gregate life. And this God has done in the institution of 
 home. 
 
 " Home 's not merely four square walls, 
 
 Though with pictures hung and gilded: 
 Home is where affection calls, 
 
 Filled with shrines the heart hath builded! 
 Home! go watch the faithful dove, 
 
 Sailing 'neath the heaven above us; 
 Home is where there 's one to love! 
 
 Home is where there 's one to love us! 
 
 " Home 's not merely roof and room, 
 
 It needs something to endear it; 
 Home is where the heart can bloom, 
 
 Where there 's some kind lip to cheer it! 
 What is home with none to meet, 
 
 None to welcome, none to greet us ? 
 Home is sweet,— and only sweet,— 
 
 Where there 's one we love to meet us! " 
 
INFLUENCES OF HOME. 
 
 T is a law of all initiate life that it is suscept- 
 ible to outward and formative influences in 
 an inverse ratio to its age. An ear of corn 
 while it is yet green may have an entire row 
 of its kernels removed, and when it becomes 
 it will show no lmyks of this piece of 
 table surgery. So the young child may 
 have many a vice removed while he remains 
 as plastic clay in the hands of those whose 
 privilege it is to mold the character for 
 eternity, and when he is old he will show no 
 marks of the cruel knife of discipline and de- 
 nial through which the change was wrought. 
 But if he becomes^gld before the work is begun the scar 
 will always remain, even if the experiment succeeds. A 
 bad temper in a young child may be sweetened, but the 
 acid temper of an old man reluctantly unites with any 
 sweetening influences. 
 
 We find here a striking analogy to a physical law of our 
 being. It is a well known fact that in early childhood the 
 osseous tissues of the body are soft and flexible. The 
 
28 OUR HOME. 
 
 bones may be almost doubled upon themselves without 
 breaking, but in the old the bones are so hard and brittle 
 that they cannot be bent the least without breaking. We 
 can make little or no impression upon them. They stub- 
 bornly refuse to respond to all influences. Surely it is 
 true of the body, " As the twig is bent the tree 's in- 
 clined." But it is no less true of the mind and soul. The 
 disposition of an animal may be made just what we choose 
 to make it by our treatment of it when young. 
 
 Who does not know that the disposition of the dog is 
 almost wholly dependent on the manner in which the 
 puppy is treated? This principle is recognized in the old 
 adage, " It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks." 
 
 Whatever may be our views concerning the moral and 
 spiritual relations of the human to the brute creation, it 
 cannot be denied that the laws which govern the mental 
 life of each are essentially the same. The difference is in 
 quantity rather than quality. 
 
 What a grand virtue is patience ! How charming in 
 childhood ! How sublime in manhood ! Then let us learn 
 a lesson from the ease with which patience is created or 
 destroyed at will in the young animal. 
 
 The susceptibility of children to outward influences is 
 largely due to their power of imitation, and this power 
 was, doubtless, given them for a wise purpose. 
 
 Originality is not a virtue of infancy and childhood. 
 Hence, if we would influence the acts of a child we should 
 
INFLUENCES OF HOME. 29 
 
 set him an example, we should act as we wish him to act. 
 Patient children are never reared by impatient parents. 
 
 Most of the crime and misery of the world are due to 
 the early influences of home. We may not be aware how 
 small an influence may work the ruin of a child when he 
 has inherited slightly vicious tendencies. By nature the 
 disposition of a child is the sweetest thing in the world, 
 and how beautiful, tender and sweet might become the 
 lives of all if parents were conscious of these truths, and 
 would act according to their knowledge. But they so 
 often contaminate the sweet springs of childhood with the 
 bitterness of their own lives, that we dp not wonder that 
 the old theologians so strongly believed in total depravity 
 and innate sinfulness. 
 
 Infancy is neither vicious nor virtuous; it is simply 
 innocent, and is susceptible alike to good and bad influ- 
 ences. 
 
 Its safety consists alone in the watchfulness of its 
 guardians. The soldier has his hours of duty, but the par- 
 ent in whose handsets entrusted the guardianship of an 
 immortal soul is never off duty. When the baby is asleep 
 all the household move softly lest they awake him ; but 
 when he is awake they should move and think and speak 
 more softly lest they awaken in him that which no nursery 
 song can lull to sleep again. 
 
 The young child is an apt student of human nature. 
 You do not deceive him as you perhaps think. The 
 
30 OUR HOME. 
 
 knowledge of human nature, of the motives that impel us 
 to actions, comes not from reason nor from observation. 
 It is an intuitive knowledge and is always keen in the 
 child. It acts, too, with far greater vigor between the 
 child and parent, especially the mother, than between the 
 child and others. Every look of the mother's eye is inter- 
 preted by her child with far greater accuracy than the 
 most profound student of the anatomy of expression could 
 interpret it. 
 
 The sharpest merchant may not detect the sign of dis- 
 honesty in the father's face so quickly as the child. 
 
 Parents, your child is the blank paper on which is to be 
 written the record of your own lives. Be careful then 
 what you allow to be written there, for the world will read 
 it. Do you not see that through this principle by which 
 you are instinctively en rapport with your child, an awful 
 responsibility is thrown upon you? The secrets of your 
 inmost soul are the copy which the trembling hand of your 
 child is trying to write. 
 
 The word influence is the most incomprehensible, the 
 most vast and far reaching in its significance, of all words. 
 We seldom use it in any but a literal sense, but in every 
 degree of its true meaning there is the shadow of infinity. 
 
 Philosophers tell us, not in jest, but in the profoundest 
 earnest, that every footfall on the pavement jars the sun, 
 and every pebble dropped into the ocean moves the conti- 
 nents with vibrations that never cease. Your hand gives 
 
INFLUENCES OF HOME. 31 
 
 motion to a pendulum, and in that act you have produced 
 an effect which shall endure through eternity. The vibra- 
 tion of the pendulum as a mass ceases, but only because 
 its motion has been transformed from mass motion to 
 molecular motion. Had it been suspended in a vacuum 
 and been made to swing without friction at the point of 
 suspension, it would have vibrated on forever, but the fric- 
 tion which is inevitable, and the resistance of the air grad- 
 ually bring it to rest, and we say the motion has ceased, 
 but this is not- true. The motion has not ceased, it has 
 simply become invisible. At every vibration a part of the 
 motion was changed at the point of suspension and in the 
 air into the invisible undulations of heat and electricity. 
 A moment ago the pendulum was swinging, but now 
 infinitely small atoms are swinging in its stead, and the 
 aggregate motion of all those atoms is just equal to the 
 motion of the pendulum at first. These waves of atomic 
 motion expand and radiate from the points of origin, ex- 
 tending on and on and on, past planets and stars, beating 
 and dashing against tfceir brazen bosoms as the waves of 
 the ocean beat the rocky shore. This is not the language 
 of fancy ; it is the veritable philosophy, the demonstrated 
 facts of science. Your will gave birth to motion communi- 
 cated along the nerve of your arm to the pendulum, and 
 that motion has gone past your recall, on its eternal errand 
 among the stars. What a solemn thought ! You are the 
 parent of the infinite ! 
 
32 . OUR HOME. 
 
 And yet this illustration but faintly shadows the awful- 
 ness of human influence. If a simple motion of your hand 
 is fraught with eternal consequences, what shall we say of 
 the influences of your mind ? They shall live as long as 
 the throne of the infinite. Oh, that we might impress 
 upon the minds of mother and father the awful truth that 
 an influence in its very nature is eternal. Not a word or 
 thought or deed of all the myriad dead but lives to-day 
 in the character of our words and deeds and thoughts. 
 We are the outgrowth of all the past, the grand resultant 
 of all the world's past forces. Only God can measure the 
 influence of a human thought. 
 
 " No stream from its source 
 Flows seaward, how lonely soever its course, 
 But what some land is gladdened. No star ever rose 
 And set without influence somewhere. Who knows 
 What earth needs from earth's lowest creature ? No life 
 Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife, 
 And all life not be purer and stronger thereby." 
 
 A mother speaks a fretful word to a child at a critical 
 moment, when just upon his trembling lips hangs the 
 ready word of penitence, and in his eye a tear, held back 
 by the thinnest veil through which a single tender glance 
 might pierce. But the tender glance is withheld. The 
 penitence grows cold upon his lip, the tear creeps back to 
 its fountain, the heart grows harder day by day, until that 
 mother mourns over a wayward child, the neighborhood 
 over a rude boy, the city over a reckless youth, the state 
 over a dangerous man, and the nation over the sad havoc of 
 
INFLUENCES OF HOME. 33 
 
 a dark assassin. Who can trace to its ultimate effect that 
 fretful word through all its ramifications to infinite conse- 
 quences ? That word shall reverberate through the halls of 
 eternity when planets are dust and stars are ashes. 
 
 Does any one doubt that the infinite results, in the form 
 of modified thought, speech and action, yet to be experi- 
 enced from the assassination of our late beloved president, 
 are all traceable to the early influences of home? 
 
 Who can tell how much of that enormous crime must be 
 shouldered by the parents of Guiteau? But if the ulti- 
 mate consequence of the assassin's evil deed can never be 
 estimated, neither can the good deeds of hi* victim. Truly 
 may it be said of the immortal Garfield, — 
 
 Such life as bis can ne'er be lost; 
 
 It blends with unborn blood, 
 
 And through the ceaseless flow of years 
 
 Moves with the mighty flood. 
 
 His life is ours, he lives in ns, 
 
 We feel the potent thrill, 
 
 And through the coming centuries 
 
 The world shall feel it still. 
 
 The web of human life is wove 
 
 Not with a single strand, 
 
 But every grand and noble man 
 
 Holds one within his hand. 
 
 And in that pulseless hand to-day 
 
 There lies a strand of power, 
 
 Whose gentle draft shall still be felt 
 
 Till time's remotest hour. 
 
 Of all human influences those of home are the most far 
 reaching in their results. The mutual influence of broth- 
 ers and sisters may be almost incalculable. There are 
 many men who owe their honor, their integrity and their 
 
:U OUR HOME. 
 
 manhood to the influence of pure minded sisters. Sisters 
 usually have it in their power to shape the character of 
 their brothers as they choose. There is naturally a pure 
 and holy affection existing between brothers and sisters. It 
 is natural for all brothers to feel and believe that, in some 
 way, their sisters are purer and better than others, and sis- 
 ters also believe that their brothers are nobler than the 
 brothers of their associates. This sentiment is so univer- 
 sal that we cannot help believing it was ordained for a 
 wise purpose. Of course there is the element of decep- 
 tion in it, but it is one of nature's wise deceptions. She 
 deceives us, or tries to deceive us, when she paints what 
 seems a solid bow upon the canvas of the sky. She de- 
 ceives the superstitious and ignorant when she flings her 
 chain of molten gold around the dusky shoulders of the 
 night. But these deceptions are not such as to cast any 
 reflections upon her integrity. So we may believe that this 
 sweet deception which makes angels of sisters and heroes 
 of brothers was divinely ordered to unite brothers and sis- 
 ters in closest communion and to bring them both within 
 the enchanted circle of home influence. 
 
 " I shot an arrow in the air, 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where. 
 
 ************ 
 
 " I breathed a song into the air, 
 It fell on earth, I know not where. 
 
 ************ 
 
 "Long, long afterwards in an oak 
 I found the arrow still unbroke; 
 And the song, from beginning to end, 
 I found again in the heart of a friend." 
 
B § (Q) F P 
 
BUDS OF PROMISE. 
 
 |OME as a natural institution lias for its pri- 
 mary object the nurturing of those tender 
 budfl of promise which can mature in no 
 other soil. But the human 1>u<1, unlike that 
 of the flower, does not contain its future 
 wholly wrapt up within itself, hut depends 
 &** more upon the hand that nurtures it. The 
 *$ft s rose bud, no matter in what soil it grows, DO 
 A matter what care it receives, must blossom 
 
 ▼ into a rose. No care or neglect, at lead in 
 
 any definite period of time, can transform it into I noxious 
 But on every mother's bosom there rests a bud of 
 promise, and whether or not that promise shall be fulfilled 
 
 ads upon her. Whether that hud shall hlossom into 
 a pure and fragrant rose or into the flower of the deadly 
 nightshade, is at the option of the guardian. We would 
 not, however, be understood as teaching the doctrine long 
 since abandoned by the investigators of human science, 
 
 that all are born equal as regards future possibilities, if 
 men had known the subtle laws that govern the develop- 
 ment of the human intellect, they perhaps might have 
 1 the lightning's course through the infant brain of 
 
36 OUR HOME. 
 
 Franklin, and have discerned in the nascent mind of New- 
 ton the unlighted lamp whose far-searching beams have 
 since guided the human intellect through the trackless 
 void of the night. And yet, had the guardianship of 
 these minds been different, they might to-day be baleful 
 blood-red stars in the firmament of guilt and sin. Homer, 
 Shakespeare, Milton, Washington, Webster and Longfel- 
 low each lay as a little bud of promise on a mother's 
 bosom, and yet that mother knew not that the world was 
 to thunder with applause at the mention of her dear one's 
 name. Knew not? 
 
 We will not, however, speak thus positively, for history 
 furnishes much evidence that with the birth of such a bud 
 there comes a hint of its promise ; as it were, a letter to 
 its guardian from the Creator. 
 
 So close is the relation between mother and child that 
 to the spiritually minded mother there seems to come a 
 premonition of her child's destiny. And yet this fact 
 does not in the least lighten the burden of responsibility 
 that falls on every mother at the birth of her child. Such 
 a premonition, indeed, would always be a safe guide were 
 it always given ; but a mother, through lack of suscepti- 
 bility dependent on temperamental conditions, may hold 
 in her arms unawares, that which the world has a right to 
 claim. Out from among the thrice ten thousand little 
 children that swell the murmur in the school-rooms of the 
 great cities, or with bare and sun-burnt feet patter up the 
 
BUDS OF PROMISE. 37 
 
 aisles of those dear old school-houses that nestle among 
 the hills and valleys, sacred urns that hold the childish 
 secrets and hallowed memories of a thousand hearts, out 
 from among these shall the angel of destiny select one and 
 place upon his little head the crown of Longfellow and 
 dedicate him to the service of his kind, and make him the 
 sweet interpreter of star and flower. 
 
 Mother! shall it be your boy? Do you hear in your 
 soul the gentle whisper? If you do, wherever you may 
 be, may the benediction of humanity rest upon you. May 
 your precious life be spared to watch the opening of that 
 bud of promise. As friends and neighbors assemble to see 
 the unfolding of the night-blooming cereus, so the world 
 shall watch the unfolding of that precious bud. 
 
 Let every mother act as if she held a bud of promise. 
 Let those who have not felt the premonition attribute it 
 to their insensibility. Better a thousand times bestow 
 your tenderest care upon an idiot, better believe that you 
 hold the bud of genius and awake to bitter disappoint- 
 ment, than to learn in the end that you have failed to do 
 your duty, and that a genius grand and awful like a fallen 
 temple lies at your feet in the pitiful impotence of mani- 
 fest but unused power. 
 
 But the buds of promise are not confined to the great 
 geniuses. As we said at the beginning of this chapter, 
 every infant is a bud of promise. It is not the Washing- 
 tons, the Lincolns, and the Garfields, that shape a nation. 
 
38 OUR HOME. 
 
 They are the directing forces, like the man who holds the 
 levers and valves of the engine. But, as after all it is the 
 toiling, puffing steam that drags the train, so it is the 
 great delving, toiling, sweating multitude that shapes the 
 character of nations. 
 
 1 1 was not her statesmen that made Greece grand. It 
 was the character of the common people. The mightiest 
 statesmen that the world has ever yet produced could not 
 make a grand republic in the South Sea islands. What a 
 nation needs is honest toilers ; intelligent and scholarly 
 farmers, cautious, scientific and temperate railroad engi- 
 neers, learned blacksmiths, and healthy, intelligent and 
 pious wood choppers. 
 
 Thus every mother is the guardian of a bud of promise, 
 and whether she will or not must hold herself responsible 
 for the blossom, and let her not hasten to rid herself of 
 that responsibility. That bud will open soon enough. 
 No bud develops so rapidly as a human bud. Let it re- ' 
 main a bud just as long as possible. The rose acquires its 
 perfume while its petals are folded, and the longer it re- 
 mains a bud, the sweeter will be the blossom. 
 
 Again, it is the most rapidly developing bud that soonest 
 fades. Then do not pull apart the tender petals of that 
 bud of promise in order to hasten its unfolding, lest in an 
 hour of sadness you should say : — 
 
 " And this is the end of it all: 
 Of my waiting and my pain — 
 Only a little funeral pall 
 And empty arms again." 
 
BUDS OF PROMISE. 39 
 
 There can be nothing more destructive to the promises 
 it contains than to attempt to open a rosebud with any 
 other instrument than a sunbeam. 
 
 The world is full of the withered buds of human promise 
 that have been too early torn open by the thoughtless 
 hand of parental pride. 
 
 The crying sin of American parents is their unwilling- 
 ness to let their children grow. They wish to transform 
 them all at once from prattling infants into immortal 
 geniuses. They have more faith in art than in Nature, in 
 books and school rooms than in brooks and groves. 
 
 Young children should not only be kept from school, 
 but they should be taught at home very sparingly and 
 with the greatest caution in those things which are 
 generally considered as constituting an education. Many 
 suppose that the injury of too early mental training re- 
 sults solely from the confinement within the school room, 
 but this is a great mistake. The injury results chiefly 
 from determining the expenditure of nervous energy 
 through the brain instead of through the muscular system. 
 Your young child must have no thoughts except those 
 which originate in the incoherent activity of his childish 
 freedom. 
 
 All others he has at the expense of bone and muscle, 
 lung and stomach, and ultimately at the expense of his 
 whole being. The solution of a mathematical problem is 
 as much a physical task as the lifting of a weight. The 
 
40 OUR HOME. 
 
 passion of the orator and the devotion of the saint are 
 both measured by the potentialities of bread and meat. 
 
 So that those who try to fill their little children's minds 
 with "great thoughts" and who teach them to meditate 
 upon the great realities of life, thinking thereby to make 
 them grand and great, are not only defeating their own 
 ends, but are destroying the foundations of future possi- 
 bility. They are turning to loathsome foulness the sweetest 
 perfume of those buds whose undeveloped petals they are 
 so rudely tearing apart. 
 
 The social forces of the present age are such as to render 
 young children peculiarly liable to precocity. Mentality 
 has acquired such an impetus through hereditary influences 
 that the minds of infants early commence that fatal race 
 of thought, which results in the wreck of so many thou- 
 sands of human bodies. Thoughtfulness in } r outh, and even 
 in childhood, when the physical system has become strong 
 enough to be aggressive in its relations to the natural 
 forces, cannot be too strongly urged. But infantile 
 thought is not only useless, but is a great evil, and usually 
 involves an irreparable waste of life force. 
 
 There are two great evils whose indirect influence upon 
 the world cannot be estimated. 
 
 The one is the overfeeding of infants, and the other is 
 the unnatural and abnormal activity of the infant mind ; 
 and the one evil enhances the other, for there is nothing that 
 so interferes with digestion in the young child as thought. 
 
BUDS OF PROMISE. 41 
 
 Wendell Phillips in speaking of the evils of American 
 precocity, with his characteristic and humorous hyperbole, 
 tells us that the American infant impatiently raising him- 
 self in the cradle begins at once to study the structure and 
 uses of the various objects about him, and before he is nine 
 months old has procured a patent for an improvement on 
 some article of the household furniture. 
 
 " Who can tell what a baby thinks ? 
 Who <:in follow the gossamer links 
 By which the manikin feels his way 
 Out from the shores of the great unknown, 
 Blind, and wailing, and alone, 
 Into the light of day? 
 Out from the shore of the unknown sea, 
 Tossing in pit i ful agony, — 
 Of the unknown sea that reels and rolls, 
 Specked with the barks of little souls — 
 Barks that were launched on the other side, 
 And slipped from heaven on an ebbing tide! 
 What does he think of his mother's eyes ? 
 What does he think of his mother's hair ? 
 What of the cradle-roof that flies 
 Forward and backward through the air? 
 What does he think of his mother's breast, 
 Bare and beautiful, smooth and white, 
 Seeking it ever with fresh delight — 
 Cup of his life and couch of his rest ? " 
 
CHILDHOOD. 
 
 LL animals are born in a somewhat helpless 
 condition, but none so helpless as the human 
 being, hence its necessity fur the tenderest 
 Throughout all nature it is the func- 
 tion of the mother to exercise a special care 
 over the young. The mere intellectual de- 
 for the child's welfare is not sufficient to 
 insure that degree of attention which it re- 
 quires; for the most intelligent, and even Christian moth- 
 ers are sometimes utterly neglectful of their children, 
 while the selfish and narrow minded are frequently very 
 tender in their attentions. Why is this? It is simply be- 
 cause the mother love, or more properly, the parental love, 
 is not the outgrowth of a sense of duty. It is an instinct 
 which we possess in common with the brute. It is a sig- 
 nificant fact that throughout the whole animal kingdom 
 the parents possess this instinct just in proportion to the 
 helplessness of the offspring. 
 
 The home is a universal institution, and exists among 
 the lower animals the same as with the human. It was, 
 doubtless, designed to meet the necessities arising from the 
 helplessness of offspring. The young lion could not accom- 
 
CHILDHOOD. 4i3 
 
 pany its parents in their search for food, nor could the 
 eaglet soar with its mother into the heavens. Hence the 
 necessity of an instinct that should prompt the lion and 
 the eagle to select and prepare a proper place in which to 
 leave their young while they may attend to the duties im- 
 posed by their mode of life. So reason may tell us that it 
 would be far better for us to take good care of our children, 
 and to provide for them a suitable home, but our observa- 
 tion of those in whom the instinct is weak convinces us 
 that mere reason seldom produces this result. While the 
 intellect tells us what we ought to do, it gives no impulse 
 to do it ; but instinct gives the impulse, the desire to do, 
 and when the instinct is in a healthy condition we may rely 
 on the intellect of Him who implanted the instinct, for the 
 fitness of the acts to which it prompts us. Indeed, it is a 
 law of our being that reason cannot perform the office of 
 an instinct. It may tell us that we ought to breathe inces- 
 santly, but there are few of us who would not forget the 
 duty were it not for the instinctive impulse. 
 
 Without the home instinct, the legitimate desire for 
 novelty which all possess would be left unbalanced, and 
 the whole human race would wander from place to place, 
 and the world would become one mighty caravan. With- 
 out the instinct of parental love, the child would be held in 
 the same esteem as any other person who should give us 
 the same amount of trouble. And since it is a law of our 
 selfish nature that unless provision is made by special in- 
 
44 OUR HOME. 
 
 stin. t, we cannot love that which gives us only pain, the 
 child's lot on earth would indeed be an unenviable one. 
 But the instinct transforms all the pain and trouble into 
 joy, so that the parents are not only made willing thereby 
 to incur all the troubles and anxieties which their children 
 bring, but are even made to take positive delight in incur- 
 ring them. 
 
 The home instinct and that of parental love are closely 
 allied, and so intimate is their relation that we cannot 
 doubt that they were bestowed with reference to each 
 other. It is true that many other blessings, even the 
 sweetest joys of life, are rooted in the home instinct ; but 
 these are all secondary and subsidiary to the one grand 
 end, the home of childhood. 
 
 Home is the only place where childhood can develop. 
 1 1 is there only that are to be found those influences which 
 are ny to fertilize the character of the child and 
 
 cause it to blossom and bear the fruit of a noble life. Why 
 have nearly all great men had homes illustrious for their 
 beauty, and the purity of their iniluences? The answer is 
 to be found in the fact that the soil of home contains just 
 those elements required for the growth and development 
 of the child's body, mind and soul. 
 
 Notice closely the figure, the face, the features, the voice 
 of that little street waif. Why is his frame so small and 
 shrunken ? Why are his features all crowded and pinched ? 
 Why do his eye, his walk, his voice and his manner sug- 
 
CHILDHOOD. 45 
 
 gest shriveled precocity? For the same reason that an 
 apple which has been early detached from its stem will 
 become early ripe, but never developed. Subject it to 
 whatever treatment we may, it will shrivel up and become 
 insipid, fit symbol of the boy who was early dropped from 
 the home into the street. 
 
 The home is the garden where buds become fruit. How 
 important then that the garden be kept free from weeds, 
 while it is enriched with affection and exposed to the sun- 
 light of joy. How slight an influence may serve to blight 
 that opening bud. 
 
 The child is as impressible as he is helpless. He is sim- 
 ply the raw material of a character to be fashioned by the 
 silent and imperceptible influence of his surroundings. 
 And it is this whk -h 
 
 "Plants the great hereafter in this now." 
 
 Silently as the falling of snow-flakes the character of 
 that child is forming. We cannot see the bud unfold, and 
 yet we know that to-morrow it will' be a rose. So our per- 
 ception cannot follow the growth of the child's character, 
 and yet we know that day by day its forces are gathering 
 and that soon he will become to his anxious parents a joy 
 or a sorrow. 
 
 Children are much more easily influenced by example 
 than by precept. A child may be told repeatedly that 
 dishonesty is sinful, yet if he detect dishonesty in father, 
 mother, sister or brother, he will imitate the example. 
 
4G OUR HOME. 
 
 V.u may as well tell him that sinfulness is dishonest, for 
 he knows no difference. Both terms are meaningless to him. 
 St of the thieves, robbers and murderers of the next 
 generation are now little innocent children in the arms of 
 mothers. How should mothers shudder at this thought! 
 The first evidence of passion or of evil intent, the first 
 manifestation of dishonesty, should alarm the mother like 
 the cry of fire in the night. 
 
 ' ' The summer breeze that fans the rose, 
 Or eddies down some flowery path, 
 Is but tlu> infant galt> that blows 
 To-morrow with the whirlwind's wrath." 
 
 Mothers! von cannot watch the formation of that 
 child's character with too critical an eye. By watching, 
 however, we do not mean that BU8piGiOD and donl)t which 
 are so fatal confidence of the child, but that, 
 
 without which, all yonr efforts in his behalf will be fruit- 
 less. Better a thousand times that the child, even in his 
 del years, should gaze full upon the hideous face of sin, 
 than that the silken cord of confidence be broken, that 
 binds him to a mother's heart. Liberty is the only atmos- 
 phere in which a human soul can grow. Strict literal 
 watching is both unnecessary and injurious. Confidence 
 between mother and child may become so perfect that the 
 child cannot commit a wrong without confessing it. Your 
 watching then should be directed to the maintenance of 
 this confidence, which can be ensured only by putting the 
 child upon his honor, for honor grows only by being exer- 
 
CHILDHOOD. 47 
 
 cised. With this confidence between yourself and your 
 child you will at all times be conscious of his moral con- 
 dition. You will feel in your very heart the first daw n- 
 ings of evil thought in him. And remember that it is 
 necessary you should know the evil thoughts as soon as 
 they dawn, for the conflagration that scourges with its 
 fury great cities is less dangerous at its onset than the first 
 evil thought in the heart of youth. 
 
 " Crush the first germ ; too late your cares begin 
 When long delays have fortified the sin. " 
 
 But by nature the young child is innocent, and positive 
 influences for evil must be brought to bear upon him be- 
 fore he can become otherwise. With his half divine na- 
 ture he recoils from the very sight or sound of that which 
 is wrong. Yet he is so imitative and so susceptible that 
 his clanger is nevertheless imminent, and the fact that he 
 may more readily imitate the good than the evil should 
 not relax parental vigilance. 
 
 Young children and even infants comprehend far more 
 than people generally believe. They cannot express their 
 mental operations by the use of language. Their thoughts 
 are expressed only by their actions, and how vague an 
 idea of the thoughts of the profoundest thinkers should 
 we have if our only clue to them were the mere outward 
 acts of their author. Were actions the only interpreters 
 of human thought, the world would appear to us like a 
 vast insane asylum. 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 Happiness is the only food on which the child can be 
 fed with profit. Sorrow is sometimes an excellent thing 
 for tho ■•■ spiritual digestion is sufficiently strong, 
 
 but children never should be fed on this diet. Sorrow 
 ns, but joy develops a soul. But let us not entertain 
 that foolish and cruel notion so prevalent, that hard 
 knocks, disappointment, constant work and little recreation 
 are necessary to develop the character of a child. Some 
 one has given the following beautiful piece of advice to 
 mothers: "Always send your little child to bed happy. 
 Whatever cares may trouble your mind, give the dear child 
 a warm good-night kiss as it goes to its pillow. The mem- 
 ory of this in the stormy years which may be in store for 
 the little one will be like Bethlehem's star to the bewildered 
 
 •pherds, and welling up in the heart will rise the thought, 
 " my father, my mother loved me!" Lips parched with 
 fever will become dewy again at this thrill of useful memo- 
 ries. Kiss your little child before it goes to sleep." 
 
 "Ah! what would the world be to us 
 If the children were no more ? 
 
 We should dread the desert behind us 
 Worse than the dark before. 
 
 " What the leaves are to the forest, 
 With light and air for food, 
 Ere their sweet and tender juices 
 Have been hardened into wood,— 
 
 " That to the world are children ; 
 Through them it feels the glow 
 Of a brighter and sunnier climate 
 Than reaches the trunks below." 
 
HOME TRAINING. 
 
 y^TTT^IIE training of the child necessarily begins 
 M Fri with the body, for the young child must be 
 - regarded chiefly as a young animal. The 
 animal is the first to be developed, and in 
 every well born and healthy child the mani- 
 festations of animality will precede those of 
 intellectuality. One has said, M If you would 
 make your child a good man, first make him 
 a great animal." The child's prospects of future great- 
 ness are measured in part by his stomach and lungs. 
 
 The most important period of a child's training, then, 
 is that period during which he is an animal. Nature's 
 method seems to be to form first a powerful physical sys- 
 tem, and then on this as a foundation to rear the intellec- 
 tual and the moral. If the physical is diseased the mental 
 cannot be healthy. The most important element in a 
 great man is a great body, great in health, in vital stam- 
 ina, and in its capacity to become the foundation for the 
 mind. 
 
 In view of these facts it becomes of paramount impor- 
 tance that the mother have a knowledge of physiology. 
 
50 OUR HOME. 
 
 No woman has any moral right to bear the honored name 
 of mother till she possesses such knowledge. We would 
 not place a delicate machine in the hands of one who was 
 ignorant of its structure. Not that the mother should be 
 a physician, for she generally practices medicine too much. 
 It is as important that she should know how to let her 
 child alone, as to know how to take care of him. It is not 
 necessary that she should know just what to do for him 
 when he is sick. It is much better for her to know what 
 not to do for him. It is the doctor's duty to cure him 
 when he is sick, but it is the mother's duty never to givtf 
 the doctor an opportunity to display his skill in this direc- 
 tion. Let every mother remember this fact, that the cry 
 of a sick child is the tell-tale that convicts her of sin. 
 A child never cries unless its mother has wronged it. A 
 healthy child is always angelic. No parent has any busi- 
 ness with any but a healthy child, for wholesome food in 
 proper quantities never deranged a stomach. Pure air 
 never diseased a lung. A human eye was never blinded 
 by the diffused sunlight. Teeth never decayed through 
 grinding pure and wholesome food. 
 
 No child, unless his appetite has been pampered by a 
 foolish mother, will ever crave that which it is necessary 
 to withhold from him. Nor will his appetite ever require 
 to be urged. No rational person will contend that reason 
 should usurp the place of instinct in the matter of eating 
 and drinking. Those delicate conditions of the system in 
 
HOME TRAINING. 51 
 
 which it accepts or rejects nourishment are entirely be- 
 yond the ken of reason. Through the whole animal king- 
 dom, including man, there is an instinct which tells its 
 possessor just what kind of food and how much its system 
 requires. No tests of science could determine this. Tyn- 
 dall may exhaust all his resources in trying to determine 
 whether or not a given robin has eaten enough to meet 
 the requirements of its physical nature. At his best he 
 can only estimate it, but the robin knows exactly. 
 
 We have known a mother to urge her little baby to rip 
 from her own cup of tea, and have seen her appear quite 
 grieved because the little creature with pure mind and 
 pure body instinctively rejected the proffered beverage of 
 sinful men. And after being defeated in her attempt to 
 poison and vitiate his taste, she would exclaim, "I fear 
 my child is going to be eccentric." Some mothers are al- 
 most terrified at seeing their child eat a piece of bread 
 without butter, although writers on hygiene, whose books 
 are within the reach of all mothers, are agreed that butter 
 is one of the abominations of civilization. It is not our 
 intention to write on the subject of health or diet, but so 
 long as butter, spices and other unnecessaries are admitted 
 to be evils, it seems unpardonably foolish, not to say 
 wicked, to urge the young child to use them, especially 
 since he does not desire them, and shows by his actions 
 that he would much prefer not to have his food polluted 
 with such stuff. Let the mother refrain from pampering 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 her child's appetite, or else be willing to take the conse- 
 quences when that same appetite, diseased and perverted 
 by her own hand, shall bring him home reeling and stag- 
 gering to her frantic arms. That mighty army of one 
 hundred thousand who are annually marching down to 
 drunkards' graves were, for the most part, we believe, 
 trained for that awful march by mothers. 
 
 It is admitted by all that alcohol is repugnant to the 
 unvitiatrd taste of man or beast. No child with instincts 
 pore from the hand of God will taste of alcohol. It is not 
 until his appetite has been depraved by Mrs. Winslow's 
 Soothing Syrups and other abominations. All these must 
 first be forced down his throat by the stern exercise of 
 parental authority before he learns to tolerate alcohol in 
 any form. The child's instinct is God's argument and it 
 is unanswerable. If it be true then that a healthy instinct 
 rejects alcohol, how shall we account for the almost uni- 
 versal appetite for it? There can be but one explanation, 
 some almost universal depraving agency ; and what can 
 this he but the wrong physical training to which mothers 
 subject their offspring. 
 
 The problem of home training to-day covers the prob- 
 lem of intemperance. So long as children are growing up 
 with a taste for the nostrums with which babies are uni- 
 versally poisoned the world will be full of drunkards. 
 
 But it is not alone the poisonous nostrums which de- 
 prave the appetite. The cookies, candies, sweetmeats and 
 
HOME TRAINING. b\\ 
 
 the thousand products of human depravity and a luxurious 
 civilization conspire to destroy that pure instinct which 
 God designed to be a perfect guide as regards the quantity 
 and quality of our food. We do not understand how 
 Christian mothers can consistently express their faith in 
 God while their acts show that they distrust the wisdom 
 which gave the child this instinct. 
 
 The little child is fed on flesh, pickles and highly sea- 
 soned food till he becomes sick ; then of course he cries. 
 That breaks the mother's heart and she gives him a cooky 
 to stop his crying before he goes to bed. She cannot bear 
 the idea of her child going to bed hungry. The cooky 
 may give him the colic, but what of it so long as he is not 
 hungry ! She cannot tell whether he has the colic or the 
 headache, but if he cries he must have some medicine. It 
 is of but little consequence what it is so long as it is 
 medicine. We have actually heard mothers when ques- 
 tioned as to why they gave their babies a certain kind of 
 medicine, answer that they "wished to give them something 
 and didn't know what else to give them." We presume 
 it never occurred to them to give the baby the benefit of 
 the doubt. 
 
 The disposition depends upon the condition of the 
 stomach. If that be sour, the disposition will be sour 
 also. Many a good child has had his disposition spoiled 
 with cake and candy. A tendency to all forms of deprav- 
 ity may result from a diseased condition of the digestion. 
 
B I OUR HOME 
 
 Every form of sin may originate with the stomach. Al- 
 most all of the suicides result from the mental disease of 
 melancholy. Tins disease is known by all physicians to be 
 the direct result of an affection of the liver, and the liver 
 and stomach are so related that the one cannot be affected 
 without the other. Hence a wrong physical training of a 
 child may lead to suicide. 
 
 The habit of dwelling perpetually on the dark side of 
 , as the melancholy person does, results in the perver- 
 sion and depravity of the whole mind. Thus every sin 
 may originate in the stomach. 
 
 lothers who WOllld regard the withholding of 
 tmeats from their children as cruelty. It is hard to 
 believe that Buoh persons exist, but observation forces the 
 fact upon us. Such mothers, of OOUTSC, can appreciate no 
 higher enjoyment than that of eating and drinking, and 
 they feel perfectly contented so long as their children are 
 eating something that tastes good. They never stop to 
 question whether the physical pleasure which a piece of 
 highly spiced mince pie yields their child can compensate 
 for the physical, intellectual and moral depravity that may 
 
 ult from it. The mother who gives her child candy, 
 cakes, etc., simply for the pleasure of the child, without 
 regard to their effect on his health, whatever may be the 
 character of her outward life, is in spirit a sensualist. 
 
 It is customary for mothers when their children get 
 angry and scream, to give them something that tastes good 
 
HOME TRAINING. 55 
 
 to eat. Now this is a two-fold evil. It is both a physical 
 and moral evil. It is a physical evil because it tends 
 directly to produce dyspepsia. The human stomach can- 
 not perform its functions properly while the mind is angry. 
 The adage, " Laugh and grow fat," is founded in true 
 philosophy. In order for digestion to be performed in the 
 most perfect manner there must be at the time of eating a 
 sense of peace and joy pervading the mind, making the 
 very consciousness of existence delightful. All have ob- 
 served that the dyspeptic men are those who are fretful 
 and cross at the table. The tea is too cold; the coffee is 
 too weak ; the steak is cooked too much or not enough ; the 
 potatoes should have been baked instead of boiled ; there 
 is too much saleratus in the biscuit ; or there is some trouble 
 with something — enough to cast a shadow over the whole 
 meal and cause the whole family to sit in gloomy silence. 
 
 This is not so much because dyspepsia tends to make 
 people cross at their meals, but because being cross at 
 meals makes them dyspeptics. Many men have become 
 incurably diseased by eating when they were angry, and 
 the mother who gives her child a cooky to stop his crying 
 is laying for him the foundation of a life of suffering. 
 
 Again, such a practice is morally wrong because it 
 rewards a child for being angry. In this way he learns, 
 whenever he wishes anything, to scream and cry until his 
 wish is gratified. He soon acquires such a habit that he 
 does this even though no one be near to grant the wish. 
 
56 OUR HOME. 
 
 This is his first lesson in rebellion against an unseen 
 power. As he grows older the screaming is changed into 
 onrsing, and thus originates the habit of profanity. Men 
 swear chiefly because their mot Iris gave them cookies to 
 stop their crying. When mothers learn the secret of home 
 training, all the vices that now curse the world will die out 
 for want of soil in which to grow. 
 
 All children are overfed. There is no danger that any 
 child will starve so long as its mother loves it, but there 
 great danger that it will be fed to death. 
 
 Bhl the mother, how shall I avoid these evils? 
 
 How shall I keep my child's appetite healthy? And when 
 he screams and will not be satisfied with anything but a 
 peppermint, what shall I do? These are honest questions. 
 No mother willfully injures her child by knowingly de- 
 praving his apj> id thereby all his passions. It is, of 
 
 me, through ignorance and not malice. 
 
 The the most easy ami natural tiling in the 
 
 world. Simply let the child alone; that is all. Children 
 have a divineh right to be let alone, but this right 
 
 has never been granted by man. Your child will keep his 
 own appetite healthy if you will let him. When he 
 screams for that which it is not lawful for him to have, the 
 treatment is very simple, let him scream. The human 
 mind acts from motives and never without them. The 
 child screams either to make you yield to him, or from a 
 feeling of revenge because you do not yield. 
 
HOME TRAINING. 57 
 
 Now the only way to prevent a mental act is to take 
 away the motives which prompt to the act. Hence the 
 way to break a child of the vice of screaming is to remove 
 these two motives. The first you can remove by showing 
 him that your word is law. When you have commanded 
 him to do or refrain from doing a certain thing, make him 
 understand that you will not revoke your order and that 
 further pleading will be in vain. 
 
 The second motive, that of revenge, may be removed by 
 proving to him that it " doesn't work." Show by your 
 indifference that his loud crying does not give you the 
 least inconvenience. You can accompany the music with 
 the humming of a careless tune. He will see by this that 
 his scheme of vengeance is defeated, and there will be 
 nothing left for him to do but to stop crying and amuse 
 himself as best he can. If it is time to put your little 
 child to bed, do not coax him to go and then be conquered 
 by coaxing in return. Do not be conquered at all. In 
 the first place, you should not tell him to go to bed till 
 you know that it is time for him to go, and not till you are 
 determined he shall go. It is not necessary that you be 
 arbitrary. There is no objection to arguing with him, if 
 your command at the time is not fully understood by him. 
 Try to convince him that he ought to do as you tell him. 
 In every instance the import of the word ought should be 
 kept before his mind. But if he still resists, use the argu- 
 ment of force, paying no attention to his cries and screams. 
 
58 OUR HOME, 
 
 We do not write thus coldly and unfeelingly from any 
 lack of love for little children. There is nothing in the 
 wide realm of being so lovely and pathetic as a young 
 child. There is no eloquence that can equal its prattle. 
 No mother can love her child too much. It is not the in- 
 tensity of the mother's love that we would condemn, but 
 the unwise and injudicious direction of that love. And 
 when we say the child should be let alone, we do not 
 mean thai he should be coldly neglected, but simply that 
 lie should be allowed to grow and develop in the soil of 
 his own childish freedom; that his body should be left 
 chiefly to the care of its own instinct, while the mother 
 watches the process with delight. Mothers usually make 
 much harder work taking care of their children than the 
 necessities of the case require. Most mothers may learn a 
 valuable lesson from the cat. See how she takes care of 
 her kittens. She does not doctor them ; she manifests no 
 anxiety for their physical welfare. She simply watches 
 the kitten's growth, and doesn't assume any higher pre- 
 rogative. She brings a mouse and lays it before the little 
 savage, but she does not urge the cast- in the least. If the 
 kitten does not want it, she does not say, " I 'm afraid my 
 little darling is going to be sick. Can't he eat it anyway ? 
 Please eat it for mamma." O no, she just eats it herself. 
 and does not seem to have the least fear that nature will 
 forget to bring back her child's appetite. Nor does she 
 seem to resent the kitten's refusal to accept her offer, but 
 
HOME TRAINING. 59 
 
 the next mouse is usually eaten with a relish. Thus the 
 cat is wiser than the human mother, for she is wise enough 
 to entrust to nature those things which she herself is not 
 wise enough to do. The world has yet to learn that the 
 little children are its physical and spiritual teachers. 
 When Christ would name the greatest in the kingdom of 
 Heaven he said, " Who so humbleth himself as this little 
 child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven," 
 thus making it a kingdom of little children. There was 
 philosophy in that beautiful reply of Christ. All sin con- 
 sists simply in the acts that are prompted by instincts 
 which have been depraved. Children's instincts are least 
 depraved, for they are nearest to the source of all purity. 
 Hence the child's heart must always be the truest symbol 
 of Heaven. 
 
 We do not belong to that school whose motto is " spare 
 the rod and spoil the child." We believe that untold evil 
 has resulted to the world from that false philosophy, and 
 we are glad to know that the world is rapidly discarding it. 
 To say nothing of the morality, or rather immorality, of the 
 doctrine, it is entirely unnecessary. How foolish to break 
 the sweet spell of confidence by beating and striking, 
 when the little heart can be melted in penitential grief by 
 a word ! Why use sticks and clubs when the child does 
 not fear them half so much as he does his mother's grief ! 
 Hyenas snarl and growl and strike, and some mothers snarl 
 and scold and strike. Isn't the analogy almost humiliating? 
 
60 OUR HOME. 
 
 But this method of treatment does not accomplish the 
 desired result. Whipping a child does not and cannot 
 produce any desirable internal change of character. It 
 may modify the outward acts. It may also produce an in- 
 ternal change, but only for the worse; only that change 
 which comes from perpetually harboring a feeling of ha- 
 tred and revenge. A blow struck upon unregenerate hu- 
 manity can awaken but one feeling, and that is the feeling 
 of resentment. The child always resents a blow , whether 
 it comes from his parent or from a playmate. lie 
 cannot easily be made to acknowledge in his heart that 
 the punishment is just ; and while, he believes that it is 
 unjust he will feel rebellious, and no one will contend that 
 a rebellious feeling can do much toward elevating the 
 character. The feelings of anger, hatred and physical fear 
 are among those which we have in common with the 
 brutes, and while we are under the dominion of these feel- 
 ings we cannot rise much above the brute. All know 
 how utterly depraving anger is to the whole mind, and 
 the effect of physical fear is nearly as bad. Some who 
 have been thought noble have been known when brought 
 face to face with death upon the ocean, to rudely snatch a 
 life-preserver from a helpless woman ; thus showing how 
 physical fear may j the sense of honor and every 
 
 other noble sentiment of the soul. Now what is true of 
 man under the influence of an intense fear is also true 
 of the child under the influence of a less intense fear. It 
 
HOME TRAINING. 61 
 
 is the nature of fear, whether great or small, to repress all 
 that is God-like and arouse all that is demoniac. You 
 cannot inflict corporal punishment on a child without fill- 
 ing his little heart with fear. It is a well known fact that 
 under a cruel and tyrannical teacher the pupils rapidly be- 
 come vicious and untrustworthy. This is simply because 
 of the moral repression resulting from constant fear. Then 
 do not frighten the children. Every argument that can 
 be deduced from the wide range of human nature forbids 
 us to inflict corporal punishment on children. 
 
 " But," says the disciple of the rod, " the child can be 
 made to acknowledge the justice of the punishment, and 
 ought not to be punished until he does acknowledge it. 
 By the proper argument he may be made to feel that he 
 deserves to be punished." Very well ; then he does n't 
 need to be punished. The object of punishment of course 
 is to induce penitence, and if the child becomes penitent 
 before the punishment, he certainly doesn't need to be 
 punished. Who would punish a child after he had ac- 
 knowledged that he ought to be ? Think of the mother 
 who could whip her child after he had laid his head sob- 
 bing on her bosom and said, " Mamma, I ought to be 
 whipped ! " And yet, according to the admission of even 
 the Solomon school, he should be willing to say this be- 
 fore he ought to be whipped. He must be made penitent 
 before the punishment can have any but an evil effect. 
 
 The whole truth is expressed in these two facts. First, 
 
n OUR HOME. 
 
 we ought not to punish a child till he sees and acknowl- 
 edges the justice of the punishment ; and second, when he 
 sees and acknowledges the justice of the punishment, he 
 does n't need it. Thus the doctrine of the rod is crowded 
 out entirely. There are no circumstances under which it 
 is proper to use it. 
 
 The object of all training is to develop character, and 
 not merely to secure outward obedience. A child may be 
 a model of obedience, and yet with every duty which he 
 outwardly performs he may mingle an unuttered curse. 
 
 With a horse or dog the prime object is to secure out- 
 ward obedience. We care but little about the moral char- 
 acter or the spiritual destiny of our horse, so long as he 
 obeys the whip and stops when we say "whoa!" But 
 what parent could say this of a child! The true mother 
 cares less for the outward act than for the inward. It is 
 not so much her object to make the child obey her com- 
 mands as it is to make him obey the commands of his own 
 conscience and the spur of duty. If the child is inter- 
 nally obedient to his own conscience, he will develop a 
 noble character even though he should disobey every pa- 
 rental command. 
 
 Let every parent remember that there may be a vast 
 difference between outward and inward obedience, and 
 that either may exist without the other. The child may 
 not cherish any feelings of hatred toward his parents, nor 
 have any definite sense of rebellion, yet if he obeys simply 
 
HOME TRAINING. 63 
 
 because he fears to disobey, while he cannot feel that the 
 command is just, he experiences, only in a less degree, all 
 those evil results that come from harboring the sentiments 
 of hatred and revenge. This obedience is outward and 
 not inward. 
 
 But how shall the stubborn boy be trained who seems 
 incapable of responding to any other appeal than that of 
 the rod ? Let us suppose a case, the most difficult that 
 we can conceive, and see if there are any points where our 
 doctrine would fail in practice. Suppose a mother re- 
 quests her boy to go to a neighbor's house on an errand. 
 The boy wishes to play ball and stubbornly refuses to go. 
 What shall that mother do ? " Give him a good sound 
 thrashing," the Puritan mother would say. But even if she 
 can do it now, she will certainly lack the physical power 
 in a short time, and then what shall she do ? " Turn him 
 over to his father," some one may say. A year or two 
 more will place him beyond the authority of his father, 
 then what is to be done? Here the resources of the 
 " rod " school become exhausted. He has defied the au- 
 thority of force, and has triumphed. The rod system, like 
 some systems of medicine, works well in those cases which 
 need no doctoring. As a rule the rod arouses the very 
 passion which led to the commission of the offense, the 
 very one we wish to allay. The secret of governing a 
 child is to soothe those faculties whose unrestrained ac- 
 tion gave rise to the offense, and at the same time to call 
 
64 OUR HOME. 
 
 into action the restraining faculties, those which would 
 have prevented the commission of the offense had they 
 acted at the time. One of the principal restraining facul- 
 ties is conscience, or the sense of obligation. Now all are 
 supposed to possess this faculty in some degree. Those 
 who do not, are morally deformed ; they are monstrosities, 
 and their treatment involves something more than the sub- 
 ject of "home training." We are not giving directions 
 for the management of the insane, nor the morally idiotic, 
 but for the management, training and development of 
 those who are fit to be entrusted with their own freedom, 
 those who are free agents and who are capable of becom- 
 ing men and women. 
 
 Now let us see how this doctrine will work with the 
 stubborn boy we have just supposed. He of course is 
 under the influence of anger, the very passion which the 
 mother would excite still more if she were to attempt to 
 punish him. Hence she must cool this passion by arous- 
 ing the sense of obligation. Let her appeal to his honor. 
 He has honor, but it is suppressed for the time by anger. 
 He loves his mother unless he is a fit subject for the peni- 
 tentiary, and in that case he does not come within the 
 jurisdiction of any system of home training. A system 
 must be devised expressly for him. Perhaps it may be ad- 
 visable for her to do the thing herself which she has com- 
 manded the boy to do, or perhaps it may be well to call 
 his sister and send her on the errand, with the understand- 
 
HOME TRAINING. 65 
 
 ing that it is not just for her to be compelled to do it. 
 When he remembers that his little sister has performed a 
 duty that was not hers but his, he will feel a little uncom- 
 fortable in the region of conscience. He should be re- 
 minded, perhaps, during the evening, that he is under 
 moral obligation to another who has performed a duty 
 that he refused to perform. It should be talked of for a 
 long time, and his conscience should not be allowed to 
 rest till he has paid the moral debt. No precise rule 
 can be given as to the way in which his conscience should 
 be appealed to in every instance. Circumstances may 
 vary so that any attempt at this would be impracticable. 
 The mother should be so well acquainted with the nature 
 of the child as to be able to appeal to any sentiment at 
 will, under any and every varying circumstance. 
 
 Some may object to this because it defers obedience too 
 long. But a disobedient, ungrateful and stubborn boy 
 should be regarded by parents as a misfortune, and they 
 should be happy if they succeed in securing obedience at 
 all, even if it requires days to secure obedience to a single 
 command. But if this method is practiced with the child 
 from his infancy, he will not become a disobedient and 
 stubborn boy. We have supposed an extreme case in 
 order to anticipate and fortify ourselves against the argu- 
 ment arising from such cases. 
 
 But we are well aware that many a good old mother 
 who has wielded the rod for thirty years, will, in her just 
 
 5 
 
66 OUR HOME. 
 
 egotism, point to her noble sons and daughters as a trium- 
 phant refutation of these views which she will be pleased 
 to call trash. Nor would we disregard the well-earned 
 practical knowledge of these grand women. Their egotism 
 is pardonable. Yet we shall modestly claim that they are 
 liable to be mistaken in some of tlieir views of life, and 
 when they oppose our doctrine and style it theory, we 
 shall reply that the doctrine of moral accountability is a 
 theory, but it is one that appeals so strongly to the com- 
 mon sense and intuition of mankind as to be independent 
 of the argument of actual experience. 
 
 We would not contend that injudicious training is sure 
 to spoil a child, neither will the wisest training always 
 serve to develop a noble character. The children of noble 
 mothers will sometimes be noble in spite of wrong train- 
 ing. Men have developed powerful lungs who through 
 their whole lives have breathed hardly a breath of pure air. 
 Men have had strong digestion who have abused their 
 stomachs, and intemperate men have died of old age. But 
 these are the exceptions and not the rule. For one who 
 desires to live a long life it would not be safe to be intem- 
 perate simply because a few have lived to be old in spite 
 of intemperance. Neither is it safe to follow a wrong sys- 
 tem of training because some mothers of the rod persua- 
 sion have reared a family of noble children. Such mothers 
 transmit to their children healthy bodies and sound minds 
 and good morals, and they would have developed into 
 
HOME TRAINING. 67 
 
 noble men and women under almost any system of train- 
 ing. Besides, the occasions for punishing such children 
 occur at intervals so rare that little injury can result. 
 
 In the training of the child, physical culture should pre- 
 cede all other kinds ; next should follow the training of 
 the affections. He should be taught to love only the good 
 and to hate all that is bad. After this the intellect should 
 be trained. Not however by sending him to school to sit 
 all day on a hard scat where his feet cannot touch the floor, 
 and where he learns to say "A." Little children are usu- 
 ally sent to school when they should be romping through 
 the woods and pastures. Of course we do not condemn 
 the common school system, yet there are many features of 
 it which tend greatly to neutralize the good. It were in- 
 finitely better for the race to live in barbaric ignorance 
 with sound and healthy bodies, than in the grandest civil- 
 ization with bodily weakness and physical impotency ; for 
 a barbaric race may become civilized, but a race of physi- 
 cal weaklings is doomed to extinction. And it cannot be 
 denied that the common schools, especially in the city, are 
 rapidly sapping the physical stamina of the civilized world, 
 and this is especially true in hot-headed America. 
 
 Children should be educated at home by the parents ; 
 at least till they are well developed physically. It is safe 
 to send a boy to school when he has become so strong 
 physically that no teacher can suppress his buoyancy and 
 make a man of him. 
 
68 OUR HOME. 
 
 Studiousness on the part of young boys and girls should 
 be regarded by parents as a more dangerous symptom than 
 hemorrhage of the lungs. Indeed, these are often symp- 
 toms of the same disease. 
 
 There are many and strong arguments for educating 
 children at home. In the first place, the mother is the 
 natural teacher of the child. The eagle does not send her 
 little ones to school to learn to fly, nor does she employ a 
 governess, but chooses to perform the duty herself. The 
 spiritual sympathy between mother and child enables the 
 mother to minister to the individual wants of the child as 
 no other teacher can. There are locked chambers in every 
 human soul, but in the child's there are none to which the 
 mother does not hold the key. 
 
 The public school tends to destroy the individuality of 
 the pupil, to crush out all his originality and force his 
 mind, whatever may be its natural tendency, into the com- 
 mon channel. Civilization tends directly toward physical 
 and mental diversity, and individual peculiarities, but the 
 public school does not recognize this fact. 
 
 Low down in the scale of life we notice but little diver- 
 sity. A flock of birds seem all alike. We cannot detect 
 any difference between two foxes of the same age and sex, 
 but dogs and horses differ, because for ages they have been 
 under the modifying influences of man until their condi- 
 tion corresponds to that of the civilization of man. In 
 the early ages men differed from one another far less than 
 
HOME TRAINING. G9 
 
 they do at present. Civilization and a tendency to diver- 
 sity are so closely dependent on common causes that what- 
 ever hinders the one hinders also the other. Of course 
 we would not contend that the common schools retard 
 civilization, although in this respect they certainly have a 
 tendency to retard it. 
 
 In the public schools all are compelled to take the 
 same course, regardless of their individual peculiarities 
 of talent. If a pupil is by nature poorly endowed with 
 the mathematical talent, he must go through just as fast 
 but no slower than the others. The explanations that 
 suffice for those who are mathematically inclined must 
 suffice for him also. No provision is made for taste or 
 talent. 
 
 But this is not the case when the children are educated 
 at home. Every peculiarity of talent may be provided for. 
 Then there is a great source of pleasure in the education 
 of one's own children. It tends to perpetuate the author- 
 ity which parents ought to have over their children. If 
 the child has been educated by his parent he will never 
 cease to have the highest respect for that parent. This is 
 a strong reason why parents should educate themselves 
 and keep pace with their children in all their studies ; for 
 although dutiful children will always respect their parents 
 however ignorant they may be, yet intelligent parents, 
 those capable of instructing their children, will be re- 
 spected still more. Then, if for no other reason, the chil- 
 
70 OUR HOME. 
 
 dren should be educated at home, to maintain the authority 
 of the parent and the respect of the child. 
 
 Let the mothers of our country, as far as possible, pat- 
 tern after that mother who not only trained the bodies of 
 her boys and made them physical heroes, but trained their 
 affections and made them moral heroes. Nor, indeed, did 
 her care cease here ! She has trained them intellectually, 
 fitted them for college, and sent them forth to meet on 
 life's arena those intellectual heroes who have been trained 
 at the hands of honored masters. 
 
 Men shall feel in this a beauty and a pathos to the end 
 of time, whenever the historian shall turn for a moment 
 from the crimson pictures of national strife to narrate the 
 simple story. Can those boys ever cease to respect that 
 mother? Can they ever cease to reverence her very name? 
 
 Perhaps it is not generally known that we worship God 
 with the same faculty with which we honor our parents. 
 Now the children of such mothers as we have considered 
 must feel perpetually a sense of honor and parental rever- 
 ence. This strengthens and develops the faculty with 
 which God is worshiped. Hence we see why the children 
 of such parents are usually religious. The unwritten life 
 of one such woman is a stronger argument than all the 
 silver irony of prostituted genius. 
 
 There are, of course, but few mothers or fathers who can 
 fit their boys or girls for college, and this is not necessary 
 in order to apply the doctrine we have advocated. There 
 
HOME TRAINING. 71 
 
 are but few boys and girls who go to college. Nor is it 
 necessary to keep the children home from school. The 
 mother can superintend the education of a child even 
 while he is in school. The teacher's function should be 
 something more than merely listening to the recitation of 
 the pupil. But this is nearly all that the average teacher 
 does. Hence the mother has a wide field even while her 
 child is in the public school. 
 
 There seems to be a growing tendency on the part of 
 mothers to entrust the training of their children to the 
 hands of hired nurses. This is a great error. In the first 
 place, its breaks the current of divine magnetism between 
 mother and child which ought to make the mental pulses 
 of both beat in unison. Again, it has a tendency to dimin- 
 ish filial reverence in the child. By separating him from 
 his mother at that tender age in which the links of the 
 eternal chain should be forged, we render it almost impos- 
 sible for him to love her as he ought. This is not to be 
 wondered at, for the modern fashionable mother sees her 
 child only as a visitor would see it. The child must be 
 dressed up as if to entertain strangers, and when he begins 
 to cry he is carried away at once by the nurse, while the 
 mother makes another appointment. Perhaps one of the 
 most striking manifestations of God's mercy to the race is 
 seen in the fact that comparatively few offspring are born 
 of such women — if the license of literature will permit us 
 to use the word woman in this connection. Better a thou- 
 
72 OUR HOME. 
 
 sand times that the world should be populated from the 
 slums than from such sources. 
 
 " The mother in her office holds the key 
 Of the soul ; and she it is who stamps the coin 
 Of character, and makes the being who would be a savage 
 But for her gentle care, a Christian man." 
 
REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 HE rewards and punishments of home should 
 be analogous to those, if not identical with 
 them, which God has already instituted as 
 natural rewards and punishments. There 
 should be little or nothing artificial in the 
 rewards or punishments of home. 
 
 If a child is bribed to do his duty by some 
 promise of reward, he is likely to acquire the 
 fatal habit of performing virtuous acts from 
 low motives. The approval of conscience is 
 the natural reward for the performance of 
 one's duty. If an artificial reward is substi- 
 tuted for this, the motive is transferred from 
 conscience to some selfish faculty, and the 
 whole moral character becomes depraved. 
 Hence no reward should ever be given for 
 the mere performance of duty when it is 
 B clear to the child that it is his duty. In 
 
 some cases where the desired act seems to be 
 an act of self-sacrifice on the part of the child, and one 
 which he does not understand to be particularly his duty, 
 it is perfectly right and often wise to offer rewards. But 
 
 ' 
 
74 OUR HOME. 
 
 if he is hired to do those things which his own conscience 
 plainly tells him he ought to do, he will learn to act in 
 such cases from the motive of the reward, and not from 
 that of conscience. But during this time conscience must 
 lie idle for want of something to do, and God never lets a 
 talent lie in a napkin without depreciating. Although 
 conscience might have prompted him to the same act, yet 
 if it be not the determining motive he cannot experience 
 the approval of conscience. Conscience deals with mo- 
 tives, not with acts, and, like every other function of our 
 being, grows by exercise. The food of conscience is its 
 own approval, and in order to secure its approval it must 
 afford the ruling motive. 
 
 Whenever a reward is offered, an appeal should not be 
 made at the same time to the sense of duty. It should 
 pass simply as a trade, and the child should not be re- 
 minded that there is any right or wrong about it. These 
 are the only circumstances under which it is proper to 
 offer a reward to a child. 
 
 We would not have it understood, however, that re- 
 wards should be given only for those acts which con- 
 science cannot approve. Such acts, of course, should 
 never be required nor performed at all. Rewards should 
 be offered only for good deeds, those which the conscience 
 of the child, if it were to act at all, would approve. All 
 we mean is simply that a base reward should never be 
 made to supplement conscience in such a way as to be- 
 
REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. ?5 
 
 come the ruling motive. If it be found that conscience is 
 acting at all, do not offer a reward to complete the motive 
 and make it strong enough to rule his act, but try to stim- 
 ulate conscience to a still higher degree of action, until its 
 motive becomes sufficient of itself to produce the desired 
 result. 
 
 As a rule the reward when given should appeal to the 
 mental rather than the physical. It should be something 
 which has a tendency to stimulate the thinking or invent- 
 ive powers rather than something which merely satisfies 
 a physical want. It is generally better to give a book 
 than a drum, although there are far meaner rewards than 
 a drum. Candy and sweetmeats should never under any 
 circumstances be offered. That which is unfit for an 
 adult is surely unfit to constitute a reward for a child. It 
 is a fact that the world makes its greatest efforts in re- 
 sponse to the demands of sensual gratification. Is it un- 
 reasonable to suppose that the foundation of this evil is 
 laid in childhood through the pernicious practice of re- 
 warding children with sweetmeats ? 
 
 A toy steam engine or some machine which will stimu- 
 late the constructive or inventive faculty is, perhaps, the 
 most appropriate present which can be given to a boy. 
 
 There are circumstances, however, under which it 
 would be improper to give such gifts. In case the child 
 is already too much inclined to mental activity, no present 
 should be given which will farther stimulate the intellect. 
 
76 OUR HOME. 
 
 At the present time there are many cases of this kind, es- 
 pecially in the cities. For such precocious children a cart 
 or sled or a pair of skates would be a far more appropriate 
 gift than a book or even a steam engine. 
 
 But the worst and most injurious practice connected 
 with the subject of rewards and punishments is that of 
 bribing children with promises that are never meant to be 
 fulfilled. It happens in many cases that this is the child's 
 first lesson in falsehood. All promises made to children 
 should be conscientiously fulfilled, for the whole life and 
 character of the child may be changed by a single repudi- 
 ated promise. Let no parent assume the fearful responsi- 
 bility of giving his child the first lesson in dishonesty. 
 
 The punishments of home should be, as far as possible, 
 natural'. They should consist chiefly if not wholly in 
 pointing out and making a direct application of the same 
 kind of punishment which nature herself inflicts for the 
 same offense. 
 
 For instance, the natural punishment which Nature has 
 appended to the sin of falsehood is the suspicion and dis- 
 trust of our fellow men. Hence when a child tells a false- 
 hood, he should be made to feel that he has done that for 
 which he deserves the suspicion of the whole family. All 
 eyes should be turned upon him with a pitying distrust. 
 
 Nature's punishment for selfishness is a withdrawal of 
 the sympathy and love of society, and in addition thereto 
 the defeat of its own ends. Selfishness is always defeated in 
 
REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. 77 
 
 the end. Hence when a child has encroached upon the 
 rights of his brothers or sisters through selfishness, the 
 sympathy of the family should be withdrawn, while at the 
 same time he should be prevented from reaping the bene- 
 fit which he anticipated from his selfish act. The other 
 children should be made to feel that he is actually unwor- 
 thy of their society. In certain cases, perhaps, he should be 
 banished from the society of the family and even shut up 
 in his room, as a severer punishment and as a more direct 
 and literal application of that principle which is involved 
 in the banishment to which society always dooms the self- 
 ish man. God has made society on such a plan that it 
 cannot tolerate selfishness. He has also arranged our na- 
 ture so that the very best thing for the selfish man is to 
 have society shun him. It is the medicine that will cure 
 him if he is curable. 
 
 Now is it not safe to follow God's method in punishing 
 the child for selfishness at home ? Who will come so near 
 to challenging the wisdom of God as to style this " idle 
 theory " ? If the child be defeated in his selfish purpose 
 by the parent, and he is banished for an hour or a day, as 
 the case may be, from the sympathy of the family, he will 
 come to feel by no process of logic, perhaps, but by the 
 force of habit and association, that such conduct on the 
 part of others is the necessary and inevitable accompani- 
 ment of his selfishness, that, it is founded in the everlasting 
 relations of his social nature. When he becomes a man he 
 
78 OUR HOME, 
 
 will receive the same kind of punishment from society if 
 he still persists in his selfishness. He will then perceive 
 that the punishment is rational and inevitable, and that 
 the relation between it and the offense is constant and nec- 
 essary. If any other method is pursued the child will in 
 the course of his life be subjected to two kinds of punish- 
 ment for the same offense, one an arbitrary and the other 
 a natural one. The human mind is unable to perceive any 
 necessary relation between the crime of selfishness and the 
 pain inflicted by an angry parent with a birch stick. 
 There is no logical relation between them, and as a natural 
 consequence the child rebels, at least spiritually, and 
 hence is made more selfish than before. He will be more 
 and more selfish as he grows older, and when he comes to 
 receive the natural punishment from society for his sin, he 
 will rebel against that from the mere force of habit. He 
 will come to hate society. He will be cold and cynical. 
 He will come to entertain a morbid sentiment of ill will 
 toward society, and, spurred on by the feeling that the 
 world owes him a debt, he may be led to commit some 
 dark and dreadful crime against his fellowmen. It is not 
 impossible that a large per cent, of the pirates, robbers, 
 and murderers are such because of the unwise and illogical 
 relation between the offenses and punishments of their 
 childhood. 
 
 One has truthfully said, " Caprice or violence in cor- 
 recting will go far to justify the transgressor in his own 
 
REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. 79 
 
 eyes at least ; he will consider every appearance of injus- 
 tice as a vindication of his own aggression." Who has not 
 seen a confirmation of this among school boys ? Often a 
 boy is whipped by a teacher when if properly managed he 
 would willingly express his sorrow for the offense. But 
 after the whipping he goes sullenly to his seat muttering 
 to himself, "I'm glad I did it." He is glad he did it 
 because he feels that his teacher has wronged him, and 
 that in a certain sense the offense which he himself has 
 committed makes them even. Human beings, and espe- 
 cially children, when under the influence of anger, are not 
 very reasonable, and are not inclined to take very impar- 
 tial views of subjects. 
 
 But it may be said that he ought to look at it differ- 
 ently ; that he has no right to look at it so partially; that 
 the case is plain if he will look at it rightly. Very well, 
 but if he doesn't look at it rightly, the facts of the case 
 are of no benefit to him, and he receives all the injurious 
 results to his moral nature that he would receive if the 
 facts were on the other side of the case. 
 
 There is no possible human act that is not right or 
 wrong ; if right it is self rewarding, and if wrong it is self- 
 punishing. It is the function of human authority to teach 
 the transgressor wherein his transgressions punish them- 
 selves. 
 
 " A picture memory brings to me: 
 I look across the years and see 
 Myself beside my mother's knee. 
 
80 OUR HOME. 
 
 " 1 feel her gentle hand restrain 
 My selfish moods, and know again 
 A child's blind sense of wrong and pain. 
 
 u But wiser now, a man gray grown, 
 My childhood's needs are better known, 
 My mother's chastening love I own. 
 
 " Gray grown, but in our Father's sight 
 A child still groping for the light 
 To read his works and ways aright. 
 
 " I bow myself beneath his hand; 
 That pain itself for good was planned, 
 I trust, but cannot understand. 
 
 " I fondly dream it needs must be, 
 That as my mother dealt with me, 
 So with his children deaieth he. 
 
 " I wait, and trust the end will prove 
 That here and there, below, above, 
 The chastening heals, the pain is love! " 
 
E M E M T S , 
 
AMUSEMENTS FOR THE HOME. 
 
 iHE human mind demands amusement. One 
 of its constituent elements is a love of fun. 
 No innate demand of the mind can be denied 
 without injury. Amusement and fun are as 
 * essential to the growth and development of 
 the young mind as sleep, or any form of 
 exercise. Hence we have no sympathy 
 with that system of home government 
 which suppresses this element in the chil- 
 dren. Such systems are suicidal, and one 
 can hardly help doubting the genuineness 
 of that religion that imposes perpetual 
 melancholy as one of its tenets. It has 
 been said that Christ never was known to 
 laugh but often to weep, and if he foresaw the existence 
 of that creed that suppresses laughter as one of the cardi- 
 nal vices, it is no wonder that he never laughed. But 
 there is no evidence that he did not laugh. The character 
 of his mission was such as to render any record of his 
 lighter moments entirely out of place. It is, however, a 
 well known fact that Christ was of a thoughtful, serious 
 
 6 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 cast of mind, and even if it could be proved that he never 
 laughed, the fact would have no weight as an argument 
 against laughter among us. We are not expected nor 
 required to follow his example in all things, for this would 
 be impossible. Marriage is a divine institution and im- 
 poses obligations upon us from which Christ by virtue of 
 his nature and work was exempted. 
 
 Were it not for the superstitious folly of so many peo- 
 ple, what we have said on this phase of the subject would 
 be entirely superfluous. Probably but few Christian peo- 
 ple at the present day would openly acknowledge that they 
 have conscientious scruples against laughter, yet there are 
 thousands of stern fathers who virtually suppress all laugh- 
 ter in their homes, as a religious duty. They would not 
 acknowledge to themselves even that they believe laughter 
 to be wrong in the abstract, and yet somehow or other 
 they manage to resolve every occasion for laughter into 
 something that ought to be suppressed. 
 
 It is the duty of the parents to make home pleasant and 
 agreeable, and even to furnish occasions for merriment and 
 fun, as much as it is to furnish food and shelter. Children 
 should not be required to remain quiet and sedate during 
 the long evenings simply because the stern father wishes 
 to read the newspaper. If he wishes to read aloud some- 
 thing that would be interesting to the children, it is proper 
 to do so. All parents should consider themselves under 
 obligations to furnish at least one paper or magazine ex- 
 
AMUSEMENTS FOR THE HOME. 83 
 
 pressly for the children. Not one of the ponderous and 
 somber journals of Zion, but one full of light jokes, inter- 
 esting stories, and such information as children desire and 
 can appreciate. Of course the father and mother are to be 
 allowed time to read their religious and political papers, 
 and their scientific books; but the children's right in this 
 respect must not be encroached upon. It will not hurt 
 the father or mother to read aloud from the " Youth's 
 Companion " or some other paper of similar character, or, 
 perhaps, what is better still, they can lay aside their own 
 paper and listen and be interested while one of the older 
 children is reading. 
 
 Reading aloud by parents and children is one of the 
 most useful sources of amusement in every home. In addi- 
 tion to the amusement, valuable information would be ob- 
 tained, also healthful vocal exercise and elocutionary drill. 
 
 Another source of amusement, peculiarly appropriate 
 for the home, and one of which we never tire, is music. 
 The money spent for a musical instrument is not thrown 
 away. Every home should contain some such instrument, 
 and there are but few families that cannot afford a piano 
 or an organ. There is something in the nature of music 
 that tends to evolve harmony in the hearts of those who 
 jointly produce it or listen to it. There is something of 
 philosophy in the oft quoted words of Shakespeare : 
 
 " The man that hath no music in himself, 
 Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sounds, 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." 
 
84 OUR HOME. 
 
 It is probable, however, that the author used this word 
 music in the broadest sense of poesy, yet even in its 
 restricted sense there is the semblance of truth. The 
 world presents us with many examples of grand and noble 
 souls that are deaf to the pleadings of the harp, and yet 
 the fact remains untouched that music is the language of 
 the highest souls. Eloquence holds a wand for the soul's 
 lofty moods, and yet there is an altitude in whose rarefied 
 atmosphere the soul is dumb, and in the frenzy of despair 
 seizes the harp and the viol. From these spiritual beati- 
 tudes on whose hushed summits the veil is rolled back, 
 there comes no message save in wordless strains. 
 
 We cannot stand beside a friend in the presence of 
 music without feeling the ties grow stronger. The spirit's 
 invisible arms clasp each other. Neither can we stand be- 
 side an enemy without feeling the timbers of hatred that 
 have braced our souls apart, give way, and before we are 
 aware our spirit proclaims him friend. 
 
 How peculiarly appropriate, then, as a home amuse- 
 ment, is music. As well might you drive love from home 
 as to exclude music. Let the boys learn to play the vio- 
 lin ; and let the girls play the organ or piano. Let the 
 home be a perpetual temple of song. 
 
 A silent home, where there is no music nor reading and 
 but little conversation, is a dull and sad place for the 
 young. Children do not like to stay long in those places 
 where their only entertainment is their own thoughts. 
 
AMUSEMENTS FOR THE HOME, 85 
 
 There is nothing worse for a child than subjective think- 
 ing, thinking of his own thoughts. It leads to habitual 
 melancholy, and this state is so thoroughly unnatural for a 
 child that it cannot exist without enfeebling both mind 
 and body. Those who commit suicide will be found in 
 almost every instance to be those who were led to sub- 
 jective thinking during the long winter evenings of their 
 childhood. 
 
 A boy cannot maintain health of body without laughter, 
 merriment, and fun. We have every reason to believe 
 that a lamb would not maintain its bodily health and grow 
 to be a mature animal if it were prevented from running 
 and frolicking. 
 
 Most especially does the feeling of merriment assist the 
 digestive function. This idea is already prevalent among 
 the people, and yet there is too little abiding faith in the 
 medicinal virtue of fun. Our meals should be scenes of 
 uninterrupted merriment. It is a fact universally ac- 
 knowledged that the American people eat too rapidly for 
 the good of their health. Now there is nothing that 
 checks rapid eating like fun and merry conversation. 
 One of the evils of Puritanism, which we have not yet 
 outgrown, was the idea that cheerful conversation is unbe- 
 coming at meals. The children were taught to eat in si- 
 lence at the second table, under the awful superintendence 
 of their parents, who had eaten up all the good things. 
 The eating up of the good things, however, was not half so 
 
86 OUR HOME. 
 
 cruel as it was to compel them to put on long faces, and 
 be men and women, and eat in silence. The free ventila- 
 tion, the hard work, and the simple fare which they en- 
 joyed prevented them from having the dyspepsia. But 
 we cannot tell how thoroughly their stomachs and livers 
 were prepared by such treatment at meal time, to give the 
 dyspepsia to the next generation. It is not at all an ex- 
 travagant belief, that much of the dyspepsia of to-day had 
 its remote origin among the Puritans in their cruel sup- 
 pression of childish mirth at the family board. There are 
 families in which the Puritanic idea is still prevalent, that 
 " children should be seen but not heard." We have no 
 sympathy with that doctrine. Such an idea could have 
 originated only in parental selfishness. In the days of our 
 grandfathers the children were, indeed, pitiable creatures. 
 But we are gradually becoming more civilized on this 
 point. The same principle in human nature that has 
 given rise to societies for the u prevention of cruelty to an- 
 imals " has so modified our sentiments toward children 
 that we no longer regard them as so many wild beasts put 
 into our hands to be tamed. Children are now allowed to 
 spend most of their time in the pursuit of fun and to laugh 
 at meals. 
 
 Parents should mingle with their children in their sports 
 and games. It is not unbecoming to a mother or a father 
 to play with a child, but, on the contrary, it is quite be- 
 coming ; and in so doing a parent is discharging one of the 
 
AMUSEMENTS FOR THE HOME. 87 
 
 highest duties that have been imposed upon him. This is 
 not the task it may seem- to be. Thetfe is something in 
 the relation of parent and child that makes the parent 
 take positive delight in that which delights the child. 
 Every mother knows this to be true. There is that in the 
 experience of every one which testifies to this. We all feel 
 an interest in those things which interest the ones we love. 
 This principle has an influence even over the senses. Ar- 
 ticles of food which we do not ordinarily like, when eaten 
 in the presence of a loved one who does like them, actu- 
 ally become savory to us. We are made by this principle 
 to fall into the same line of thought and feeling with those 
 we love. And hence the mother experiences almost as 
 much delight from playing with a cart as does her child. 
 This same principle doubtless accounts for the fact that 
 all animals play with their young. This is Nature's argu- 
 ment. The cat and dog, however old and dignified, al- 
 most continually play with their young ; so does the 
 lion, and probably all wild animals. Animals that cannot 
 by any other possible means, be induced to manifest the 
 slightest degree of pla} T fulness, are full, or appear to be 
 full, of fun and frolic while rearing their young. Do not 
 these facts proclaim a natural law? Playing with chil- 
 dren is a subject of more importance than most people are 
 aware of. 
 
 The oldest of a family of children often has a bad dispo- 
 sition, and it is doubtless due to the fact that it had no 
 
88 OUR HOME. 
 
 older playmates. It seems to be a law of the child's na- 
 ture that in order to properly develop he requires an older 
 playmate. 
 
 The younger members of the family are provided for in 
 this respect by the older ones, and accordingly their dispo- 
 sitions are better, and their minds are usually more sym- 
 metrically developed. Now, if parents would heed this 
 law and become the intimate associates and playmates of 
 their children while they are young, no such disparity of 
 disposition and character would be found. 
 
 The chief reason why so many children become dissatis- 
 fied with their home and desire to leave it at the earliest 
 possible opportunity, is because they have not had happy 
 homes ; and unhappy homes are seldom looked back to 
 with tender thoughts in after years. But let them keep 
 the old time feeling in their hearts that " there's no place 
 like home," and when the hour of reunion draws nigh with 
 its glad tidings and joyful welcome they will not send 
 the cruel telegram of two words, " business pressing," but 
 will come with open hearts, and smiling faces, bringing 
 back again the same feeling that they carried away, that 
 " there's no place like home." 
 
 But children are not the only beings that require amuse- 
 ments. All require it, even the aged. Absolute rest is 
 not the thing required by the father when he comes home 
 from the shop, the office, or the store. Human beings 
 need but very little of that kind of rest beyond what they 
 
AMUSEMENTS FOR THE HOME. 89 
 
 get during the hours of sleep. If there could be found a 
 vocation in which all the faculties should be exercised 
 alike, those engaged in such a vocation would require no 
 amusement beyond what would necessarily result from 
 exercising the faculty of mirth equally with the other fac- 
 ulties. But the relations of human life afford no such vo- 
 cation, hence the wisdom of making special provision for 
 amusements. 
 
 Suppose we have a complicated machine, only a part 
 of which is in action, half of the wheels remaining motion- 
 less. Now suppose we discover that the machine is wear- 
 ing out in that part which is constantly exercised. What 
 shall we do to maintain the symmetry of the machine 
 and prevent it from becoming in a short time useless? 
 Will it be sufficient to simply stop the machine a few 
 hours or days and then start it again ? Surely not, for 
 half of it is now actually rusting out from the want of 
 being used. One half needs rest and the other part needs 
 action in order to check the process of destruction. Hence 
 the only way to accomplish the desired result is to stop 
 the part that has been continually running and start the 
 other part. 
 
 This illustration explains the whole philosophy of amuse- 
 ments and recreations. Man does not need to rest, but 
 simply to start up the other half of his vital and mental 
 machinery, and home furnishes the only adequate motive 
 power. 
 
90 OUR HOME. 
 
 " Frown not, when roistering boys or toss or strike 
 The bounding ball, or leap or run or ride 
 The mastered steed that, as the rider, loves 
 The rushing course, or when with ringing steel 
 The polished ice they sweep in winter's reign; 
 All pleasing pastimes, innocent delights, 
 That gladden hearts yet simple and sincere, 
 Let love parental gather 'round the home, 
 And consecrate by sharing ; let it watch 
 With kind, approving smiles each merry game 
 That quickens youthful blood, and in the joy 
 That beams from crimson cheeks and sparkling eyes 
 Its own renew, and live its childhood o'er." 
 
HOME SMILES. 
 
 SMILE is the most useful thing in the world 
 in proportion to its cost. It costs absolutely 
 nothing, but its utility is often beyond esti- 
 mation. It comes as the involuntary and 
 irrepressible expression of a sentiment that 
 lies at the basis of human society. Smiles 
 constitute a part of our language. There 
 seem to be certain combinations of words that 
 require to be supplemented with a smile be- 
 fore they can have any meaning to us. 
 The human soul, shrouded in the mysteries of personal- 
 ity, yearns to know the essence of other souls, as it were, to 
 touch a hand in the dark, and smiles are the electric 
 flashes that illumine the wide gulf that separates indi- 
 vidualities. 
 
 There is a mystery in what we call acquaintance. Ac- 
 quaintance, however, is not the proper word, but since 
 human language affords no apter one we shall be obliged to 
 use it. Why should we say that we are acquainted with 
 this one and not with that one ? Acquaintanceship does 
 not consist in a knowledge of an individual's peculiarities 
 of character or disposition, for we sometimes feel ac- 
 
92 OUR HOME. 
 
 quainted with persons whose minds are sealed books to us. 
 We cannot understand them. Their thoughts are mysteri- 
 ous and unfathomable, and they always seem to take a turn 
 which was wholly unexpected to us and which we cannot 
 account for, and yet we feel perfectly acquainted with 
 them. 
 
 There are others whose minds are as transparent as glass. 
 Their mental operations are performed, as it were, in the 
 sight of all. We can almost anticipate their very thoughts, 
 and yet we would not think of speaking to them because, 
 as we say, we are not acquainted with them. 
 
 Acquaintance is not a conventionality of society, for it 
 may be observed in those rude and primitive communities 
 where the mere conventionalities of society have little 
 weight. It is more strongly manifested in little children 
 even before they can talk than in older people. This 
 shows that whatever acquaintance may be, it is natural 
 and not artificial. In what then does it consist? What 
 passes between two souls when a third party says, " this is 
 Mr. , Mr. " ? There is usually some form of salu- 
 tation, as the bow or the shaking of hands ; although there 
 is nothing of a permanent or essential nature in these, for 
 the mode of salutation differs in different nations and com- 
 munities. The Turks fold their arms across the breast 
 while bowing ; the Laplanders touch their noses ; and in 
 Southern Africa they rub their toes together. 
 
 But there is one act that accompanies all these different 
 
HOME SMILES. 93 
 
 modes, one rite that never varies. It is the smile. The 
 philosophy of acquaintance is wrapt up in the philosophy 
 of the smile. When two smiles have met, two souls are 
 acquainted. A smile is the sign that a soul gives when it 
 would examine another soul. 
 
 Every soul in the universe lives alone. There is a 
 dark curtain dropped before the window of its house 
 which hides it from the view of all. Every one has felt 
 his loneliness even in the midst of crowds. Souls cannot 
 come into contact, but they can draw aside the curtain 
 from the window. To smile is to draw aside the curtain. 
 The fondest souls can do no more. Even lovers must 
 caress through a window. 
 
 At home, these curtains should often be drawn aside, for 
 there is nothing so fatal to a home as to have its members 
 become unacquainted with each other. And there is noth- 
 ing so difficult as to renew the acquaintance of brothers 
 and sisters, when once it has been lost. When they begin 
 to be restrained and self-conscious in each other's society ; 
 when they begin to review with indifference those phases 
 of life over which they once smiled and wept together, — 
 they are unconsciously, perhaps unwillingly, cutting each 
 other's acquaintance. There is no sadder sight on earth 
 than that of a brother and sister who are unacquainted. 
 The coldness and reserve that springs up between the 
 members of so many families originates in a lack of 
 " smiles at home." 
 
94 OUR HOME. 
 
 By smiles we do not mean that which takes the place of 
 loud laughter when the occasion is insufficient to provoke 
 us to more noisy demonstrations. Nor do we mean either 
 the transient smile with which one regards the ludicrous, 
 or the habitual smile that often accompanies a low degree 
 of thought-power. There is a smile that originates neither 
 in the sense of the ludicrous, nor in thoughtlessness. Like 
 certain articles of dress such smiles are becoming on all 
 occasions. They sit with equal grace upon the brow of 
 joy and of sorrow. They seem as appropriate when they 
 wreathe the mother's thoughtful face as when they live in 
 the dimpled cheek of laughing girlhood, or with their 
 magic play transform the eyes to twinkling stars. 
 
 These are the smiles with which we would adorn every 
 home. We would set them as vases of flowers in every 
 house. 
 
 Smiles should be the legal tender in every family for the 
 payment of all debts of kindness, and each member should 
 be willing to take this currency at its face value ; for its 
 value is beyond the reach of those disturbing influences 
 that shake the world of commerce. And, what is better 
 than all, it can never be demonetized, for it bears the 
 immutable stamp of the divine government. 
 
 Let the members of the family, almost as often as they 
 meet, greet each other with a smile, for eyes that meet in 
 full gaze without a smile soon grow cold. The mother, if 
 she would keep the confidence of her son, must be lavish of 
 
HOME SMILES. 95 
 
 her smiles. Mothers often weep in the presence of their 
 sons on account of the anxiety that they feel for them. 
 This is a great error, for in the first place it leads a young 
 man to conceal that which he believes would displease his 
 mother. This is often the beginning of a fatal reserve. 
 Besides, it causes him to feel that his mother has not con- 
 fidence in him, and that however much she may love him 
 she fears to trust his honor. 
 
 The smile is nature's cure for the disease of bashfulness. 
 This disease is simply the fear which one soul experiences 
 in approaching another. But the smile is an instinctive 
 effort to suppress the fear and to know the soul. 
 
 A knowledge of this principle would be of great service 
 to those having the charge of bashful children. Strangers 
 should always encourage a smile in a bashful child. Such 
 children should be met with smiles rather than with words. 
 The smile is the only form of salutation that a bashful 
 child can use. He cannot speak to a stranger in audible 
 language, but if the stranger will consent to use the lan- 
 guage of smiles he may almost always gain quick admis- 
 sion to his confidence. When the bashful child smiles and 
 blushes and hangs his head in the presence of strangers, 
 there is great hope that he will outgrow the infirmity, for 
 the smile is an instinctive effort to overcome it. But 
 where the child is not inclined to smile there is little hope, 
 and the malady usually degenerates into moroseness and 
 oddity. 
 
96 OUR HOME. 
 
 The habitual smiler is never a dyspeptic. Smiles pro- 
 mote the general health and are especially fatal to any dis- 
 ease of the stomach or liver. 
 
 Smiles also promote the growth of the religious senti- 
 ment, because they cannot thrive without a constant sense 
 of obligation to others. Especially do they tend to culti- 
 vate benevolence, for every smile is a gift, and benevolence 
 grows by giving. There are few souls that can " smile, 
 and murder while they smile." None indeed can murder, 
 while they smile from the heart. There may be the same 
 movement of the facial muscles, but smiles are not merely 
 contractions of certain muscles. They are mental acts. 
 
 The actor may give the outward expression of a smile, 
 and murder while he smiles, but the words of the great 
 dramatist are not true of a single human soul except the 
 smile be spurious. 
 
 " Sweet is the smile of home; the mutual look 
 Where hearts are of each other sure ; 
 Sweet all the joys that crowd the household uook, 
 The haunt of all affections pure." 
 
JOYS OF HOME. 
 
 §| OY is the natural and normal condition of 
 every human soul. To be genuine and per- 
 manent it must depend chiefly on internal 
 instead of external conditions. Every nat- 
 ural function both of the body and of the 
 mind is attended with pleasure and never 
 with pain, unless it be the penalty for a 
 broken law. If walking is not pleasurable, 
 it is because there is some trouble with the 
 physical system. If daylight does not bring 
 to the eye positive pleasure, it is because the 
 eye is diseased and there is ^ maladjustment 
 between it and the light. The difficulty is 
 always on the part of the eye and never on the part of the 
 light. When the song of birds, the sighing of the breeze, 
 the rippling of the brook, the chirping of the insect &nd 
 the thousand voices of nature do not bring to the ear and 
 soul the exquisite sense of divine harmony, it is because 
 sin with rude hand has broken the chords of the spirit's 
 harp. We always hear music at second hand, just as we 
 see beauty. Hence it has been said that " beauty is in the 
 eye of the gazer, and music is in the ear of the listener." 
 
 7 
 
98 OUR HOME. 
 
 There is philosophy in this saying, for all the music that 
 we hear is that which the soul itself produces when it re- 
 sponds to the myriad voices from without. These sounds 
 and voices from nature, God's great orchestra, must be re- 
 produced by the soul's response before they can become 
 music to us. It is not the music without that we hear, but 
 the spirit's imitation of it. 
 
 If, then, the soul be tuned to the same key so as to give 
 a true response, rest assured that our lives will be filled 
 with harmony and joy, for God's hand never strikes a dis- 
 cord. 
 
 The secret of human joy, then, is to keep the spirit's 
 harp in tune. To the spirit whose harp is out of tune, the 
 clouds are but unsightly rags with which the mantle of 
 the sky is patched ; the mountain in its grandeur is but an 
 eminence that is hard to climb ; the sublime thunder of 
 Niagara is but a loud noise that makes it difficult to sleep ; 
 while the songs of birds, the patter of the rain, the laugh- 
 ter and the voices of the woods are but the troublesome 
 prattle of Nature's children. 
 
 Joy cannot be bought with gold. There is but one 
 thing that Nature will take in exchange for it, and that is 
 obedience to the divine laws of our being. Joy is the 
 only legitimate and necessary product of every normal and 
 healthy function. It is absolutely impossible for any 
 function of our being, if healthy and normal in its action, 
 to produce anything but joy, no matter what may be the 
 
JOYS OF HOME. 99 
 
 outward conditions. The truest and highest joy is a prod- 
 uct of health, and is but partially dependent on external 
 conditions. 
 
 Nature aims at no other grand result than that of joy. 
 She has created the myriad varieties of fruit for the pleas- 
 ure of the palate. For the joy of the eye she has painted 
 on the earth's green canvas the gentle hints of heaven, and 
 bathed the picture in the liquid silver of the sunlight. 
 For the ear she has filled the earth with harmony divine. 
 For the joy of our social and domestic natures she lias 
 instituted the home, the fireside and society. For our in- 
 tellectual nature she has filled the universe with problems, 
 the solution of which gives us exquisite pleasure. For our 
 spiritual nature she has given the heavenly reward of an ap- 
 proving conscience. Thus is joy the eternal aim of Nature. 
 
 On whom then rests the blame when life's joys are tar- 
 nished and its sweetness turned to bitterness? Whom 
 shall we blame for the strained and weakened eye that 
 makes the sunlight painful ? Whom shall we blame for 
 the overwrought brain that makes causation and all prob- 
 lems irksome ? Whom shall we blame for the seared and 
 deadened conscience that makes duty a task and honor a 
 burden? We fancy that the conscience of none of our 
 readers is yet so far deadened that he will not quickly an- 
 swer, " I myself am to blame." 
 
 The clamor for joy and pleasure, then, when rightly in- 
 terpreted, is a universal call to duty, for the reward of 
 
100 OUR HOME. 
 
 duty is unalloyed joy. Tis a call to study and mental 
 discipline ; for the fruit of culture, like that of duty is joy 
 and only joy. It is a call to physical obedience and to the 
 cultivation of health ; for joy is the necessary and insep- 
 arable accompaniment of these, and without them it can- 
 not exist. Let the reader remember this one fact, that 
 obedience to the physical, intellectual and moral laws of 
 our being is the only condition that Nature imposes upon 
 us, and when this one condition is complied with she will 
 shower upon us joys untold. She will make the breath of 
 morning a source of exquisite delight. The very conscious- 
 ness of existence will thrill us with that joy which all have 
 felt at rare intervals, undefinable, and too subtle for any 
 analysis. External objects and conditions seem to play 
 no part in the program. At most they are only the occa- 
 sions and not the causes of the joy. We look into the 
 face of a friend or out over the sheen of a lake and we feel 
 an unutterable joy coursing through all the channels of our 
 being, and welling up in gurgling laughter; and we cannot 
 for our lives tell why we laugh. The joy that comes to 
 perfect health with the sweet intoxication of the morning 
 dew, is " the purest and sweetest that Nature can yield." 
 Such is the bountiful reward of Nature for obedience to 
 her laws. 
 
 We have dwelt thus at length on the laws that govern 
 the emotion of joy because they have an important bearing 
 on the subject of which we are treating. 
 
JOYS OF HOME. 101 
 
 The fireside is the only spot where it is possible to obey 
 all the laws of our being : hence it is the only spot where 
 supreme joy can exist. Domestic joy is the only joy that 
 is complete. 
 
 Truly has the poet said : 
 
 "Domestic joy, thou only bliss 
 Of paradise that hath survived the fall." 
 
 Man may cultivate his intellect and derive pleasure from 
 obedience to its laws, even though he may not have a home. 
 He may derive a joy from obedience to the laws of his 
 moral nature while he is a hermit or a wanderer. He may 
 even derive some enjoyment from partial obedience to 
 the laws of his social nature. But all enjoyment from this 
 source must be partial, because all obedience to the social 
 law must be incomplete outside the domestic circle. The 
 family is the truest type of society. 
 
 But without a fireside man's domestic nature, from which 
 he derives by far the largest amount of his earthly enjoy- 
 ment, cannot but remain cold and entirely inactive. This 
 department of his nature can be kept alive only by the heat 
 of the hearth-stone. The home is the place where all the 
 joys of life may exist in their ripest fruition. 
 
 Even the intellectual nature, which is the farthest re- 
 moved from the sphere of domestic influence, cannot be 
 developed to its fullest possibility outside of the home ; for 
 the boy requires in the first stage of his intellectual devel- 
 opment the wholesome spirit of rivalry and emulation that 
 
102 OUR HOME. 
 
 exists among children of the same household. In every 
 stage he needs the stimulus of honest commendation, and 
 this comes in its purest and most useful form from the 
 members of the same family. 
 
 The joys peculiar to the moral and spiritual nature must 
 be only partial, and far below what this part of our be- 
 ing is capable of yielding, unless it be cultivated in the 
 sanctuary of home. Conscience must be kept sharp by the 
 pathetic appeals of little children, by the tender looks and 
 anxious words of mothers and sisters, and by the nice ad- 
 justments of domestic obligations. 
 
 What a plea do we find in these facts for the institution 
 of home, and how much is signified by "the joys of 
 home ! " No words of ours are necessary to impress that 
 significance upon the minds of those who are the members 
 of happy families. With what feelings of delight do such 
 look forward to the evening hour when the family, over- 
 flowing with joy, shall gather around the board with mirth 
 and laughter. How the father's heart thrills at the sudden 
 thought that the hour is near when he shall meet his loved 
 ones ; when he shall leave his care and troubles all behind, 
 and sit in his easy chair, or recline upon the sofa, and 
 watch the fire-light dancing on the wall and hear the 
 merry voices of the children, or listen to the sweet music 
 of his daughter's voice. Can heaven yield a sweeter joy 
 than this ? 
 
 But the joys of home are not to be measured by actual 
 
JOYS OF HOME. 103 
 
 domestic felicity, for home has joys independent of this. 
 There is joy in the very thought that one has a home. 
 There is joy in the poetry with which the divine artists of 
 time and memory conspire to paint the old homestead. 
 
 Joy is heightened and pain is lightened by being shared, 
 but home is the only place on earth where they can be fully 
 shared. Everywhere else there is a reserve that makes our 
 joys and pains peculiarly our own. At home the heart 
 may be opened, and all that it knows and feels may be 
 known and felt by others. 
 
 The joys of home are the only ones of which we never 
 weary. We grow tired of those joys that come from min- 
 gling promiscuously in society. We tire of the exciting 
 pleasures of trade and commerce. We tire of gazing at the 
 marble fronts and gilded palaces of the great city. We 
 shut our eyes and close our ears in weariness and disgust 
 even at the sights and sounds of the public park. But we 
 never grow tired of mother's song, although the birds in 
 the park may weary us. We may leave the art gallery 
 satiated, but the old pictures on the walls of home are ever 
 new. 
 
 Let us then cherish the joys of home, for their perennial 
 freshness hints at their eternity. The child, who with his 
 playmates, wanders from his home over the hill and meadow, 
 when he wearies of his sports and games, turns at nightfall 
 to his home to lay his little weary head upon his mother's 
 breast. ,80 when we shall weary of the little sports and 
 
104 OUR HOME. 
 
 games of earth, may we find our homeward way back across 
 life's meadow and up the hill to the threshold of the home 
 eternal, and lay our weary heads upon the bosom of the 
 Divine, forever and ever. 
 
 14 Sweet are the joys of home, 
 And pure as sweet; for they 
 Like dews of morn and evening come, 
 To make and close the day. 
 
 " The world hath its delights, 
 And its delusions, too; 
 But home to calmer bliss invites, 
 More tranquil and more true. 
 
 " The mountain flood is strong, 
 But fearful in its pride; 
 While gently rolls the stream along 
 The peaceful valley's side. 
 
 " Life's charities, like light, 
 Spread smilingly afar; 
 But stars approached, become more bright, 
 And home is life's own star. 
 
 " The pilgrim's step in vain 
 Seeks Eden's sacred ground! 
 But in home's holy joys again 
 An Eden may be found. 
 
 "A glance of heaven to see, 
 To none on earth is given ; 
 And yet a happy family 
 Is but an earlier heaven." 
 
EDUCATION OF OUR GIRLS. 
 
 HE education of woman is among the fore- 
 most problems of the nineteenth century. 
 It is something more than a social problem. 
 It is a civil and political, a moral and re- 
 ligious problem as well. Inasmuch as the 
 presence of woman constitutes one of the 
 ^ \ chief charms and benefits of society, and in- 
 asmuch as it is she who far more than man 
 gives character to society, her education and culture are a 
 social problem. 
 
 But into her care have been entrusted the nation's future 
 statesmen, those who are soon to be clothed with authority 
 and to make laws for the government of mankind. Hence 
 her education becomes a civil and political problem. Not 
 only is she entrusted with the guardianship of the intellect 
 and character of the world's statesmen and philosophers, 
 but her gentle presence, as she bends over the cradle, and 
 the silent influence of her daily life are shaping the entire 
 moral character of the coming generation ; and thus does 
 the education of woman become a great moral problem. 
 Again, since she shapes the moral character of the world, 
 
106 OUR HOME. 
 
 and since the eternal destiny of man depends upon the 
 character in this life, it follows that her education becomes 
 the profoundest spiritual and religious problem. 
 
 In view of these momentous facts what should constitute 
 the education of our girls? Human life is short and its 
 powers of endurance are limited. None of us can reasona- 
 bly hope to accomplish all that our imagination may picture 
 to our minds as desirable. We cannot appropriate the 
 great sea of knowledge. We surely cannot do better than 
 Sir Isaac Newton, who picked up only a few pebbles on the 
 shore. But whether we are able to pick up one or many 
 of these pebbles we should select only those whose size and 
 shape best adapt them to our purpose. 
 
 We have no argument to offer against the study of 
 those branches which utilitarians are wont to condemn as 
 involving a waste of time and energy. We have no sym- 
 pathy with this utilitarian idea. We pity the man who is 
 able even to distinguish between beauty and utility. 
 That mind which does not see the highest use in Niagara 
 is but poorly developed and poorly educated. Nature has 
 drawn no line between the beautiful and the useful. On 
 the contrary, she has purposely blended them in an indis- 
 tinguishable union. Every apple tree is first a vase of 
 flowers and then a golden fruit basket. A blossom is the 
 preface to every useful product. Before Nature can allow 
 even a potato to grow and ripen she places the divine seal 
 of beauty on it in the form of a little flower. That little 
 
EDUCATION OF OUR GIRLS. 107 
 
 flower, which is made the necessary condition of the pota- 
 to's development, was placed there to teach us that there 
 is a use in beauty and a beauty in use. Hence we would 
 not condemn the study of music and the fine arts. The 
 history of music is the history of human development. It 
 has been the sensitive gauge that has marked the civiliza- 
 tion of every age and nation. The music that charmed 
 the undeveloped and savage ear of the past would be to us 
 but rude noise, and perchance the divinest harmony that 
 wafts our spirit starward may be but discord compared 
 with the symphonies that echo down the aisles of coming 
 ages. Music is not altogether an art; it is a science as 
 well, and viewed in its highest aspect it becomes the 
 grand exponent of that universal and divine harmony 
 which every properly developed soul has felt, and which 
 gives credence to that sweetest of all mythologies, " the 
 music of the spheres." 
 
 Thus while we cannot speak too highly of the science of 
 music as a means of soul development and heart culture, 
 yet as a mere outward accomplishment it cannot be denied 
 that it usurps a disproportionate amount of time and en- 
 ergy, and we would unhesitatingly condemn that method 
 of study which would reduce the science and art of music 
 to a mere system of finger and vocal gymnastics. It is a 
 fact which the observation of almost every one will con- 
 firm, that the present method of musical instruction has a 
 direct tendency to take the soul out of music, and leave it, 
 
108 OUR HOME. 
 
 like the poetry of Pope, a mere shell from which the living 
 creature has departed. The modern masters of song seem 
 to have forgotten the prime object of music, viz., to move 
 the heart and lift the soul. They exhibit their powers to 
 us as the circus rider exhibits his, and they expect us to 
 applaud them for their skill in execution ; if we do not 
 they attribute our indifference to the " lack of culture." 
 
 Life is too short and its duties too momentous for a girl 
 to spend years in acquiring proficiency in the production 
 of a mere sound, and one in which, in spite of her culture, 
 she is discounted by the ordinary canary bird. Music 
 should be made an instrument and not a toy. 
 
 All this may be true, says the mother, but how shall I 
 educate my daughter? It is easy to generalize and to 
 criticise existing systems ; but what is the particular method 
 which I must follow in order to avoid this criticism ? 
 
 In the first place, it is necessary to have a just view con- 
 cerning woman's place in the economy of society. It is 
 useless to give advice in regard to the higher education of 
 woman to those who covertly or otherwise regard woman 
 as an inferior being, whose highest and most legitimate 
 function is to swing a cradle through the air twelve hours 
 a day. We would not express other than the tenderest 
 sentiments concerning the divine mission of motherhood. 
 But has the reader ever asked himself what it is that 
 makes motherhood so divine ? Is it not, after all, that 
 which lifts woman above motherhood, that can make 
 
EDUCATION OF OUR GIRLS. 109 
 
 motherhood divine? We are pained when an eminent 
 writer gives weight to expressions like the following: " The 
 great vocation of woman is wifehood and motherhood." 
 Would the author object to a slight change in the latter 
 part of the phraseology so as to make the expression appli- 
 cable to man ? Would those who think that the quoted 
 words express a fine thought be offended with the follow- 
 ing? The great vocation of man is husbandhood and 
 fatherhood? The moment we exalt motherhood to the 
 rank of a prime object, that moment does it descend to 
 the level of the function involved, and the divine mother 
 becomes simply a mammal of the genus " homo." 
 
 All there is of divinity in motherhood is derived from 
 the divinity of womanhood. Why does the artist always 
 paint that kind of motherhood which suggests to our 
 minds the condescension of the divine to the human ? It is 
 not the motherhood, but the condescension to motherhood, 
 that makes it divine and beautiful. Whatever heightens 
 and glorifies woman's nature then renders more beautiful 
 and more divine the mission of motherhood. It is the 
 seminary that sanctifies the nursery. 
 
 We hope the world has heard the last of that sickly 
 sentiment concerning " woman's sphere," " The hand that 
 rocks the cradle rules the world," etc. If that hand were 
 permitted to take hold of the world a little more directly, 
 it would not at all interfere with its ability to rock the 
 cradle. The female robin must feed and care for its 
 
110 OUR HOME. 
 
 young, but it finds time each morning to sing its little 
 hymn of praise upon the tree-top to its Maker. So woman 
 may rock the cradle sufficiently each day and yet find time 
 to glorify her God with her intellect. 
 
 We would see the little sister and brother hand in hand 
 enter the primary school ; we would see them together 
 promoted to the grammar school ; we would see them 
 struggling on through the course all unconscious that 
 there is any radical difference in their mental constitu- 
 tions ; we would see them graduate from the high school 
 together, and together enter the university, and here 
 through four years of intellectual conflict we would see 
 them stand side by side in that fiercely contested arena, 
 and with tongue and pen and brain compete for those 
 prizes whose winning foreshadows life's success. We would 
 see them both at the graduating exercises, fearlessly giv- 
 ing to the world a specimen of their thought and elo- 
 quence, 
 
 " Mid the sweet inspiration of music and flowers." 
 
 Nor would we see them part here ; but with brave 
 hearts enter the same profession. We see no good reason 
 why women should not serve their kind as lawyers, doc- 
 tors, and ministers. It is true there are objections and 
 hinderances incidental to their sex, but these we believe 
 are fully counterbalanced by those qualifications in which 
 they must be acknowledged even superior. 
 
 In medicine, it is fast coming to be the opinion of the 
 
EDUCATION OF OUR GIRLS. Ill 
 
 world that woman, whatever may be her incidental disabili- 
 ties, is by nature even better endowed than man with 
 some of the peculiarities of talent that prophesy success. 
 One of these peculiarities is that intuitive insight which, 
 when supplemented by scientific knowledge, leaps to right 
 conclusions with the certainty of an instinct. It is in 
 moments of emergency that woman's mind betrays its 
 peculiar fitness for the medical profession. All must 
 admit that she is the natural nurse, and it is almost an 
 adage among physicians that " as much depends upon the 
 nursing as upon medical skill." We would not, of course, 
 make this claim for woman with reference to all profes- 
 sions. It is not the general superiority of woman that we 
 seek to prove, but simply that for the profession of medi- 
 cine, at least, she has some special qualifications. 
 
 But we would not deny that she may with equal pro- 
 priety enter almost any of the other professions, and in 
 this we are confident that we only anticipate the tide of 
 public sentiment. How eminently do her sincerity, moral- 
 ity and spiritual mindedness fit her to point the world to 
 nobler endeavors and higher ideals. 
 
 Many of the arguments which prove her fitness to min- 
 ister as a physician to the diseased bodies of mankind also 
 go to prove her special fitness to minister as a moral physi- 
 cian to their diseased souls. 
 
 Why then should our talented and ambitious girls la- 
 ment that there is no field open for them. There are very 
 
112 OUR HOME. 
 
 few professions open to their brothers, which they may not 
 also enter if they will but have the courage, not the immod- 
 esty, to step aside from the conventional path which the 
 hand of society has marked out for them. But while 
 woman possesses so many of the qualities requisite in the 
 professions, there are still few women who are adapted to 
 a professional life, and the same may be said of men. 
 Hence a professional education cannot meet the require- 
 ments of the great mass either of girls or of boys. " The 
 greatest good to the greatest number " should be our 
 motto. We must go, then, to the little farm-house and 
 the little cottage beneath the hill. Not that the farm- 
 house and the cottage are the abodes of intellectual weak- 
 ness. On the contrary, history shows that the world's 
 great minds, like wheat, potatoes and apples, are usually 
 produced on farms, yet it cannot be denied that the mass 
 of the people, those to whom we wish to speak, are sym- 
 bolized by the farm-house and the cottage. 
 
 What, then, shall constitute the education of the com- 
 mon girl who is destitute of the ambition and, perhaps, 
 the talent to become great and useful in any professional 
 capacity? We answer, in the first place, that her educa- 
 tion should be as varied and perfect as possible. If for no 
 other reason to enable her properly to educate and rear 
 her own children. Whatever grand truths are planted in 
 the mother's mind take root in the next generation, and 
 there grow, blossom, and shed their perfume on the world. 
 
EDUCATION OF OUR GIRLS. 113 
 
 The child receives the mother's very thought by intuition. 
 Jf the mother's mind is weak and narrow in its range, the 
 child is affected by this fact long before it finds any mean- 
 ing in the mother's words. But if the mother's mind is 
 cultured and refined by study until her thoughts are grand 
 and far-reaching, the child's soul will grow and expand 
 under the mesmeric influence of these thoughts, as the 
 plant grows under the influence of the sun. 
 
 Again, education, or the refinement and organic im- 
 provement resulting from education, is transmitted from 
 mother to child. Who cannot tell by the looks of a little 
 boy whether his mother was educated or not? The child 
 of the educated mother will have a finer grained organism ; 
 he will be handsomer, will have more regular features than 
 the child of the ignorant parent. As a rule he will ac- 
 quire the use of language at an earlier period. He will 
 also generally be found more open and frank in his man- 
 ner, and more susceptible to moral and spiritual influ- 
 ences. 
 
 How grand and comprehensive, then, becomes the theme 
 of woman's education. To the parent no question can be 
 more important than how shall I educate my daughter? 
 If it is impossible to educate both let the son go unedu- 
 cated, and educate the daughter. The importance of the 
 son's education may be, indeed, beyond estimation ; yet 
 that of the daughter is even more important. 
 
 Many parents believe that the virtue of their daughters 
 
114 OUR HOME. 
 
 will be more secure if they remain in general ignorance ; 
 but the frightful statistics of our great cities show this to 
 be a terrible mistake. It is a fact that cannot be denied, 
 that the ranks of that army which parade the streets of 
 the great cities at midnight, in painted shame, are filled 
 from the country. Few are natives of the city, notwith- 
 standing the dangers and temptations of city life are far 
 greater than those of the country. 
 
 There can be but one explanation of this fact. The su- 
 perior educational facilities of the city afford a salutary 
 and restraining influence in the form of mental culture. 
 The city girl is better educated than the country girl, 
 hence she has a stronger character. 
 
 Both may be innocent, for innocence may live comfort- 
 ably with ignorance, but virtue and ignorance cannot long 
 endure each other's society. A young kitten is innocent, 
 but it has but little character; and we could not call it 
 particularly virtuous. There are thousands of human 
 kittens whose virtue consists only in the innocence of ig- 
 norance. 
 
 " Pulpy souls 
 That show a dimple for each touch of sin." 
 
 Let every mother and father remember that there is no 
 virtue in ignorance, even ignorance of sin. If you do not 
 give your boy an opportunity to use his muscles he will 
 soon cease to have any muscles. So there can be no virtue 
 without temptation; if you do not give your daughter an 
 opportunity to use her virtue in the resistance of tempta- 
 
EDUCATION OF OUR GIRLS. 115 
 
 tion, it is to be feared that she will soon cease to have any 
 virtue. 
 
 A certain woman had a choice plum tree, the fruit of 
 which she was anxious should ripen. The birds had car- 
 ried away all but one, and over this she bound a cloth. It 
 was safe from the birds, but while she shut it from them, 
 she shut it also from the sunshine and the storms which 
 alone could ripen it, and it withered away and fell. 
 
 The mother should teach her daughter above all things 
 to know herself. 
 
 The man was unwise, who, fearing that his bird-dog 
 would acquire the habit of killing barn fowl, shut him up 
 during his puppy-hood and secluded from his sight every 
 kind of bird. When he released him to test the merits of 
 his system of education, the dog rushed at the fowls and 
 killed them all before his master could call him off. 
 
 Would he not have acted more wisely had he taught the 
 young dog to discriminate between barn-fowl and wild- 
 fowl? As it was he did not educate him, but attempted to 
 suppress an inborn instinct. 
 
 Equally unwise is the mother who keeps, or tries to keep, 
 her daughter in ignorance concerning those things which 
 she has a divinely given right to know. Let her direct her 
 daughter's intuitions as nature unfolds them, but never 
 attempt to suppress them, for sooner or later there must 
 come a revelation. 
 
 Whatever may be true concerning the question of wo- 
 
116 OUR HOME. 
 
 man's rights ; whether or not she has a moral right to par- 
 ticipate in the civil government of society, we will not here 
 attempt to discuss. 
 
 A concession of her rights, however, as interpreted by 
 the strongest advocate of woman's suffrage is not at all in- 
 consistent with the undisputed fact that woman finds her 
 highest mission at the altar of home. Nor does this fact 
 interfere with what we have already said concerning the 
 inconsistency of making wifehood and motherhood the 
 prime object of life. 
 
 The doctrine of woman's rights can never be proved by 
 contending that she is not by constitution and nature calcu- 
 lated to pursue a somewhat different object in life from that 
 which man pursues, or at least to pursue the same by some- 
 what different methods. 
 
 If it could be shown that men and women should both 
 engage in the cultivation of the soil, it would be still unde- 
 niable that woman is best adapted to the more aesthetic 
 portion of the labor, and man to the rougher and heavier 
 portion. If a flower garden or nursery were placed in the 
 midst of rough stubble, none would deny that it would be 
 natural for the man to mow the stubble, while the woman 
 should tend the garden in its midst. This would be true 
 even if it should be shown that woman should help to till 
 the soil. 
 
 So if it should be shown that woman has a moral right 
 to participate in the solution of social problems, which we 
 
EDUCATION OF OUR GIRLS. 117 
 
 are not by any means prepared to deny, it would still be 
 true that it is her most natural function to have particular 
 charge of the little nursery, home, in the midst of the rough 
 stubble of human society. 
 
 Woman's education, then, is necessarily very imperfect, 
 unless it be largely in the line of that which best becomes 
 her nature. 
 
 She should have, emphatically, a home education, and 
 this means something more than a knowledge of the dust- 
 pan and broom. 
 
 It means something more than a mere knowledge of the 
 daily routine of housekeeping, in the popular sense of that 
 word. Woman holds in her hands the physical health of 
 the world. Three times each day our lives and health are at 
 the mercy and practical judgment of woman. Nay, more, 
 for the world's character is largely what its food makes it. 
 Indirectly, then, she exerts a modifying influence over 
 our loves and hates, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows. 
 
 Whoever controls a being's stomach controls that being's 
 destiny. What, then, can be more important than that 
 girls should be educated in cookery and the related sci- 
 ences, chemistry and hygiene? This, then, is what we 
 mean by a home education for girls, that they should be 
 taught both through the wisdom and experience of moth- 
 ers, and also through the medium of books, how to engage 
 in the noble occupation of housewife with the best advan- 
 tage to mankind. 
 
118 OUR HOME 
 
 Such an education cannot be obtained solely from prac- 
 tice in the kitchen. The whole mind must be expanded 
 and disciplined by a study of nature and her laws. No 
 woman can possibly fulfill, in the best manner, her duties 
 as housewife without a good general education. 
 
 " Three years she grew in sun and shower; 
 Then nature said, " A lovelier flower 
 On earth was never sown ; 
 This child I to myself will take; 
 She shall be mine, and I will make 
 A lady of my own. 
 
 " Myself will to my darling be 
 Both law and impulse; and with me 
 The girl, in rock and plain, 
 In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
 Shall feel an overseeing power 
 To kindle or restrain. 
 
 " She shall be sportive as the fawn 
 That wild with glee across the lawn 
 Or up the mountain springs; 
 And hers shall be the breathing balm, 
 And hers the silence and the calm, 
 Of mute insensate things. 
 
 " The floating clouds their state shall lend 
 To her; for her the willow bend; 
 Nor shall she fail to see 
 E'en in the motions of the storm 
 Grace that shall mold the maiden's form 
 By silent sympathy. 
 
 " The stars of midnight shall be dear 
 To her; and she shall lean her ear 
 In many a secret place, 
 Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
 And beauty born of murmuring sound 
 Shall pass into her face." 
 
EDUCATION OF OUR BOYS. 
 
 N education does not necessarily mean the 
 discipline of a college course. In the present 
 condition of society, that advantage is, M I 
 matter of necessity, reserved for compara- 
 ' lively few. In its true significance educa- 
 tion means something more than the ability 
 to unravel the involved constructions of 
 a dead language; something more than a 
 proficiency in mathematics and the physical 
 sciences; something more, even, than can 
 be reaped from the most laborious toil of 
 the human intellect. It is a drawing out, 
 a developing and strengthening of every 
 element, every faculty, every power of body, 
 mind and spirit. It is such a condition of 
 the whole being, resulting from a constant 
 refinement, that the several powers shall 
 JTL observe the highest economy in their sep- 
 
 JL arate spheres, while the power of co-ordi- 
 
 \ y Dated action shall be rendered more perfect. 
 
 One may so cultivate and strengthen the muscles of his 
 little finger that he may be able to support with it twice 
 
 I 
 
120 OUR HOME. 
 
 his weight ; while the main muscles of his body are so 
 weak that he may not be able to lift half his weight. You 
 could not call such a man a strong man. So one may cul- 
 tivate hifl mere intellectuality till he becomes the brilliant 
 center of the world's admiration, if such were possible; 
 but you cannot call him educated if he is vicious, if his 
 anger is uncontrollable, if he is a drunkard or a glutton, if 
 he is stubborn, if he is unconscientious, if he is irreverent, 
 if he is spiritually blind, if he is selfish, if he is dead to 
 the appeals of human want and suffering. 
 
 An education on this broad basis should be the life- 
 work of even human being. 
 
 We would not by any means be understood as under- 
 valuing the education of the intellect. The importance of 
 the education of a power is commensurate with the impor- 
 tance of the power itself, and certainly no power of our 
 being can be of more importance than the intellect. A 
 college education is within the reach of every young man 
 who possesses the ambition for it, even though he may 
 possess neither friends nor money. There are hundreds of 
 students in this country who are paying their own way 
 through college by their own energy and labor. In most 
 of our colleges, a young man of activity and determination 
 may earn during the vacation enough to pay his expenses 
 during the term. So that he who thirsts for knowledge 
 has no legitimate excuse if he does not avail himself of a 
 college education. None should ask us to bring other evi- 
 
EDUCATION OF OUR BOYS. 121 
 
 dence than the illustrious triumphs of a Garfield. There 
 never yet was occupation so low, nor obstacle so broad and 
 high as to defeat the resolve of a human soul. No fierce 
 monster of opposition ever reared its hydra head in the 
 path of a human endeavor, 
 
 That would not shrink and cower 
 Before the dauntless power 
 Of a fearless human will. 
 
 There are those who are conscious that they were richly 
 endowed by nature with noble gifts, but who have failed 
 in life through their own indolence. It is customary for 
 these to comfort themselves in their sad retrospection by 
 repeating these melancholy lines : — 
 
 " Full many a gem f purest ray serene 
 
 The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; 
 Full many a flower is born to blush unseen 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 
 
 Do those lines prove that truth is not an essential ele- 
 ment of poetry ? No, for they are believed and felt to be 
 true by mistaken souls, and in that way they perform the 
 function of truth. They convey, or rather seem to convey, 
 a solemn truth to those who have unwittingly surrendered 
 life's argument to the merciless opponent of circumstances 
 by the unwise concession of their own weakness. 
 
 But let us put this doctrine to the practical test. We 
 have said that an education does not necessarily mean the 
 discipline of a college course. Indeed, all are not so con- 
 stituted that a college education would bring them the 
 
UH OUR HOME. 
 
 greatest good even intellectually. Nor would we be so 
 radical as to deny that circumstances may defeat the pur- 
 pose of merely going to college, but the circumstance of 
 poverty is not a valid excuse. At any rate, all may become 
 well educated. Those men are almost numberless who 
 have become great and useful by the light of a pine torch, 
 who have learned the science of mathematics with a stick 
 for a pencil and the ocean beach for a slate. But suppose 
 we meet the barefoot boy in the street picking rags, what 
 word of advice have we for him ? He will listen to all our 
 line talk about the grand possibilities which this free and 
 glorious republic offers to the poorest and the lowliest ; he 
 will listen to the story of tjiose great souls who have 
 climbed to glory over fence rails and canal boats; and 
 when we have finished he will meet us with the question, 
 u What shall I do and how shall I begin ? H Let us see if 
 we can answer these questions. As the first step toward 
 the desired result, he can pick up a rag, just as he has 
 been wont to do, and examine it, not as heretofore with 
 the simple purpose of determining whether he shall put 
 it into one or the other of two baskets; but he can 
 make it the text-book with which to begin an education. 
 He can ask those older and wiser than himself what it is 
 made of and how it is made. They will point him to the 
 great mill yonder, where, if he tells his purpose, he can 
 gain admission and learn something of the mechanical 
 principles involved in the manufacture of the rag. If he 
 
EDUCATION OF OUR BOYS. 123 
 
 continues to make inquiries until he can trace a piece of 
 cotton through all its transformations, till it comes out a 
 piece of fine bleached cotton, he has surely begun an edu- 
 cation in earnest. He can save a penny a day for a few 
 days and buy a primer, and with that primer under his arm 
 he may politely accost any lady or gentleman with these 
 words, " I am determined to make the most of myself. I 
 want to learn to read. I have bought a little book. Can 
 you give me any advice or help ? " There is not a man or 
 woman in all that great city with a heart so hard as not to 
 be melted to sympathy by that appeal. He would be 
 astonished at the amount of love and sympathy and philan- 
 thropy in the world which he before had considered so cold 
 and heartless. 
 
 Young man; boot-black; rag-picker; obscure farmer 
 boy; or dweller in the dingy haunts of the city; remem- 
 ber that Freedom's goddess holds over your head a crown. 
 She never crowns a royal idiot ; she scorns fine clothes and 
 gloved hands, and she never puts that crown on any but 
 a sweaty brow. 
 
 From every lowly cottage roof, 
 
 However poor and brown, 
 From every dusty hovel, points 
 
 A hand at glory's crown. 
 
 Although it is true that men can be good farmers 
 or mechanics without being able to read or write, yet 
 we believe that the greatest possible number of these 
 classes should be liberally educated. We often hear it 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 remarked that one is very foolish to spend so much time 
 and money in procuring an education if he intends to 
 make no use of it, the remark implying that if he intends 
 to enter no profession the time and money thus spent are 
 wasted. 
 
 We have no sympathy or patience with that view of 
 life. Man is above the brutes chiefly because he knows 
 more. It is a greater sin to take his life than that of a 
 brute, because he has more life to take, because his facul- 
 ties are more God-like and more powerful. 
 
 Now education means simply making these faculties 
 powerful and God-like, and nothing more. Hence an edu- 
 cated man is more a man than an uneducated one. It in- 
 creases the humanity of man and adds to our very being. 
 So that if one is to spend his life in idleness gazing at the 
 clouds, it is a duty he owes to himself, to the universe and 
 to God, to make the most of himself by acquiring a liberal 
 education. 
 
 Knowledge, like virtue, should be an end in itself. 
 Think of a mother teaching her children to be virtuous 
 because their prospects of financial success would be 
 greater! We should pity the moral weakness of that 
 mother. We all instinctively recognize virtue as a sub- 
 lime object and end in itself. It is a part of that God-like 
 nature of which we boast, it is a part of our very immor- 
 tality. So is knowledge. Why then should we talk about 
 knowledge and education simply as means to facilitate 
 
EDUCATION OF OUR BOYS. 125 
 
 the accumulation of dollars and cents? Let no mother 
 teach her boy such sophistry. 
 
 The capacity of the soul for enjoyment is just propor- 
 tionate to its interior development. Knowledge is to the 
 mind what health is to the body, it makes more of us. 
 
 Education is the handmaid of religion. The statistics 
 of every community will show that criminals are taken 
 from the ranks of the ignorant. If the best and highest 
 minds do not in some way associate knowledge and relig- 
 ion, why- are all our colleges and seminaries under the di- 
 rect supervision of the Christian church? Education has 
 transformed the savage into the Christian. The wide gulf 
 that stretches between the beastly cannibal and the God- 
 like Christian man has been bridged by the invisible cables 
 of education, and away into the infinitely potential fu- 
 ture shall stretch this golden bridge, till the farther end 
 shall rest upon the massive masonry of the eternal. 
 
 Education was divinely instituted. Nature is the school 
 mistress whom God employs to educate his children. 
 This sweet and patient teacher knows how to win our 
 hearts so that study becomes a pleasure. Everywhere she 
 has placed before our eyes an open text book with such 
 fascinating pictures that we cannot help reading the de- 
 scription of them. She found us with the beasts. Pa- 
 tiently she has conducted us through the primary school 
 of the savage and barbarian, through the grammar school 
 of war and bloodshed, till we have entered with her the 
 
126 OUR HOME. 
 
 high school of modern civilization. She will lead us tri- 
 umphantly through and admit us into her vast university. 
 There she , \vill show us mysteries that would blind us now. 
 In her laboratory we shall learn the awful secret of being. 
 When we have graduated here she will lead us proudly up 
 and present us to the Great Master, at whose side we shall 
 sit and under whose tuition we shall turn our eyes star- 
 ward and forever and forever shall study the infinite of 
 infinites. 
 
 " The heights by great men reached and kept 
 Were not attained by sudden flight; 
 Bnt they, while their companions slept, 
 Were toiling upward in the night." 
 
BOOKS FOR THE HOME. 
 
 SOME one has said that "to thoroughly know 
 one book is to have a key to all libraries." 
 
 The vast battalion of books that fill the 
 shelves of our great libraries is almost ap- 
 palling to behold, alcove upon alcove piled 
 into the very domes of colossal buildings. 
 Think of what they contain : the crystallized 
 thought and wisdom of the centuries, and yet 
 where shall we begin to make an analysis of that wisdom. 
 We may call for a given book, but we find that book laps 
 over on both sides of its subject. 
 
 Figuratively speaking, it leaned for support both ways 
 upon its shelf. One subject is dependent upon another so 
 that we cannot thoroughly know a single book in all that 
 great library without knowing all. The classification may 
 be admirable, yet it is after all but the classification of the 
 dependent parts of a sublime and incomprehensible whole. 
 How despair seizes the lover of wisdom, how hopeless seems 
 his task, when he gazes upon those awful records of human 
 thought. His feelings may be defined as those of mental 
 strangulation. As we sit beneath the great dome and 
 watch the men and women, with noiseless footsteps and 
 
lis OUR HOME. 
 
 with the anxiety of thought upon their faces, glide in and 
 shift their burdens and pass out, how appropriate seems the 
 metaphor that would make the library a vast sea, in which 
 these men and women are strangling and in their mad de- 
 spair letting go of one straw and grasping at another, vainly 
 struggling to rise above the overmastering flood for one 
 breath of thought that is yet unspoken, or to speak a word 
 that is yet unwritten. 
 
 Since, then, we cannot compass the range of human 
 thought, since we must be content with single links from 
 an unbroken chain, the problem fur us to solve becomes 
 this, viz., where shall we break that chain, what books 
 shall we read ? This is one of the problems which parent- 
 age imposes, and, perhaps, there is no more vital one 
 which j are called upon to solve. As the body is 
 
 chiefly what its food makes it, so is the mind. It is true 
 that the infant mind has its positive mental proclivities, 
 which cannot, and surely should not, be eradicated, yet 
 they may and should be guided, and thus prevented from 
 producing mental excrescences upon the character. The 
 books of a family, not less than the training of the parents, 
 shape the destiny of the children. The books of a family, 
 however, we regret to say are not always solely those 
 which are on exhibition in the book-cases and on the table 
 of the drawing-room. There are in too many families 
 books that are not on exhibition at all, books of which the 
 parents are ignorant, books that are read only by lamp- 
 
BOOKS FOR THE HOME. 129 
 
 light, while the parents suppose that no lights are in the 
 house. Parents ! if you knew the books that, while 
 you are sleeping at midnight, your children are reading by 
 that dim light which casts its glimmer into the street, you 
 would blush with shame. 
 
 Books are advertised in our daily newspapers under the 
 veil of pathological philanthropy, to which the advertiser 
 dares not put his name. Boys are directed to send so 
 many postage ■ stamps to a post-office box, to which there 
 are many keys. A hint to the wise is all that is necessary. 
 We will not enlarge upon this class of literature which 
 disgraces the civilization of our age. But, like the " pesti- 
 lence that w alketh in darkness," none knows or feels it till 
 it breathes its fatal breath into his face. This hellish lit- 
 erature lies piled mountain high in the dark and subter- 
 raneous caverns of society, and under the added gloom of 
 midnight it is read by the baleful torches of lust. Our 
 public schools are flooded with books that the teacher 
 never sees. They constitute the text books from which 
 the lessons are learned and recited without the aid of a 
 tutor. Perhaps it is impossible to wholly eradicate this 
 social evil. No parent is sure that his child has not already 
 been contaminated. But parental vigilance is the only 
 remedy that falls within the province of this work. 
 
 We have said enough concerning the books that should 
 not be read. We come now to a more difficult task, viz., 
 to determine what books should be read. 
 
ISO OUR HOME. 
 
 Of course we caii give no definite list of books which 
 should be read by each and every one. Courses of read- 
 ing, however, have frequently been marked out, but we 
 have little faith in the wisdom of such a method, unless 
 the tastes and inborn mental tendencies of the individual 
 for whom the course is marked out can be consulted. 
 That evil feature of our public educational institutions 
 wliich tends to destroy the originality and individuality of 
 the child and student by forcing all casts of mind into a 
 common mold, is strong enough already without helping on 
 its bad effects by recommending the same course of reading 
 for all. We do not mean by this, of course, that the pa- 
 rent, teacher, and guardian should not advise those under 
 their charge with reference to the selection of books. We 
 do not deny the wisdom of marking out a course of read- 
 ing, if it be done with express reference to the mental 
 peculiarities of those for whom it is intended, and by 
 some one who is thoroughly conversant with those pecul- 
 iarities. 
 
 Let parents study the minds of their children. Every 
 parent should know enough of the general principles of 
 mental science to enable him to make tolerably good intel- 
 lectual and moral classifications. Until he does, he should 
 hesitate before he attempts to pilot a human mind up the 
 perilous rapids of childhood and youth. 
 
 Suppose a parent perceives that his child is greatly in- 
 terested in shells, fossils, beetles, and all those things that 
 
BOOKS FOR THE HOME. 131 
 
 pertain to zoological science, and that when his eye for the 
 first time falls on a book devoted to this science, he is de- 
 lighted beyond measure. Could there be anything more 
 unjust and foolish than for that parent to withhold all such 
 books from his child and to mark out a course of reading 
 which should consist largely of psychological works, and 
 books in which he is not at all interested, and compel him to 
 toil through them. It is not, however, impossible that the 
 child may possess a taste for both classes of books which 
 we have mentioned, but if he has not already evinced a 
 taste for both, it is surely the duty of the parent to ascer- 
 tain the facts of the case before he compels him to read 
 those books for which he has evinced no taste. If the boy 
 is continually disposed to marshal his little playmates and 
 march them around the house to the music of a tin pan, he 
 will be a good candidate for West Point, and will proba- 
 bly be found to possess a latent love of history, and may 
 perhaps become an historian. If he is disposed to spend 
 much of his time in the work-shop making his own toys, he 
 will delight in natural philosophy and in the biographies of 
 great inventors. Parents should be able to interpret these 
 outward indications of innate talent, and, regarding them as 
 the cries of a hungry mind, should be quick to furnish the 
 proper food. If the boy who is inclined to invent and to 
 use tools, be compelled by his parents to study history most 
 of the time, instead of natural philosophy, he will very 
 likely conceive a general dislike for all kinds of reading. 
 
OUR HOME, 
 
 But if he be allowed first to read and study those branches 
 that lie along the line of his taste and talents, he will not 
 only acquire a taste for reading, but by such a course he 
 will also early develop a strong individuality. Every mind 
 should be first developed in the line in which it earliest 
 evinces an unmistakable tendency. 
 
 This secures a stability of purpose and an individuality 
 that no after course or promiscuous reading can destroy. 
 The mind may then be brought into shape, as it were, by 
 supplementary reading. Nor will this be dillicult, but on 
 the contrary, very natural, since it will have first acquired 
 a taste for reading. 
 
 Every book in the great library is the record of some 
 man's individuality, and when you have read the book you 
 have read the man. Books differ as men differ. A person 
 may associate with a hundred different people of that char- 
 acter which one meets every day upon the street, and not 
 be conscious of the modifying influence which they exert 
 over him. But he may afterwards meet a single individual 
 in whose silent presence he will feel the tumultuous thrill 
 of a molding influence. The meeting of such people is a 
 crisis in one's life, and he is never the same afterwards. 
 
 So with books. We may read alcove after alcove of the 
 books that make up the body of a public library, and 
 never feel that we have read anything. The largest library 
 that adorns the great city is almost useless after a scholar 
 has carried home an armful of books. "Of the writing 
 
BOOKS FOR THE HOME. 133 
 
 of many books there is no end." But of the writing of 
 great books there has hardly been a beginning. 
 
 If one wishes to cultivate his social nature and improve 
 himself generally by mingling in society, he cannot do it 
 to the best advantage by going to the circus or the theater. 
 All will admit that the most effectual way is to select a 
 few choice associates bettei* than himself. 
 
 Now since a library is but a proxy for society, the same 
 rule holds good in respect to it. Read the few great books ; 
 books that work revolutions in our natures, and burn them- 
 selves into our memory and become a part of ourselves. 
 
 We do not mean that every child should read Plato, for 
 Plato would be the same as no book at all to a child. 
 "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Arabian Nights" are great and 
 revolutionary books from a child's standpoint, and when 
 he has grown stronger, "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Paul and 
 Virginia " are also great and revolutionary. A few such 
 books await him at every stage of his development, so that 
 no one need read any but the great and good books. We 
 have used the word few with reference to good books in a 
 relative rather than an absolute sense. Of course there 
 are in all libraries very many good and great books, but 
 when compared with the mass they are certainly few. 
 
 But how shall you determine whether a given book be 
 worth reading or not ? By what means are you to be cer- 
 tain that you have selected one of those few ? By the 
 testimony of your own soul. If the book throws your 
 
1U OUR HOME. 
 
 whole being into the wild tumult of mingled thought and 
 aspiration, if it lifts you till you feel, in the sweet decep- 
 tion of the hour, that the wings of your own spirit leave 
 their shadows upon the star-lit heights, and you almost 
 wonder that you yourself have allowed those grand words 
 to remain so long unsaid, look no farther. You have found 
 the book you were looking for, and it bears the divine im- 
 print of genius. 
 
 All book-, wl Hither great or small, are but attempts to 
 translate that one great book which lies open before human- 
 ity, the star-and-flower-writ book of Nature. There are 
 many imperfect translations and poor commentaries, and 
 thrice happy is he who can read the original without trans- 
 lation or commentaries. 
 
 " Books are not seldom talismans and spells, 
 By which the magic art of shrewder wits 
 Holds an unthinking multitude enthralled. 
 Some to the fascination of a name 
 Surrender judgment, hoodwinked. Some the style 
 Infatuates, and through labyrinths and wilds 
 Of error leads them, by a tune entranced. 
 While sloth seduces more, too weak to bear 
 The insupportable fatigue of thought, 
 And swallowing, therefore, without pause or choice, 
 The total grist unsifted, husks and all. 
 But trees and rivulets, whose rapid course 
 Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer, 
 And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs, 
 And lanes in which the primrose ere her time 
 Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root, 
 Deceive no student. Wisdom there and Truth, 
 Not shy, as in the world, and to be won 
 By slow solicitation, seize at once 
 The roving thought, and fix it on themselves." 
 
EVENINGS AT HOME. 
 
 | HE evening hours are the holy hours of home 
 life. They are the hours in which there is 
 the freest play of all the hallowed influences 
 that come from the domestic relation ; the 
 hours in which the radical forces of the home 
 \'\ 7Mfi are focalized and brought to their highest 
 * ' i : y' efficiency. 
 $$* There is really just as much sunshine on a 
 
 A cloudy day as when the sky is clear, but the 
 
 * sickly growth of vegetation during cloudy 
 
 weather proclaims its ineffectiveness. So the home may 
 exert just as much actual influence when its sunshine 
 is intercepted by the clouds of care and busy toil : 
 when the merciless dispatch with which "father's" din- 
 ner must be prepared, or with which some of those many 
 labors inseparably connected with the home life must be 
 performed, has so absorbed the time and energy of the 
 family that each member seems to be an illustration of the 
 " survival of the fittest." Under these circumstances the 
 home may send forth as large an amount of influence, 
 and yet such influence cannot reach the lives and charac- 
 
136 OUR HOME. 
 
 ters of those who have a claim upon it. Such may be 
 called latent influence. 
 
 It is only when the "day is done" that home exhibits 
 its sweetest and serenest life. It is when the sun has 
 gone down that the home influences become actual and 
 potent. 
 
 In opening the tender buds of young characters, the 
 light from the hearth-stone is far more efficient than the 
 sunlight. 
 
 The distinctive characteristics of the home life are mani- 
 fested most strongly when the labors of the day are ended 
 and the family gather round the fireside for the evening. 
 One hour of evening home life is worth a month of the 
 ordinary daily experience. It matters little where our 
 days are spent if we spend our evenings at home. 
 
 Man's soul is not receptive during the day, for its atti- 
 tude is not favorable. The labor of the day puts the mind 
 into that attitude in which it resists the shaping influences 
 of life. Labor itself is in part a process of spiritual resist- 
 ance, so that the soul that toils is comparatively safe from 
 the snares of temptation. 
 
 During the hours of labor we are also less susceptible to 
 good influences as well as to evil ones. The whole being 
 puts itself upon the defensive while it toils. Satisfied 
 with its own condition, it refuses to be changed by outward 
 influences. In this principle we find the explanation of 
 the adage " idleness is the parent of vice." The evening 
 
EVENINGS AT HOME. 13? 
 
 is the hour when crafty Satan preaches most eloquently. 
 It is also the hour at which he can gather the largest and 
 most attentive audience. In our great cities Satan's 
 churches are crowded every evening. 
 
 But, fortunately, the evening hour is also the hour in 
 which the good angel can gather his largest audience, and 
 he who would baffle Satan's influence must preach in the 
 evening. The evening is the hour when the protecting 
 power of home is greatest ; it is the hour when its protec- 
 tion is most needed. We see a divine wisdom in this. 
 The only hour in the day when the laboring young man is 
 vulnerable to temptation is when his labor is ended and 
 the mind relaxed, and just at this needed hour the home 
 exerts a doubled influence. Parents need not be at all 
 anxious concerning the character of their boys who from 
 choice stay at home evenings, but they should never feel 
 at ease concerning those who desire to spend their even- 
 ings away from home. 
 
 We do not mean that children should never go away 
 from home evenings. The evening is a very proper and 
 agreeable time to visit our neighbors, and children should 
 be allowed frequently to spend the evening with their 
 neighbors' children. This is only a transfer of home in- 
 fluence. They are at home in one sense when at their 
 neighbors' home, or at least they are surrounded by home 
 influences. 
 
 It is an excellent practice to allow children, even when 
 
138 OUR HOME. 
 
 very young, to visit their neighbors' children alone in the 
 evening. The reason of this may not at first be obvious, 
 but we think that upon reflection every parent will per- 
 ceive the wisdom of it. 
 
 In the first place, it is a mild lesson in self reliance and 
 independent action, which every parent should try to de- 
 velop in the minds of his children. 
 
 Again, all children who are to develop into noble men 
 and women must sooner or later be brought into contact 
 with temptations to every form of improper action, and 
 the earlier this process commences, and the more gradually 
 they encounter the temptations of life, the better for their 
 welfare. And, certainly, sending children to their neigh- 
 bors' alone in the evening, thus putting them upon their 
 own sense of propriety, and subjecting them to the little 
 temptations to trifling breaches of etiquette, which always 
 present themselves when little children gather in groups, 
 is one of the most judicious methods of applying this prin- 
 ciple. It is not well for parents in such cases to be over 
 strict in regard to the hour of the children's return. It is 
 far better to teach them to exercise their own sense of pro- 
 priety in this matter. 
 
 Let them be taught that it is a gross breach of good 
 manners to stay much beyond a certain hour, perhaps 
 nine o'clock. 
 
 But this is far different in its effect from commanding 
 them to start when the clock strikes nine. In the one case 
 
EVENINGS AT HOME. 
 
 they are compelled to go home by an inward se 
 priety, and in the other by an outward sense of autKorn 
 It is always a cross for children to leave their playmates, 
 and if they can just as well be taught to make this sacrifice 
 through their own sense of propriety, their parents should 
 certainly rejoice in this early opportunity to give them a 
 practical lesson in self denial. If the child is compelled by 
 an outward authority located at home, to withdraw from a 
 pleasant associate, he is quite likely to conceive a dislike 
 for that authority and for the place toward which it con- 
 strains him. 
 
 Then let the children visit. Let the parents visit in the 
 evenings. Let all the members of the family feel that the 
 home is not a prison. This is the only way in which chil- 
 dren can be taught to love home and to feel that home is the 
 best place to spend their evenings. You cannot make them 
 feel this by compelling them to stay at home evenings. If 
 a child has acquired a distaste for home, the evil must be 
 corrected by the use of mild stratagem. 
 
 One of the strongest arguments for the habit of spending 
 the evenings at home is found in the opportunity which 
 they offer to the young for self-improvement. 
 
 Horace Mann once wrote a beautiful truth in the form 
 of an advertisement, " Lost, yesterday, somewhere between 
 sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty 
 diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone 
 forever." 
 
140 OUR HOME. 
 
 We would like to have the ordinary young man of 
 twenty-five look over our shoulder while we do a little fig- 
 uring. We mean that young man, however, who is always 
 complaining because he hasn't time. 
 
 We mean that young man who is mourning because he 
 hasn't an education, who would have gone to college could 
 he have spared the time. 
 
 We want to show him how many of those golden hours 
 set with diamond minutes he has thrown away since he was 
 sixteen years old. It is nine years since then, and in each 
 of those years there were three hundred and sixty-five 
 evenings. Setting aside the fifty-two Sunday evenings, 
 which, however, might be employed to advantage without 
 violating the fourth commandment, then taking out fifty- 
 two evenings more, one for every week, for visiting and 
 entertaining visitors, there will remain two hundred and 
 sixty-one. Now each one of these two hundred and sixty- 
 one evenings contains four of those golden hours. Hence in 
 one } T ear he throws away one thousand and forty-foiir hours. 
 During the nine years from sixteen to twenty-five, he 
 throws away nine times this number, or nine thousand 
 three hundred and ninety-six hours. 
 
 Just think of it. The average college student spends 
 about four hours a day in study. There are five days in a 
 week in which he studies, making twenty hours a week. 
 Thirty-eight weeks constitute the college year, making 
 seven hundred and sixty hours which he studies in a year. 
 
EVENINGS AT HOME. 141 
 
 There are four years in the college course. Hence in 
 his whole course he studies four times seven hundred and 
 sixty, or three thousand and forty hours. This is less 
 than a third as many as the young man may throw away 
 between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. Should not 
 every such young man feel indignant with himself? Time 
 enough spent on the street corners, in the stores, in the 
 hotel, or in the bar-room, to go through college three times. 
 Nine thousand golden hours gemmed with five hundred 
 and forty thousand diamond minutes, gone forever. 
 
 Perhaps it may seem even cruel in us to remind the 
 young man of his terrible loss, but it is never too late to do 
 better. A noble endeavor can never be too early or too 
 late. We would not cause any young man a useless pain- 
 fill regret. He cannot profit by mourning over spilt milk, 
 but if he will keep his pan right side up for five years to 
 come he can go through college yet, and graduate when 
 he is thirty years old, and have the honor of presenting to 
 himself his own diploma. 
 
 But not alone for the opportunities for culture which 
 they afford are evenings to be prized. The evening in the 
 happy home is a fragment of heaven, we cannot afford to 
 lose it. The ineffable joy that human nature is consti- 
 tuted to experience at the evening hour around the golden 
 altar of home, is a symbol and a prophecy of that which 
 every truly and interiorly developed soul has reason to 
 believe is in store for him. It is the only place where each 
 
L42 OUR HOME. 
 
 and every faculty and power of mind and body may legiti- 
 mately act, and with that divine spontaneity that feels no 
 pressure nor restraint. When reason acts through the day 
 it is spurred to action by the necessities of daily duty, and 
 the pleasure which all organic activity, both mental and 
 physical, is intended to produce is lost in the mad whirl of 
 life's tumultuous conflict. The same is true of that innate 
 tendency to mathematical computation which is capable of 
 conferring so much pleasure by the revelations it gives of 
 the universality of divine law and order. But when these 
 powers act amid the cheerfulness of the evening entertain- 
 ment at home, in the playful solution of problems and 
 puzzles, they act with that spontaneity and accompanying 
 pleasure on their own account which hints at their origin 
 and their destiny. This same principle applies to every 
 power of being. Who does not still carry in his mind the 
 sweet pictures of happy evenings at home, when all the 
 family sat by the fire, mother with her knitting, and father 
 with his stories of prouder days, while the kitten gam- 
 bolled upon the floor or played with the ball of yarn that 
 fell from mother's lap, and while the fire-light moved upon 
 the wall like the waving of a white wing in the darkness, — 
 as if heaven could not permit so much joy upon the earth 
 without having its representative there? Now mother tar- 
 dily rises to light the lamp, and the children gather round 
 the table with slate and pencil to grapple with those little 
 tasks and problems that only sweeten life's remembrances. 
 
EVENINGS AT HOME. 143 
 
 How indelibly through all the change-freighted years 
 this picture remains upon the canvas of the soul. Unlike 
 the perishing works of genius, time never bleaches the 
 canvas nor turns the picture pale. Gaze on that picture, 
 O youth. Nor turn your eyes aside when Temptation 
 with perfumed robes sweeps- past thee in the tumultuous 
 rush of beauty's carnival. When we turn our eyes from 
 the soft colors of a beautiful picture, to gaze upon the 
 brilliancy of the electric light, and then turn again to view 
 the picture, how dim the colors, how blurred is the whole 
 picture till we have steadily and persistently gazed for a 
 long time. 
 
 Learn a lesson from the analogy that exists between the 
 spirit's eye and that of the body. That sweet picture of 
 your home, O youth, gleams not brilliantly but softly 
 and forever in the evening fire-light. Reflect before you 
 turn your eyes from that soft fire-light to gaze long upon 
 the splendors where beauty glides 'neath lights that 
 dazzle. 
 
 " Gladly now we gather round it, 
 
 For the toiling day is done, 
 And the gay and solemn twilight 
 
 Follows down the golden sun. 
 Shadows lengthen on the pavement, 
 
 Stalk like giants through the gloom, 
 Wander past the dusky casement, 
 
 Creep around the fire-lit room. 
 Draw the curtain, close the shutters, 
 
 Place the slippers by the fire; 
 Though the rude wind loudly mutters, 
 
 What care we for wind sprite's ire ? 
 
144 OUR HOME. 
 
 " What care we for outward seeming, 
 
 Fickle fortune's frown or smile ? 
 If around us love is beaming, 
 
 Love can human ills beguile. 
 'Neath the cottage roof and palace, 
 
 From the peasant to the king, 
 All are quaffing from life's chalice 
 
 Bubbles that enchantment bring. 
 Grates are glowing, music flowing 
 
 From the lips we love the best; 
 O, the joy, the bliss of knowing 
 
 There are hearts whereon to rest! 
 
 u Hearts that throb with eager gladness — 
 
 Hearts that echo to our own — 
 "While grim care and haunting sadness 
 
 Mingle ne'er in look or tone. 
 Care may tread the halls of daylight, 
 
 Sadness haunt the midnight hour, 
 But the weird and witching twilight 
 
 Brings the glowing hearthstone's dower. 
 Altar of our holiest feelings ! 
 
 Childhood's well-remembered shrine ! 
 Spirit yearnings— soul revealings — 
 
 Wreaths immortal round thee twine ! " 
 
SELF CULTURE. 
 
 jULTURE is the constant elimination of use- 
 less movements, and the attainment of in- 
 creasing economy in the expenditure of our 
 forces. The Indian has plenty of strength, 
 *but the white man of half his weight and 
 strength, who has acquired the art of boxing, 
 is more than a match for him ; and this for 
 the simple reason that the Indian has not yet 
 learned to eliminate the movements that do 
 not count. He is a spendthrift as regards 
 forces. But the white man, by means of pa- 
 tient culture, has learned to omit all useless 
 movements, and to expend his forces in that 
 manner and at that time and place in which they will tell 
 the most. He does not bend a joint or contract a muscle 
 that does not produce some desirable outward result. 
 
 It is easy to detect an uncultured person in society ; for 
 example, when he attempts to walk across a hall or draw- 
 ing-room in the presence of spectators. It is not because 
 he does not perform all the movements necessary to take 
 him to the other side, but because he performs certain other 
 
 movements that interfere with, or obstruct the essential 
 10 
 
146 OUR HOME. 
 
 movements ; such as the turning of the head from side to 
 side, accompanied by a wasteful expenditure of thought in 
 the form of a painful consciousness that people are gazing 
 at him. There is in his blush a wasteful expenditure of 
 vital forces in compelling the blood to the surface. All 
 such movements are uneconomical because they produce 
 no desirable or useful result. Nature has agreed to give 
 us a positive dislike for all such movements, and we call 
 them awkward. She has also made us susceptible of a posi- 
 tive delight from witnessing economical movements, and at 
 her suggestion we call them graceful. Graceful move- 
 ments, then, are simply economical movements. If the 
 person referred to should walk across the hall with the 
 least possible expenditure of vital and mental force, the 
 movement would necessarily be graceful. Civilization is 
 but aggregate culture, and since culture is the spirit and 
 essence of economy, we see why it is that the science of 
 political economy has always developed itself simultane- 
 ously with civilization. Indeed, civilization and political 
 economy are one and the same. 
 
 Such, then, is the nature of culture in the abstract. 
 Let us follow out the principle in its application to our 
 physical, mental, and moral natures, and see whether we 
 can find in it anything that shall be of use to us in the 
 development of our lives and characters. Our muscles 
 are cultured when we can use them with no waste of force. 
 Our intellects are cultured when we can solve a prob- 
 
SELF CULTURE. 147 
 
 lem or arrive at a conclusion by the shortest and most 
 direct route of logical deduction. Our moral nature is 
 cultured when duty becomes a graceful and economical 
 movement in the soul ; when the useless movements of sin 
 are eliminated ; when all our spiritual forces are concentra- 
 ted, and it no longer becomes necessary to divide the force 
 by detailing a squadron to guard the harbor of love and 
 duty against the pirate fleets of selfishness. When we can 
 say " Thy will be done," without a diverting and wasting 
 struggle with ourselves. The reason why certain men 
 have been able to accomplish such wonderful results in the 
 field of thought and investigation is because, through long 
 toil and patient culture, they have learned to concentrate 
 the mental forces by eliminating all useless thoughts. Like 
 the bee, which always takes a straight line, they have ac- 
 quired an intellectual instinct by which they are enabled 
 to take the shortest, directest, and consequently most eco- 
 nomical line of logic links between their intellectual 
 standpoint and the solution that they crave. And he who 
 can do this, he who can take the shortest road, can surely 
 go farther and accomplish more in the same time than he 
 who is compelled to hunt out his path, to travel through 
 all the by-ways, the briers, the brambles, and the under- 
 brush, and at last, perhaps, lose his way altogether in the 
 vast swamp of intellectual uncertainty. 
 
 All culture in its ultimate analysis is necessarily self 
 culture. Culture when used as a verb always means to 
 
lis OUR HOME. 
 
 afford the conditions for self-direction or self-development. 
 If we attempt to culture a horse or a dog we accomplish 
 the result only by inducing him to make certain volun- 
 tary movements in the direction of our will. But if he 
 does not choose to act according to our will, all culture 
 ceases until he becomes willing to obey. We cannot cul- 
 ture anything that has the power of volition. Hence, 
 when we break a colt, or train a dog, he cultures himself at 
 our suggestion. And thus it is that all the culture we 
 receive in tins life must be self culture. Teachers may 
 suggest, but we must execute ; they may advise, but we 
 must do the work. 
 
 The sense in which we have used the word " culture " 
 is not very different from that in which we have used the 
 word " education " in the chapter on the " Education of 
 our Boys." Indeed, all that we have said byway of defini- 
 tion in either chapter might have been said with equal pro- 
 priety in the other. We will allow the one to supplement 
 the other. 
 
 The words educate, train and culture are, for all prac- 
 tical purposes, synonymous, and may be used interchange- 
 ably. 
 
 In our chapter on " Home Training n we have presented 
 some similar thoughts concerning the importance of train- 
 ing or cultivating the physical, intellectual, and moral na- 
 ture in the proper order, and in the right way. That, 
 however, was intended chiefly for advice to parents con- 
 
SELF CULTURE. 149 
 
 cerning the management of children too young to attempt 
 self culture. But the primary constitution does not 
 change. What the child requires, the youth and young 
 man require, only, perhaps, in larger quantities and in 
 different proportion. Hence in this chapter we shall aim 
 to give such helpful advice as will enable young men and 
 women to continue the process that their parents helped 
 them to begin. They may now call it self culture, to de- 
 note a higher stage of the same process. The first and 
 chief aim of self culture, as of all education, should be 
 symmetry. The undue strengthening of one part or fac- 
 ulty, to the neglect of another, is not culture, but accord- 
 ing to our definition it is the reverse, for it destroys that 
 power of co-ordinate action and economical expenditure of 
 effort in which culture consists. No power of mind or 
 body exists independent of other powers, and no one can 
 be unduly strengthened without peril to the other and 
 weaker ones. If the stomach be enlarged by overeating, 
 while the lungs be kept weak and small, the whole body 
 will become diseased and the mind also ; for a sound mind 
 cannot exist in an unhealthy body. The stomach, being 
 large, will crave a large amount of food, but the lungs, be- 
 ing small, cannot furnish oxygen enough to oxidize the 
 carbon that is furnished to the blood by the stomach ; so 
 the system becomes clogged ; corrupt and troublesome ul- 
 cers appear, and perhaps consumption, and all because the 
 stomach was enlarged. Not because the lungs were not 
 
150 OUR HOME. 
 
 cultivated, but because the stomach was cultivated alone, 
 as if it were an independent organ. Similar disasters fol- 
 low the independent and separate training of any of the 
 other physical powers. If the stomach, the appetite, the 
 lungs, the liver, the kidneys, the circulation, the skin, and 
 the muscles be all cultivated together, the more they are 
 cultivated the better. It is absolutely impossible to carry 
 that kind of culture to excess. But if we cannot cultivate 
 all, it is far better not to specially cultivate any of the 
 physical functions. 
 
 It is a well known fact that circus performers are very 
 short lived ; and yet we would naturally expect them to 
 live to a very old age. How full and powerful their lungs 
 are ! How agile ! How almost marvelous the strength of 
 their muscles ! How erect they are ! What free play all 
 the internal organs must have ! They are compelled by 
 their employment to live temperately; their food is that 
 which is recommended by the highest medical authority ; 
 they sleep in well ventilated rooms. It would seem that 
 if earthly immortality were possible, the professional gym- 
 nasts should possess the boon. 
 
 But instead the average duration of their lives is very 
 short. How shall we account for this paradox ? Simply 
 by that principle just named, which demands the symmet- 
 rical and proportionate development of all the functions. 
 They carry training of the muscles to such an extent, that 
 like wasting fire they consume their vitality. In spite of 
 
SELF CULTURE. 151 
 
 all hygienic regimen and temperance, their training is not 
 symmetrical, although it may appear to be such. The hu- 
 man body is a delicate machine, and no wheel can be made 
 to turn faster or slower than it. was intended to turn with- 
 out tearing off the cogs. But it is often found that in the 
 same individual certain vital organs even without special 
 culture are larger and more powerful than others, and this 
 is doubtless the reason why many apparently healthy peo- 
 ple die young. It is because they are born with some of 
 the vital organs powerfully developed, while others are 
 weak, and the strong ones consume the vitality that the 
 weak ones have not the energy to appropriate. It should 
 be the first object of culture to balance the powers by cul- 
 tivating the weak and restraining the overaction of the 
 strong. After this most desirable result has been secured, 
 all the functions should be trained alike, and the whole 
 carried to the highest possible state of culture. It is 
 usually an easy matter to ascertain what organs of the 
 body are weak, and what strong; but in case the facts are 
 not obvious, a physician should be consulted, who should 
 be requested to test all the vital organs ; not to doctor 
 them, but to measure their strength. If the brain and 
 nervous system are predominant, much muscular exercise 
 should be taken, while the mental powers, and especially 
 the imagination, should be restrained. If the reverse is 
 true, the brain should be forced to act, and the tendency 
 to muscular action should be held in check. If the mus- 
 
152 OUR HOME. 
 
 cles are stronger than the frame-work of the body, then 
 great care should be used not to exercise the muscles to 
 their full extent, for such a practice would be sure to 
 strain the body and injure the vital organs. This con- 
 dition is oftener seen in women than in men ; hence 
 women frequently injure themselves by lifting. ■ If the 
 muscles are weaker than the frame-work, then little injury 
 can result from the full and unrestrained use of the mus- 
 cles. But Nature is very kind to those who are too igno- 
 rant to ascertain their own weaknesses. She has so con- 
 stituted us that the best and most useful form of exercise 
 is that of walking or running. And that is just the kind 
 of exercise that the necessities of life compel us to take 
 the most of. This form of exercise actually has a ten- 
 dency to balance the organic developments, for it brings 
 into action every organ of the body, and in such a way as 
 to benefit the weak ones relatively more than the strong 
 ones. For instance, if the lungs are weak and the muscles 
 strong, then the lungs will be the first to say stop ; and 
 they will say so just at that moment when they have re- 
 ceived the greatest possible amount of good from the run- 
 ning. 
 
 The lungs will have received just enough exercise to do 
 them good long before the muscles have had enough to test 
 their endurance, or to strengthen them much. If the mus- 
 cles are weak and the lungs strong, then the muscles will 
 control the amount of running, and adapt it to their own 
 
SELF CULTURE. 153 
 
 particular needs. Long before the lungs have received ex- 
 ercise enough to do them much good, the muscles will have 
 received just enough to do them the greatest possible 
 amount of good. Thus we see how it is that running is 
 the best exercise in the world, and, to a certain extent, 
 relieves us of the responsibility of ascertaining which are 
 our weak organs, for it will pick them out for us and make 
 them strong. People both walk and run far too little. It 
 is, perhaps, impossible for human beings or animals to be 
 born with all their organs in a state of perfect balance, and 
 running seems to be Nature's means of balancing them, for 
 she gives the young of all animals, the human species 
 included, an irrepressible impulse to run almost contin- 
 ually, and during that age, too, in which their organs are 
 most easily modified. 
 
 As a rule, children need no other physical culture than 
 their own freedom. A child in the woods for one day will 
 do more in the direction of curing an organic weakness 
 than all the doctors of Christendom. 
 
 We have spoken thus minutely on the subject of physi- 
 cal culture because physical culture is not only the basis of 
 all culture, but the same general directions which we have 
 given, are as applicable to intellectual and moral culture 
 as to physical. 
 
 Symmetry is the one idea that should be kept promi- 
 nently in view in all forms of culture. But the laws of 
 the mind are such as to allow considerable margin for 
 
154 OUR HOME. 
 
 variety's sake. One need not be equally gifted in all his 
 mental powers in order to be symmetrical. It is not nec- 
 essary that he be able with equal facility to play the violin 
 and calculate an eclipse. He may be born with such a 
 latent talent for music as to render this not only the most 
 pleasant but also the most profitable occupation of his life, 
 and still violate no essential law of symmetry. But if he 
 possesses the talent to such a degree as to become its slave, 
 while his whole mental energy is absorbed by the one pas- 
 sion, and he is left to feel that there is nothing else beside 
 music to render life worth living, he has passed the limits 
 which the law of variety allows him and has become 
 unsymmetrical. His musical faculty should be restrained, 
 while other faculties should be called to the front and com- 
 pelled to act. This is a hard task and one which is not 
 very frequently accomplished, for the very reason that the 
 difficulty itself is of such a character as to prevent the per- 
 son from seeing things in their true light. When one 
 talks to him about the grandeur of science and the beau- 
 ties of philosophy, he listens with impatience to such fool- 
 ishness. The same is true of all forms of disproportionate 
 mental development. Nothing but a knowledge of the 
 mental economy will enable one, under these circumstances, 
 to see himself as he is. When one looks upon himself 
 from the standpoint of mental science, he eliminates the 
 bias of his own feelings resulting from his strongest ten- 
 dencies, and sees himself as others see him. It is very 
 
SELF CULTURE. 155 
 
 often the case that one can be made to see his own mental 
 defects in no other way than by a study of mental science. 
 
 There is one law of great importance that should not be 
 lost sight of either in physical or mental culture. It is 
 the law of periodicity. It is in recognition of this law 
 that the professional gymnast is required to practice at 
 just such an hour each day. In some way which we can., 
 not fully understand, the muscles instinctively adapt them- 
 selves to the conditions of periodical activity, so that when 
 the appointed hour arrives it finds them in that particular 
 condition which enables them to derive the greatest possi- 
 ble amount of good from a given amount of practice. The 
 law operates precisely the same in the mental economy. 
 A music teacher who has had much experience will insist 
 that the pupil practice at the same hour each day. 
 
 It is not essential that we should advise more minutely 
 with reference to the education of the mental powers, since 
 the needed advice may be found in the chapter devoted 
 expressly to that subject. 
 
 Moral culture involves no different principle from that 
 of intellectual culture, and the cardinal idea of symmetry 
 is as applicable to this form as to the two forms we have 
 already considered. The same is true of the law of period- 
 icity ; the saint who prays at regular periods will grow in 
 the instinct, of prayer and faith, while he who prays only 
 when he finds it convenient will find that the intervals 
 grow constantly wider. It is necessary, however, to keep 
 
156 OUR HOME. 
 
 constantly in mind the fact that the only legitimate condi- 
 tion of him who lays claim to moral culture, is that of the 
 complete supremacy of the moral sentiments over the pas- 
 sions. All sin originates in passional supremacy, while 
 out of the ceaseless and often equal conflict between the 
 moral impulses and those of the passions, grow all the 
 enigmas of human conduct. A person in whom the latter 
 condition exists will remain alike to his friends and foes 
 an unsolved problem. He will be both very good and very 
 bad. When under the dominion of the excited passions he 
 may be a fiend ; but an hour later he may be a saint. The 
 saddest condition for a human being is that in which the 
 passions and moral sentiments are so equally balanced that 
 neither can gain a permanent victory over the other. 
 
 When the moral sentiments and the passions are both 
 predominant at intervals, the moral sense becomes capri- 
 cious and cannot be depended upon. The person becomes 
 distrustful of his own good resolves, and his character 
 loses all stability and permanence. Either condition is 
 bad enough, but on the whole we regard the relation of 
 equality between the passions and the morals as the most 
 dangerous and destructive. 
 
 So deplorable is this condition that we would even regard 
 the permanent ascendency of the passions as a lesser evil. 
 
 Such a condition offers little hope of recovery, for the 
 passions and moral sentiments both grow by their occa- 
 sional victories, the one as fast as the other, and both are 
 
SELF CULTURE. 157 
 
 weakened by their occasional defeats, the one as much as 
 the other. The remedy for .this condition is to make the 
 intellect an ally for the conscience. It should be required 
 to devise means to keep the passions out of temptation. 
 When the passions are not aroused by the presence of 
 temptation, they are not difficult to manage. Ordinarily, 
 however, temptation is a source of strength, uniformly, 
 indeed, if it be resisted. But this condition is not always 
 fulfilled, and in the case we are considering it is almost 
 sure not to be fulfilled, so that the intellect should see that 
 temptation is never allowed to be present, and should seek 
 those places, occasions, and influences that appeal to the 
 morals. By persisting in this course a long time the moral 
 nature will gain a permanent victory, and then the vigilant 
 restraint may be removed, the fetters may be taken off 
 from the passions, and they will recognize their master. 
 
 " When gentle twilight sits 
 On day's forsaken throne, 
 'Mid the sweet hush of eventide, 
 Muse by thyself alone. 
 And at the time of rest 
 Ere sleep asserts its power, 
 Hold pleasant converse with thyself 
 In meditation's bower. 
 
 " Motives and deeds review 
 By memory's truthful glass. 
 Thy silent self the only judge 
 And critic as they pass; 
 And if thy wayward face 
 Should give thy conscience pain, 
 Resolve with energy divine 
 The victory to gain. 
 
158 OUR HOME. 
 
 " Drink waters from the fount 
 That in thy bosom springs, 
 And envy not the mingled draught 
 Of satraps or of kings; 
 So shalt thou find at last, 
 Far from the giddy brain 
 Self-knowledge and self-culture lead 
 To uncomputed gain." 
 
SUNDAYS AT HOME. 
 
 HETHER we regard the Sabbath as divinely 
 appointed or as growing out of the instincts 
 and necessities of man's moral and spiritual 
 nature, the experience of man has demon- 
 strated that it sustains a vital relation to our 
 highest welfare. 
 
 Hence no work dealing with the varied 
 phases of domestic life would be complete 
 without a chapter on " Sundays at Home." 
 With the exception of the few hours sup- 
 posed by all civilized people to be spent in 
 public worship, the day is not in any sense 
 a public day, but, on the contrary, it is the 
 most private of all days. It is a day when 
 the loud tumult of public affairs is hushed, 
 and each individual becomes a world in him- 
 self. It is a day of personal meditation. A 
 purely public day, like the Fourth of July in 
 the United States, bears little relation to the 
 home life. It is from the fact that Sunday is the most 
 private of all days, that we here make it a subject of 
 
160 OUR HOME. 
 
 special consideration; in order, if possible, to determine 
 what purpose in the economy of home shall be subserved 
 by this important period called the Sabbath. It consti- 
 tutes one seventh of our entire existence, and of no other 
 seventh do we spend so large a part at home. For the 
 small part that is devoted to public worship by no means 
 equals that consumed on other days by labor and those 
 duties which partially or wholly isolate us from the influ- 
 ences of home. 
 
 How, then, shall we employ the Sunday at home ? How 
 shall we secure for it a place among the higher ministries 
 of home life ? This, of course, will depend somewhat upon 
 the views we hold concerning the nature and object of the 
 Sabbath. It is not our purpose to discuss the subject in 
 its theological aspect, but simply to compel it, if possible, 
 to yield a contribution to the lessons of home life. And 
 yet it is impossible to do even this without taking some 
 definite ground as to the religious significance of the day. 
 It is useless to contend that the Sabbath has no religious 
 significance, for to divest it of such significance, would be, 
 in the nature of things, to abolish it altogether. If it be 
 claimed that the Sabbath was born of human instincts, still 
 it was of the religious instincts, and to prove that it was 
 thus born would be to claim for it a Divine sanction. We 
 believe that the religious nature of man and the institution 
 of the Sabbath are complementary, the one to the other. 
 But whatever origin may be claimed for the Sabbath, and 
 
SUNDAYS AT HOME. 161 
 
 whatever purpose it was primarily intended to serve in the 
 economy of civilization, we have no reason to believe that 
 it was intended for a period of " suspended animation " or 
 of physical and mental stagnation. Jesus rebuked the too 
 close and Pharisaical observance of the Sabbath, and 
 taught, both by precept and by example, that man was not 
 made in order that he might observe the Sabbath, but on 
 the contrary, that the Sabbath was made in order that man 
 might have the privilege of observing it. Man was made 
 first and the Sabbath was adapted to him, although we be- 
 lieve that the natural law on which the Sabbath is based 
 is coeval with the history of creation. 
 
 If, then, the Sabbath originated in the religious instincts 
 of man, it is inconsistent and foolish to contend that it 
 should not be observed as a day of special religious exer- 
 cise. But the question still arises, what constitutes special 
 religious exercise? and by what method is the desired 
 result best attained ? The now generally recognized law 
 that disagreeable or painful action always weakens instead 
 of strengthening the faculty involved, is directly opposed 
 to the Puritanic observance of the Sabbath ; for how can 
 a child be submitted to more intense mental torture, than 
 to be compelled to spend a whole day where he is not al- 
 lowed to smile, where all conversation is suppressed, ex- 
 cept that which is absolutely necessary, and where even 
 that is conducted with semi-whispers in the unmistakable 
 
 tone of reverence and awe. The Sabbath in too many 
 n 
 
162 OUR HOME. 
 
 homes is a day to be dreaded by the children. The ob- 
 servance of it required is so strict as to be painful, and 
 hence weakens instead of strengthening their moral and 
 religious nature. The effect of such forced action is al- 
 most always far worse than no action at all. This law 
 obtains with reference to every power of our being, but its 
 action is most obvious with reference to the moral and 
 spiritual faculties. These must act from choice or they 
 cannot be strengthened. Hence the question becomes a 
 most delicate one, "How shall the Sunday be spent at 
 home?" 
 
 Perhaps no further advice to the intelligent parent is 
 required than that he should be guided in all cases by this 
 great law, that every action, in order that it may strengthen 
 the part acting, must be accompanied with pleasure, in- 
 stead of pain. 
 
 In the first place, let the Sunday at home be divested of 
 all needless solemnity ; let it be a day of cheerfulness and 
 social enjoyment, a day of music both instrumental and 
 vocal, a day of conversation and reading. Let the chil- 
 dren be taught to think and to meditate on the great prob- 
 lems of life and the vast concerns of eternity, not in a sol- 
 emn, awe-inspiring way, but in a manner consonant with 
 good judgment and common sense. Let them be encour- 
 aged to engage in respectful discussions among themselves, 
 on these questions. Thus will they early develop a ten- 
 dency to think and hold opinions of their own, while yet 
 
SUNDAYS AT HOME. 163 
 
 the parents' superior wisdom may detect and point out fal- 
 lacies in their reasoning. There is little danger of sophis- 
 try and false conclusions in these arguments if the parent 
 is watchful, and seeks constantly to set the young thinkers 
 right, not by an ipse dixit, nor even by " thus saith the 
 Scripture," but by convincing their reason with superior 
 logic. When one begins to doubt any doctrine, whether 
 intellectual or religious, he naturally conceives a dislike 
 for any authority which disputes his ground, unless the 
 authority is enforced by reasons which his own intellect is 
 compelled to acknowledge as conclusive. Superior logic 
 is the only authority which a questioning mind naturally 
 receives with good grace. Hence, if you do not wish your 
 child to hate the Bible, do not attempt to silence all his 
 questions by the mere quotation of Scriptural texts, but 
 first, calmly and kindly lay bare the fallacy in his argu- 
 ment, and then show him, if you choose, how your own 
 argument accords with Scripture. 
 
 But it may be asked, why not teach the child to trust ? 
 why cultivate a tendency to question, by harboring the 
 argumentative disposition ? There is, it is true, a period 
 in early childhood when unquestioning trust is natural and 
 proper. But let us remember that when the child reaches 
 the age of fourteen or fifteen, he comes suddenly into pos- 
 session of the weapon of logic, and no matter what may 
 have been the teachings and influences of his early years, 
 he will, between the ages of fourteen and twenty, think, 
 
1G4 OUR HOME. 
 
 doubt, and question for himself. Every human mind, 
 however trustful it may be through childhood, must pass 
 through its period of doubt and mental conflict, and the 
 earlier this period is passed, the better and the safer. 
 Atheists are made out of those minds which receive only 
 the ipse dixit of bigoted fathers, after the awakening 
 intellect demands a reason. 
 
 When questions begin to present themselves to such 
 minds, questions that insist upon an answer, dissatisfied 
 with the merely dogmatic answer of the father, they nat- 
 urally appropriate the most logical explanation at hand, 
 which, of course, partakes of the narrowness of their own 
 thought-power, and thus they are often led astray. 
 
 There are probably in the world few atheists who 
 would be such had their young logic been answered with 
 logic and not with authority. We believe that a very 
 large per cent, of the world's unbelief is due to a wrong 
 system of Sunday discipline. 
 
 But we would not have the children disregard the 
 solemnity and sanctity of the Sabbath. It is natural for 
 children as well as for older people to have their periods of 
 serious thought. But parents should bear in mind that 
 with the child these periods are not naturally quite so 
 serious nor so protracted as their own. We believe the 
 day should be a day of rest, not, however, for the reason 
 usually assigned, viz., that man's physical nature re- 
 quires it. For to suppose that the natural duties of life 
 
SUNDAYS AT HOME. 1 80 
 
 constitute a burden so heavy that it cannot be borne with- 
 out constantly putting it down, is to suppose that God 
 made a mistake in the adaptation of life's powers to its 
 duties. 
 
 Man is surely as well adapted to his natural surround- 
 ings as the ant or the beaver, and to these, the burden of 
 life's labor is not so great as to require a periodic rest. 
 
 We believe that the philosophy of the Sabbath as a day 
 of rest is to be found in Nature's law of undivided inten- 
 sity, the law by which it is impossible for an organized 
 being to act intensely at two or more points at the same 
 time. This law holds with equal force in the physical, in- 
 tellectual and moral worlds. The physician makes a prac- 
 tical application of its physical phase when he irritates 
 the feet with drafts to cure the headache. The student 
 applies its mental phase when he requires his room to be 
 silent in order that he may put his "whole mind" to his 
 task. And the saint applies its moral phase when he avoids 
 temptation and prays in his closet. 
 
 Now the Sabbath is the complement of man's religious 
 nature, and in accordance with the law of " periodicity," of 
 which we have already spoken in our chapter on " Self 
 Culture," this department of his nature must act with 
 special force at certain regular periods. In the light of 
 these facts the whole philosophy of the Sabbath as a day 
 of rest may be seen at a glance by watching a laborer at 
 work. Suddenly a thought seizes him ; one which deeply 
 
1G6 OUR HOME. 
 
 interests, and vitally concerns him. How instinctively he 
 drops his tool and stands motionless. 
 
 Now we have only to regard the world as one man la- 
 boring for his daily bread, but, who by a law of his spiritual 
 nature, is called upon once in seven days, to think with 
 special intensity upon the great concerns of the eternal 
 and the unseen. The same instinct that caused the me- 
 chanic to drop his tool and stand motionless causes the 
 world to do the same. It is but the instinctive applica- 
 tion of this universal law of undivided intensity that closes 
 the furnace door, hushes the roar of the engine, and spreads 
 the mantle of silent thought over the great city. 
 
 Is it then a sin to labor on the Sabbath? Yes, a twofold 
 sin, a sin against both our physical and our moral nature. 
 Just as when one eats heartily when engaged in intense 
 mental labor, he sins against both his mind and his stomach.' 
 Physicians tell us, we can do nothing more injurious, for 
 the brain having concentrated nearly all the vital energy of 
 the system, the stomach is in consequence left feeble and 
 unable to dispose of its burden without a great strain. Ex- 
 actly the same principle holds with reference to laboring 
 on the Sabbath. The absorbing occupation of the Sabbath 
 should be the study of ourselves with the one view to sym- 
 metrical self culture. Sunday is the day of all others for 
 self culture. It is a day in which we should study our re- 
 lation to our Maker, and in accordance with the impulses 
 of the moral nature, all our mental energies should be ex- 
 
SUNDA YS AT HOME. 167 
 
 pended in rounding out our characters, and perfecting our 
 whole nature. 
 
 But he who attempts this great work on the Sabbath, 
 and at the same time attempts to carry on the ordinary la- 
 bors of life, is not only thwarting his own efforts at self- 
 improvement, but is doing that which will shorten his life 
 perhaps a score of years. 
 
 But he who carries his ordinary labors into the Sabbath 
 does not, of course, observe the day. Then he commits a 
 still worse sin. He not only sins against society, which, 
 however, is a comparatively minor sin, but he refuses to 
 obey a great spiritual law, which is woven into the very 
 constitution of his moral nature. 
 
 So that, view the subject as we may, we cannot ignore 
 the Sabbat li without sinning against ourselves, and we can- 
 not sin against ourselves without sinning against our God. 
 
 " O day to sweet religious thought 
 So wisely set apart, 
 Back to the silent strength of life 
 Help thou my wavering heart. 
 
 " Nor let the obtrusive lies of sense 
 My meditations draw 
 From the composed, majestic realm 
 Of everlasting law. 
 
 " Break down whatever hindering shapes 
 I see or seem to see, 
 And make my soul acquainted with 
 Celestial company. 
 
 " Beyond the wintry waste of death 
 Shine fields of heavenly light; 
 Let not this incident of time 
 Absorb me from their sight. 
 
168 OUR HO Ml-. 
 
 M I know these outward forms wherein 
 So much my hopes I Stay, 
 
 Are but the shadowy hints of that 
 Which cannot pass away. 
 
 "That just out>ide the work-day path 
 By man's volition trod, 
 Lie the re > MS of 
 
 The things ordained of God." 
 
RESOLUTIONS AND 
 INDIVIDUAL RULES OF LIFE. 
 
 SUCCESSFUL culture is never the result of 
 unmethodical effort. The best results are 
 obtained only when due regard is had to a 
 judicious and systematic use of time, when 
 the mind subjects itself to self-government 
 through a code of laws adopted and ap- 
 proved by itself. Mind in all its operations 
 and volitions is under the dominion of law. 
 There is no product of creation's law that in its operations 
 can transcend law. A being, then, develops best and most 
 rapidly when each department of his nature is subjected to 
 the rigid discipline of its own laws. In the foregoing chap- 
 ter we have dwelt upon the general laws that govern our 
 physical, intellectual, and moral natures; but there are 
 laws of a less general nature, which it is equally important 
 that we should observe, laws pertaining to individuals 
 and growing out of organic or temperamental conditions. 
 These laws each individual must discover and obey for 
 himself; for since they originate in individual peculiarities 
 they cannot be of general significance, and hence cannot 
 
1T0 OUR HOME. 
 
 be formulated into a code by any but the individual him- 
 self. Such are the laws pertaining to the particular time 
 and the amount of sleep required by each person, to the 
 kind and quantity of food desirable for each, and to the 
 processes of thought and mental activity that vary with 
 traits and temperaments. 
 
 All these laws should be ascertained by self-examination 
 and by remembering our own experiences. In this connec- 
 tion it is proper to consider the importance of dividing 
 each day into periods for the performance of special duties. 
 Learn from self-observation what part of the day may be 
 with greatest advantage spent in reading and study. Not 
 alone, however, with reference to reading and study, but 
 with reference to each and every function of life. But it 
 is not enough merely to learn these facts. It is far more 
 important, as it is far more difficult, to form and keep the 
 resolutions to which this knowledge should prompt us. 
 
 This subject naturally suggests the practice of keeping a 
 journal. And, perhaps, there is no duty of life (and we 
 consider this a duty of all), which, in proportion to the 
 exertion it requires, is capable of yielding such desirable re- 
 sults in the direction of personal culture. Setting aside the 
 advantages of being able, at a moment's notice, to present 
 the written volume of our lives (not the generalities and 
 glowing eulogiums in which biographers and literary execu- 
 tors indulge), such a minute delineation of our daily 
 thought! and deeds through all our past years, as .will 
 
INDIVIDUAL RULES OF LIFE. 171 
 
 enable us at any moment, to tell what function in our 
 life's programme a given day has performed, — setting 
 aside all this, there is probably no one practice more dis- 
 ciplinary in its permanent effects, than that of recording 
 each night the thoughts and deeds of the vanished day. 
 The duty, however, should be conscientiously performed. 
 This disciplinary tendency is in the process itself independ- 
 ent of the record's value. It often happens that the de- 
 mands of daily life present themselves with such tumultu- 
 ous rapidity, and in such perplexing confusion, that the 
 great reviewer, Conscience, does not always have time to 
 subject each act to a sufficiently scrutinizing examination. 
 And many of them get a favorable verdict by demanding 
 a haste that conceals their deformities. But when, at the 
 close of day — that hour which seems to offer most leisure 
 for the solution of life's problems — we sit, calmly reviewing 
 our deeds in the order of their occurrence, and in all their 
 inter-relations, then it often happens that Conscience 
 finds occasion to revoke its decision, and to pass a severer 
 verdict. Again, the aid in the cultivation of memory 
 which the practice offers is by no means insignificant, since 
 it especially cultivates that power of memory in which 
 nearly all, particularly Americans, are deficient, viz., the 
 power to reproduce impressions in the order in which they 
 occurred. It is needless to say that this form of memory 
 is the most useful of all. That form of memory which 
 enables one to reproduce a few disjointed links in a chain 
 
ITS OUR HOME. 
 
 of thought, although it may reproduce a great many of 
 them, can seldom be of great service to its possessor. The 
 recollection of past events is valuable to us only as it 
 enables us to recognize the relation of the recollected 
 events. Hence the value of that form of memory that can 
 recollect them in their sequential order. 
 
 Now the reader will demand no proof of the assertion 
 that there are no means by which this form of memory can 
 be so quickly and thoroughly acquired as by the practice 
 of recalling each night the experiences of the day in their 
 chronological order. The talent for public speaking, so 
 highly prized by all young men, but possessed by few, is 
 almost wholly conferred by this power of consecutive 
 memory. Those who possess it are enabled not only to 
 reproduce the thoughts gathered in the process of prepara- 
 tion, but to reproduce them in their order, one thought 
 suggesting the next, and thus enabling the speaker to dis- 
 pense with notes. 
 
 We cannot too strongly urge the practice of keeping a 
 journal. We have dwelt thus at length upon the subject 
 on account of the importance which we believe it pos- 
 sesses, and because it affords the best possible assistance in 
 carrying out the chief injunction of this chapter, viz., 
 that each individual should govern himself by laws, max- 
 ims, and resolutions of his own authorship. 
 
 We would recommend, not only the practice of record- 
 ing, in the evening, the thoughts, deeds, and events of the 
 
INDIVIDUAL RULES OF LIFE. 173 
 
 day, but also of recording, in the morning, that which we 
 intend to accomplish during the day. This practice offers 
 a threefold advantage. First, it enables us to govern our- 
 selves through the day by the laws which we enact in our 
 better moods ; second, it leads us to set a high price upon 
 time, and to cultivate a habit of punctuality and method ; 
 third, when we have written the record at evening just 
 under the promise of the morning, and the divine con- 
 science within us utters in our spirit's ear the comments 
 that seem fittest, we may be gazing upon one of the most 
 significant lessons of life. For it is a lesson symbolic of 
 the close of many a life ; a dark and colorless, evening in 
 sad contrast with (he brilliant hues and gaudy beauty of 
 youth's morning. The practice can have but one ten- 
 dency, and that is to make these two records more closely 
 agree. 
 
 The journal or diary is the best and most convenient 
 place in which to record those maxims and resolutions, the 
 wisdom and necessity of which we have so strongly urged. 
 As fast as you discover under what particular regulations 
 and circumstances a given function of your life is most ad- 
 vantageously performed, make these regulations and cir- 
 cumstances the theme of a resolution or a maxim, and re- 
 cord it in your diary, to become a law of your life. In 
 this way you will eliminate the evil and conserve the good 
 in your experience. You will grow wiser and better, and 
 in the end, it is possible that your list of resolutions may 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 lie a contribution to the worlds store of wisdom and 
 virtue. This, however, should not he the object of the 
 resolutions. Your one purpose should be the development 
 in your soul, of life's virtues, for it is by these that life is 
 measured. 
 
 " Count life 1- will last 
 
 When Ufe'a lame, foil <>'er; 
 
 And these, when earthly joys arc pest, 
 Shall cheer us on a brighter shore.'' 
 
1 CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 HERE is probably no one accomplishment 
 that reveals so much of human character as 
 that of correspondence. All are familiar with 
 the fact that experts are able from the hand- 
 ' writing alone to give the prominent features 
 of a person's character with so much accu- 
 racy that their testimony is allowed as evi- 
 dence in the courts. 
 
 But much as is revealed by the manner in 
 
 which we write, still more is revealed by 
 
 the nature of that which is written, — not 
 
 only the general merit of the composition, 
 
 but the thoughts and sentiments expressed, 
 
 the delicacy and propriety with which they 
 
 are expressed, the neatness of the written 
 
 page, the orthography and the grammar. 
 
 Then there is a certain air that impresses 
 
 us that comes under none of these heads, 
 
 J too subtile to be reduced to a definition, 
 
 y$ more ethereal than the perfume of a tropic 
 
 morning, but which stamps the product unmistakably as 
 
 the work of a noble soul. This indefinable something 
 
 J 
 
176 OUR HOME. 
 
 transforms all the sharp angles and irregular lines into 
 shapes that please, and covers the ugliness of imperfect 
 chirography with a secondary beauty on which we delight 
 to gaze. 
 
 Scholarship, culture, refinement, and inborn nobility no- 
 where betray themselves so conspicuously as in the act of 
 correspondence. While general culture of the whole mind 
 b necessary to the acquirement of this accomplishment, yet 
 the only specific means to be employed is the study of the 
 best models. Advantage should be taken of the imitative 
 tendency of little children, and accordingly all the best cor- 
 respondence of the parents should be read repeatedly to the 
 children. They will always be interested in a letter from 
 
 Aunt or Cousin , and if the letter is a good model 
 
 it should be read and re-read in the presence of the child till 
 he begins to catch the phraseology. The best models of 
 the father's business correspondence may be committed 
 to memory by the children. These forms once fixed in 
 their minds will leave their influence long years after the 
 words of the model are forgot ben. 
 
 The particular examples and problems we solved in our 
 school days are all forgotten, but they have left something 
 in our minds of which we make use every day. So in 
 regard to these models in correspondence. It is not so 
 much the mechanical form of the written page to which 
 we would call the attention of the young reader, as to that 
 intellectual ideal to which the study of the models gives 
 
W E R . 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 177 
 
 rise, and which embraces not only the mechanical form, 
 but all the qualities that go to make it a finished product 
 of the individual mind. 
 
 We have tried to select such models as in themselves 
 convey valuable suggestions and information on the gen- 
 eral theme of correspondence. 
 
 The one great error into which most young people Call 
 in the matter of correspondence is the idea that to write a 
 letter is to perform a literary feat. 
 
 When a child writes his first letter to his cousin or ab- 
 sent friend, he usually makes a day's work of it even with 
 mother's suggestions, while if that cousin or friend were to 
 visit him, he would not only find no difficulty in prattling 
 all day, but would probably much prefer to dispense with 
 his mother's suggestions. 
 
 In the following letter from the Hon. Wm. Wirt to his 
 daughter, mark how charmingly natural and simple his 
 language. It seems almost impossible that such should 
 have been written. It seems more like a verbatim report 
 of a fireside conversation. 
 
 Baltimore, April 18, 1882. 
 My Dear Child: — 
 
 You wrote me a dutiful letter, equally honorable to your head 
 and heart, for which I thank you, and when I grow to be a 
 light-hearted, light-headed, happy, thoughtless young girl, I 
 will give you a quid pro (/no. As it is, you must take such a 
 letter as a man of sense can write, although it has been re- 
 marked, that the more sensible 'the man, the more dull his letter. 
 
178 OUR HOME. 
 
 Don't ask me by whom remarked, or I shall refer you, with 
 Jenkinson, in the Vicar of Wakefield, to Sanconiathon, Manetho, 
 and Berosus. 
 
 This puts me in mind of the card of impressions from the 
 pencil seals, which T intended to pnnlose last mail, for you to 
 your mother, but forgot. Lo ! here they are. These are the 
 best I can find in Baltimore. I have marked them according to 
 my taste ; but exercise your own exclusively, and choose for 
 yourself, if either of them please you. 
 
 Shall I bring you a Spanish guitar of Giles' choosing ? Can 
 you be certain that you will stick to it ? And some music for 
 the Spanish guitar ? What say you ? 
 
 There are three necklaces that tempt me — a beautiful mock 
 emerald, a still more beautiful mock ruby with pearls, and a 
 still most beautiful of real topaz, — what say you ? 
 
 Will you have either of the scarfs described to your mother, 
 and which — the blue or the black ? They are very fashionable 
 and beautiful. Any of those wreaths and flowers ? Consult 
 your dear mother ; always consult her, always respect her. 
 This is the only way to make yourself respectable and lovely. 
 God bless you, and make you happy. 
 
 Your affectionate father, 
 
 WILLIAM WIRT. 
 
 This quality of simplicity is the chief virtue of the fam- 
 ily letter and the letter of friendship. In these it is neces- 
 sary to observe but one principal rule, viz., write just as 
 you would talk if the person to whom you write were by 
 your side. In a letter to mother or father, is no place to 
 display your literary skill by the free use of technical 
 words and high-sounding phrases. When the letters of 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 179 
 
 brothers and sisters become essays, be assured that their 
 heart relations are not what they should be. The vocabu- 
 laries of affection are not compiled from the glossaries of 
 science and philosophy. 
 
 When you write to a friend put yourself into the letter. 
 He does not wish you to instruct him. It isn't what you 
 say, but yourself that he desires. Except that of business, 
 the one object of all correspondence is to serve as a substi- 
 tute for that interblending of personalities which is the ex- 
 cuse and philosophy of society. It is a miserable substitute 
 at best, and fulfills its office badly enough even when we 
 put all of ourselves into it that we can. It is not egotism 
 to talk about yourself in a letter of friendship, for if your 
 friend is not interested in you, he is not your friend. - 
 
 The following is from a young man in college to his 
 mother. It does not contain a single allusion to Calculus, 
 nor are there any Latin quotations in it. 
 
 College, Tuesday evening. 
 
 My Dear Mother: — 
 
 Though I am now sitting with my back toward you, yet I 
 love you none the less ; and what is quite as strange, I can see 
 you just as plainly as if I stood peeping in upon you. I can 
 see you all just as you sit around the table. Tell me if I do not 
 see you ? 
 
 There is mother on the right of the table with her knitting, 
 and a book open before her ; and anon she glances her eye from 
 the work on the paper to that on her needles ; now counts the 
 stitches, and then puts her eye on the book and then starts off 
 
180 OUR HOME. 
 
 on another round. There is Mary, looking wise and sewing with 
 all her might ; now and then stopping to give Sarah and Louise 
 a lift in their lessons — trying to initiate them in the mysteries 
 of geography. She is on the left side of the table. There, in 
 the background, is silent Joseph, with his slate, now making a 
 mark, and then biting his lip, or scratching his head to see if 
 the algebraic expression may not have hidden in either of those 
 places. George is in the kitchen tinkering his skates, or con- 
 triving a trap for that old offender, the rat, whose cunning has 
 so long brought mortification upon all his boastings. I can now 
 hear his hammer and his whistle — that peculiar sucking sort of 
 whistle which indicates a puzzled state of brain. Little Wil- 
 liam and Henry are in bed, and if you will step to the bedroom 
 door you will barely hear them breathe. And now mother has 
 stopped and is absent and thoughtful, and my heart tells me she 
 is thinking of her only absent child. 
 
 You have been even kinder than I expected or you promised. 
 I did not expect to hear from you till to-morrow, at earliest, 
 but as I was walking to-day, one of my classmates cried, " A 
 bundle for you at the stage office ! " I was soon in my room 
 with it. Out came my knife, and, forgetting all your good ad- 
 vice about " strings and fragments," the bundle soon opened 
 its very heart to me ; and it proved a warm heart, too, for there 
 were the stockings— they are on my feet now, that is, one pair 
 of them, — and there were the flannels, and the bosoms, and the 
 gloves, and the pin-cushion from Louise, and the needle-book 
 from Sarah, and the paper from Mary, and the letters and love 
 from all of you. Thanks to you all for the bundle, letters and 
 love. One corner of my eye is now moistened while I say, 
 " Thanks to ye all, gude folks." I must not forget to mention 
 the apples — " the six apples, one from each," — and the beautiful 
 little loaf of cake. The apples I have smelled of, and the cake 
 nibbled a little, and pronounced it to be in the finest taste. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 181 
 
 Now a word about your letters. I cannot say much, for I 
 have only read mother's three times and Mary's twice. I am 
 glad the spectacles fitted mother's eyes so well. You wonder 
 how I hit it. Why, have I not been told from babyhood that I 
 have my mother's eyes ? Now, if I have mother's eyes, what is 
 plainer than that I can pick out glasses that will suit them ? 
 I am glad, too, that the new book is a favorite. 
 
 I suppose the pond is all frozen over, and the skating 
 good. I know it is foolish ; but if mother and Mary had 
 skated as many " moony " nights as I have, they would sigh, 
 not at the thought, but at the fact that my skating days are 
 over. 
 
 I am warm, well and comfortable. We all study, and dull 
 fellows, like myself, have to confess that they study hard. We 
 have no genius to help us. My chum is a good fellow. He 
 now sits in yonder corner, his feet poised upon the stove in 
 such a way that the dullness seems to have all run out of his 
 heels into his head, for he is fast asleep. 
 
 I have got it framed, and there it hangs — the picture of my 
 father! I never look up without seeing it, and I never see it 
 without thinking that my mother is a widow and that I am her 
 eldest son. What more I think I will not be fool enough to 
 say — you will imagine better than I can say it. 
 
 I need not say write, for I know that you will. Love to you 
 all, and much too. Your affectionate son, 
 
 HERBERT. 
 
 LORD CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON. 
 
 Dear Boy: — 
 
 Your letters, except when upon a given subject, are exceed- 
 ingly laconic, and neither answer my desires nor the purpose of 
 letters; which should be familiar conversations between absent 
 friends. As I desire to live with you upon the footing of an 
 
182 OUR HOME. 
 
 intimate friend, and not of a parent, I could wish that your let- 
 ters gave me more particular account of yourself, and of your 
 lesser transactions. When you write to me, suppose yourself 
 conversing freely with me, by the fireside. In that case you 
 would naturally mention the incidents of the day, as where you 
 had been, whom you had seen, what you thought of them, etc. 
 Do this in your letters : acquaint me sometimes with your stud- 
 ies, sometimes with your diversions; tell me of any new persons 
 and characters that you meet with in company, and add your 
 own observations upon them; in short, let me see more of you 
 in your letters. 
 
 How do you go on with Lord Multeney; and how does he go 
 on at Leipzig ? Has he learning, has he parts, has he applica- 
 tion ? Is he good or ill-natured ? In short, what is he ? At 
 least, what do you think of him ? You may tell me without 
 reserve, for I promise secrecy. 
 
 You are now of an age that I am desirous of beginning a con- 
 fidential correspondence with you, and, as I shall, on my part, 
 write you very freely my opinion upon men and things, which I 
 should often be very unwilling that anybody but you or Mr. 
 Harts should see; so, on your part, if you write me without re- 
 serve you may depend upon my inviolable secrecy. If you have 
 ever looked into the letters of Madame De Sevigne to her daugh- 
 ter, Madame De Grignan, you must have observed the ease, free- 
 dom, and friendship of that correspondence; and yet I hope, and 
 believe, that they did not love one another better than we do. 
 Tell me what books you are now reading, either by way of 
 study or amusement; how you pass your evenings when at 
 home, and where you pass them when abroad. 
 
 The foregoing letters in themselves contain a whole vol- 
 ume on the subject of correspondence. They leave very 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 183 
 
 little to be said as to what a family letter should be. We 
 will, however, add one more, a genuine love-letter in dis- 
 guise written by Doctor Franklin. There is nothing in the 
 nature of a love-letter, however, that renders necessary any 
 different suggestions from those we have already given 
 under letters of friendship. We have said there that it is 
 yourself, more that what you say, that your friend desires, 
 and in the case of love-letters the same is especially true, 
 and perhaps in a more literal sense. Some of our senti- 
 mental readers may perhaps be a little disappointed after 
 reading the following letter, and may possibly blame us, 
 and accuse us of malicious intent to dash their expecta- 
 tions. But if the letter does not fall under their definition 
 of a love-letter, the fault is doubtless one of age, and not 
 of natural judgment. 
 
 DR. FRANKLIN TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 My Dear Child: — 
 
 I wrote you, a few days since, by a special messenger, and 
 inclosed letters for all our wives and sweethearts, expecting to 
 hear from you by his return, and to have the northern news- 
 papers and English letters per the packet; but he is just now 
 returned without a scrap for poor us; so I had a good mind not 
 to write to you by this opportunity; but I can never be ill- 
 natured enough, even when there is the most occasion. The 
 messenger says he left the letters at your house, and saw you 
 afterwards at Mr. Duche's, and told you when he would go, and 
 that he lodged at Honey's, next door to you, and yet you did 
 not write; so let Goody Smith give one more just judgment, 
 
184 OUR HOME. 
 
 and say what should be done to you. I think I won't tell you 
 that we are all well, nor that we expect to return about the 
 middle of the week, nor will I send you a word of news — that 's 
 poz. 
 
 My duty to mother, love to children, and to Miss Betsey, and 
 Gracey, etc., etc. I am your losing husband, 
 
 B. FRANKLIN. 
 P. S. I have scratched out the loving words, being writ in 
 haste by mistake, when I forgot I was angry. 
 
 There is another class of correspondence which requires 
 the observance of a very different class of rules from those 
 already given. We refer to business correspondence. In 
 writing a business letter we should bear in mind that the 
 person addressed cares only for what we have to say, and 
 not for ourselves ; being in this respect exactly the reverse 
 of a family letter or a letter of friendship. This is why 
 the chief virtue of a business letter is brevity. The per- 
 son who is to read it desires to learn what you have to say 
 about your business as quickly as possible, in order that if 
 it be related in any way with his own, he may discharge 
 the obligation arising from that relation, and lose no time. 
 The Anglo Saxon bisig is the word from which are derived 
 both business and busy, so that the business man is sup- 
 posed to be a busy man ; hence he has no time to weigh 
 political arguments, nor to consider your peculiar views on 
 the "Trinity." 
 
 It is true that business relations may exist between 
 friends, and they may feel like expressing this in their 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 185 
 
 business letters, but if they do so, the letter, to that extent 
 departs from the nature of a business letter and becomes 
 one of friendship. In this case, it is proper, of course, that 
 the letter should be a mixed one, for wherever friend- 
 ship exists it is the prerogative of the parties concerned 
 alone, to say when and under what circumstances that 
 friendship shall be expressed. 
 
 In letters of this kind, it is, as a rule, preferable to de- 
 vote the first part of the letter to the business, and the 
 latter j>art to the interests of friendship ; but of course 
 circumstances and the relative weight of the two interests 
 must determine this matter in the mind of the writer. 
 
 The requirements of a business letter are well met in the 
 following model : — 
 
 San Francisco, Cal., Dec. 29, 1882. 
 
 Editors Springfield Republican: 
 
 Gentlemen: — Enclosed find nine dollars ($9.00), for which 
 please send me, the coming year, your widely known and valu- 
 able publication, The Springfield Republican (daily edition), 
 and oblige, Yours respectfully, 
 
 P. O. box 1937. Clara M. Sheldon. 
 
 It very frequently happens that the members of the fam- 
 ily are called upon to write, or to reply to what are called 
 letters of invitation. 
 
 The following models will show the form which custom 
 has sanctioned :— 
 
186 OUR HOME. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Cogswell request the favor of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Gile's company at dinner on Thursday, January 21, at 5 o'clock. 
 
 THE INVITATION ACCEPTED. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Gile, with much pleasure, accept Mr. and Mrs. 
 Cogswell's kind invitation for the 21st of January. 
 
 THE INVITATION DECLINED. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Gile regret that the condition of Mrs. Gile's 
 health will not permit them to accept Mr. and Mrs. Cogswell's 
 invitation to dinner for January 21st. 
 
 Of course the phraseology need not conform exactly to 
 that of the above models. The only uniform characteris- 
 tics are a business-like brevity, admitting nothing foreign 
 to the subject, and that they be written in the third person. 
 
 Notice that the invitation does not read "we request 
 your company, etc." It may be true, however, that com- 
 mon sense can assign no valid reason why the third person 
 should be used. But since the affectation of fashionable 
 society has established the custom, it is well for us to con- 
 form to the same, especially since conformity or non-con- 
 formity is not a question of conscience. 
 
 It seems proper in this connection to give a few of those 
 forms pertaining to the various kinds of business and com- 
 mercial transactions which necessarily constitute no insig- 
 nificant element in the education, not only of the business 
 man, but of all who successfully deal with their fellow men. 
 
 And since the home is the school in which children are 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 187 
 
 supposed to receive in a large degree their education in 
 all that pertains to life and its relations, a work de- 
 voted to the home life would hardly seem complete with- 
 out, at least, a brief consideration of the formulas of 
 business. 
 
 The following forms embrace all of importance that the 
 business man, whether farmer, mechanic or merchant, un- 
 der ordinary circumstances will be called upon to use: — 
 
 PROMISSORY NOTE ON DEMAND WITH INTEREST. 
 
 Springfield, Mass., Feb. 1, 1883. 
 $225.50. 
 
 On demand, I promise to pay H. J. Bennett, or order, two 
 hundred and twenty-five <£fo dollars, value received. 
 
 O. T. THORNTON. 
 
 PROMISSORY NOTE WITHOUT INTEREST. 
 
 Barnstead, N. H., Nov. 8, 1883. 
 $19.80. 
 
 Four months after date, I promise to pay Frank C. Cole, or 
 order, nineteen -j^fo dollars value received. 
 
 JOSEPH A. MARSTON. 
 
 PROMISSORY NOTE NEGOTIABLE. 
 
 Lewiston, Me., March 3, 1883. 
 $420.00. 
 
 Sixty days after date, for value received, I promise to pay 
 Everett Remick, or order, four hundred and twenty dollars with 
 interest from date. 
 
 H. W. COGSWELL. 
 
188 OUR HOME. 
 
 PROMISSORY NOTE NOT NEGOTIABLE. 
 
 Boston, Mass., Jan. 5, 1883. 
 $790.00. 
 
 For value received, I promise to pay Toorin H. Harvey, on 
 demand, seven hundred and ninety dollars. 
 
 WILLIAM J. MERRILL. 
 
 Notice in the above the omission of the phrase "or 
 order." 
 
 JOINT NOTE. 
 
 Chicopee, Mass., Aug. 6, 1882. 
 $75.00. 
 
 Thirty days after date, we promise to pay John Shaw, or order, 
 seventy-five dollars, value received. 
 
 TRUE L. PERKINS, 
 F. H. SARGENT. 
 
 JOINT AND SEVERAL NOTE. 
 
 Athol, Mass., Nov. 22, 1882. 
 $300.00. 
 
 Value received, on demand we, either or both, promise to pay 
 Charles L. Sheldon, or order, three hundred dollars with interest. 
 
 O. T. MAXFIELD, 
 TRUE B. JOHNSON. 
 
 The above note might, of course, have any of the charac- 
 teristics of the others. That is, it might be with or with- 
 out interest, on demand or after a stated period, negotiable 
 or not negotiable. 
 
 There is a modification of the joint and several note, 
 called principal and surety note, like the following : — 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 189 
 
 Chichester, N. H., July 9, 1882. 
 $320.00. 
 
 Ninety days after date, for value received, I promise to pay 
 Charles J. Carpenter, or order, three hundred and twenty dol- 
 lars, with interest from date. 
 
 F. CABIN LANE, Principal 
 D. K. FOSTER, Surety. 
 
 The purpose of this note is more frequently met by the 
 endorsement of the surety. That is, the principal signs 
 his name in the usual manner, and the surety endorses the 
 note by writing his name upon the back of it. In this 
 case he does not sign the note with the principal. The 
 endorser must be notified when the note becomes due, 
 otherwise he cannot be held responsible for its payment. 
 
 CHATTEL NOTE. 
 
 Bangor, Me., Jan. 10, 1883. 
 $900.00. 
 
 For value received, I promise to pay F. E. Perhan & Co., 
 or order, nine hundred dollars in ship masts, to be delivered at 
 Portland during the month of March, 1883. 
 
 JOSEPH BLY. 
 
 DRAFT — TIME FROM SIGHT. 
 
 Wells, Me., Aug. 2, 1882. 
 $400.00. 
 
 At ten days sight, pay to Joshua Hatch, or order, four hun- 
 dred dollars, value received, and charge to account of 
 
 J. G. BLAISDELL. 
 To D. D. Belcher, 
 
 Wells, Me. 
 
190 OUR HOME. 
 
 DRAFT — AT SIGHT. 
 
 Holyoke, Mass., June 2, 1882. 
 $140.00. 
 
 At sight, pay to Eben Clark, or order, one hundred and forty 
 dollars, value received, and charge to account of 
 
 H. O. GREENLEAF. 
 To W. C. King & Co., 
 
 Springfield, Mass. 
 
 DUE BILL — CASH. 
 
 Augusta, Me., May 4, 1882. 
 $25.00. 
 
 Due Frank H. Sanborn, on demand, twenty-five dollars with 
 interest from date. 
 
 J. W. HODGDON. 
 
 DUE BILL — MERCHANDISE. 
 
 Bowdoin, Me., April 30, 1882. 
 $60.00. 
 
 Due H. H. Tucker, or order, sixty dollars, payable in clover 
 seed at the market price on the first day of July, 1882. 
 
 W. H. WALKER. 
 
 BANK CHECK. 
 
 Springfield, Mass., Jan. 3, 1883. 
 $700.40. 
 
 CITY NATIONAL BANK. 
 
 Pay to the order of J. W. Holton, seven hundred fifo dollars. 
 
 No. 
 
 W. C. KING & Co. 
 
CORRESPONDENCE. 191 
 
 "RTCfJFJPT TN FTTI/L OF AT J, DEMANDS. 
 
 Springfield, Mass., Feb. 1, 1883. 
 $48.60. 
 
 Received of W. C. King & Co., forty-eight ^ dollars in full 
 of all demands to this date. 
 
 W. H. HOLTON. 
 
 Perhaps there is no one business form which the common 
 people are so often called upon to use, nor one in which 
 there are so many ludicrous errors committed as the simple 
 form pertaining to indebtedness for ordinary services. How 
 few matrons are able to present in proper form, a simple 
 board bill. The following is the proper form for a bill of in- 
 debtedness for rent : — 
 
 Alton, N. H., July 9, 1882. 
 Mrs. Mary N. P. Mathews, 
 
 To Mrs. Almira Sargent, Dr. 
 To four months rent ending July 11, 1882, @ $11.00, $44.00. 
 
 Received payment, 
 
 MRS. ALMIRA SARGENT. 
 
 The above form is applicable to all kinds of indebted- 
 ness for services rendered. In case some article or com- 
 modity represented the service, the name of that article or 
 commodity is put in the place of that of the service, and 
 the bill otherwise may be the same. 
 
 There are, it is true, many other forms pertaining to 
 business, as deeds, mortgages, bonds, wills, etc., etc., but 
 the occasions which require a knowledge of these are so 
 
192 OUR HOME. 
 
 comparatively rare that we have not thought it expedient 
 to give them. We have given all that are really essential 
 to the business man, and even in those works devoted ex- 
 pressly to business forms, those we have given will be 
 found to be the ones most minutely dwelt upon. 
 
 But whatever of importance may be attached to the 
 mere mechanical form of any document, the habit of ex- 
 pressing our thoughts in writing, with naturalness and 
 grace, whether in correspondence, in our private journal, or 
 in the formulas of business, is of far more importance. 
 This most desirable of all accomplishments comes only as 
 the reward for patient and tireless practice. 
 
 " To think rightly is of knowledge; to speak fluently is of nature: 
 To read with profit is with care ; but to write aptly is of practice. 
 No talent among men hath more scholars and fewer masters. 
 
 ****#**»**♦*♦# 
 And shouldst thou ask my judgment of that which hath most profit in the world, 
 For answer take thou this ; the prudent penning of a letter. 
 
 M Thou hast not lost an hour whereof there is a record, 
 
 A written thought at midnight shall redeem the livelong day. 
 Idea is a shadow that departeth, speech is fleeting as the wind, 
 Reading is an unremembered pastime; but a writing is eternal." 
 
MANNERS AT HOME. 
 
 JANNERS constitute the natural language in 
 which the biography of every man is written. 
 They are the necessary and unconscious ex- 
 pression of our lives and characters. 
 
 Politeness in its essence is always the same. 
 The mere rules of etiquette may vary with 
 time and place, but these are only different 
 modes of expressing the principle of polite- 
 ness within us. 
 
 Politeness does not consist in any system 
 of rules, nor in arbitrary forms, but it has a 
 real existence in the instincts of men and wo- 
 men. The ever changing conditions and cir- 
 cumstances of. social life may necessitate modifications in 
 the manners and customs of the people, and these modi- 
 fications may and do extend to the domestic circle. Yet 
 the principle of our nature in which the manners, customs, 
 and rules of etiquette all had their origin, is permanent 
 and unchangeable. All the various rules of etiquette for 
 the government of society are but notes and commentaries 
 on the one great rule, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." 
 
 13 
 
194 OUR HOME. 
 
 It has truthfully been said: u In politeness, as in every- 
 thing else connected with the formation of character, we 
 are too apt to begin on the outside, instead of the inside. 
 Instead of beginning with the heart and trusting to that 
 to form the manners, many begin with the manners and 
 leave the heart to chance and influences. The golden rule 
 contains the very life and soul of politeness: 'Do unto 
 others as ye would that they should do unto you.' Unless 
 children and youth are taught, by precept and example, to 
 abhor what is selfish, and prefer another's pleasure and 
 comfort to their own, their politeness will be entirely arti- 
 ficial, and used only when interest and policy dictate. 
 True politeness is perfect freedom and ease — treating oth- 
 ers just as you love to be treated. Nature is always grace- 
 ful ; fashion, with all her art, can never produce anything 
 half so pleasing. The very perfection of elegance is to imi- 
 tate nature ; how much better to have the reality than the 
 imitation. Anxiety about the opinions of others fetters 
 the freedom of nature and tends to awkwardness ; all would 
 appear well if they never tried to assume what they do not 
 
 possess." 
 
 Says the author of " The Illustrated Manners Book," 
 " Every denial of or interference with the personal free- 
 dom or absolute rights of another is a violation of good 
 manners. The basis of all true politeness and social en- 
 joyment is the mutual tolerance of personal rights." 
 
 La Bruyere says, " Politeness seems to be a certain care, 
 
MANNERS AT HOME. 195 
 
 by the manner of our words and actions, to make others 
 pleased with us and themselves." 
 
 Madame Celnart says, " The grand secret of never failing 
 propriety of deportment is to have an intention of always 
 doing right." 
 
 There are some persons who possess the instinct of 
 courtesy in so high a degree that they seem to require no 
 instruction or practice in order to be perfectly polite, easy, 
 and graceful. But most people require instruction and 
 rules as to the best and most appropriate manner of ex- 
 pressing that which they may feel. We sometimes find 
 young children with such an aptitude for speech and such 
 a command of language that their grammar is absolutely 
 faultless. They seem to have an instinctive knowledge of 
 the rules of grammar ; yet most children without grammat- 
 ical instruction are prone to errors. 
 
 Rules of etiquette are essential, then, but far less so 
 than that cultivation of heart and character, to which all 
 just rules of etiquette must trace their origin. 
 
 Personal habits claim the first place in our considera- 
 tion of home manners ; and foremost among these we 
 would place cleanliness. This virtue has been said to be 
 akin to godliness, and surely there is no quality in a 
 human being that more forcibly suggests ungodliness than 
 uncleanliness. An unclean person is an object of disgust 
 to all whom he meets. Foulness of character and moral 
 pollution will not isolate one from the sympathy of his fel- 
 
196 OUR HOME. 
 
 low men more effectually than physical uncleanliness. 
 We cannot long retain a love for our best and dearest 
 friend if he is unclean and has a foul breath. We may not 
 despise him, but our love will necessarily lose a little of its 
 ardor, or at best will change to pity. But the disgust of 
 our friends is not by any means the worst result of un- 
 cleanliness. It is most destructive to health. It is like 
 sand and mud thrown into the wheels and gearing of a 
 delicate machine. Few persons of unclean habits have 
 died of old age. People may sometimes in their old age 
 come to be uncleanly in consequence of their infirmity, 
 but during their younger days they must have been mod- 
 erately clean. 
 
 We would not advise one to adopt radical views on this 
 subject and take a daily bath through life, although we 
 doubt if such a course would injure most people, yet it 
 would probably be unnecessary, and would be a needless 
 waste of time. A full bath once or twice a week is, per- 
 haps, all that is necessary to escape the charge of being 
 ungodly in consequence of filth. 
 
 Most people do not seem to consider the laws of clean- 
 liness as applicable to the head and hair. Even those who 
 are clean in other respects are very apt to neglect the hair. 
 Many ladies who have long and thick hair are, perhaps, 
 unaware how quickly it becomes filthy and emits a disa- 
 greeable odor, especially if it be dressed while it is wet. 
 However cleanly the person may be in other respects, the 
 
MANNERS AT HOME. 197 
 
 hair will necessarily collect much dust and so become un- 
 clean. No father, mother, or child of good breeding will 
 allow the teeth or nails to become unclean. A clean mind 
 cannot dwell in an unclean body. 
 
 Perhaps in proportion to the population there are at the 
 present time fewer in the world who are addicted to the 
 disgusting and health-destroying habit of smoking and 
 chewing tobacco than in the days of our grandfathers, yet 
 the number even now is appalling. Although it is a vice 
 too large to be confined within any circle or sphere of life, 
 yet it may, perhaps, appropriately be considered under the 
 head of home manners. 
 
 There are few, if any, who will not frankly acknowledge 
 that tobacco in all of its forms is an unalloyed evil, and 
 that they would not desire their children to become ad- 
 dicted to its use. And yet the most effectual way to 
 cause their children to use it certainly is to use it in their 
 presence. After all that has been said and done by moral- 
 ists and philanthropists, we do not presume to be able to 
 say anything that shall influence the acts of confirmed to- 
 bacco users, but if we may be able to give them a few hints 
 by which they shall the better prevent their children from 
 falling into the same habit we shall be satisfied. If fathers 
 will persist in smoking and chewing they should surely try 
 to neutralize, as far as possible, the influence of their ex- 
 ample. This is a dangerous influence at best, but it may 
 be rendered more or less so according to the desires and 
 
198 OUR HOME. 
 
 acts of the father. No father should smoke frequently in 
 the presence of his boys, especially if the fumes of tobacco 
 are agreeable to them. But whenever he does so, he 
 should do it with some casual remark as to the folly of the 
 habit. He should aim to' convey the impression that he is 
 t\L\ and that he would give worlds to be free. It is 
 possible that in this way the very evil may be made a 
 means of good to the child, for thus he may early come to 
 realize the truth that man cannot always trust himself, 
 and that it is dangerous to trifle with any vice lest it bind 
 him with' a chain of iron. 
 
 He who feels that because he is at home he may act as 
 he chooses and throw off all restraints of politeness and 
 good manners generally finds that when he comes to put 
 on these restraints for special occasions they don't fit, and it 
 becomes evident that the harness wasn't made for him. 
 Even the children can see that his manner is entirely arti- 
 ficial and is not his own. Such men when they are occa- 
 sionally compelled to go into society experience pain and 
 embarrassment enough to outweigh the cost of being de- 
 corous and mannerly at home. 
 
 If parents expect their children to be favorites in soci- 
 ety, they must teach them good manners. The world's 
 fortress that has stood the bombardment of many a genius 
 has fallen under the more subtle force of good manners. 
 There is no way to teach children good manners except by 
 ox ample. It is an art that cannot be taught to advantage 
 
MANNERS AT HOME. 199 
 
 theoretically. The tactics of courtesy can never be mas- 
 tered without field practice. If husbands are not courte- 
 ous to their wives, the brothers will not be courteous to 
 their sisters, nor when they in turn become husbands will 
 they be courteous to their wives. Every man owes to his 
 wife and to his daughter at least the same considera- 
 tions of civility and politeness that he owes to any other 
 women. 
 
 From the " Home and Health " we copy the following 
 valuable rules which seem to be so perfectly to the point 
 that we cannot resist the temptation to appropriate them to 
 our purpose : — 
 
 HOW TO BE A GOOD HUSBAND. 
 
 Honor your wife. 
 
 Love your wife. 
 
 Show your love. 
 
 Suffer for your wife if need be. 
 
 Study to keep her young. 
 
 Consult her. 
 
 Help to bear her burdens. 
 
 Be thoughtful of her always. 
 
 Don't command, but suggest. 
 
 Seek to refine your own nature. 
 
 Be a gentleman as well as husband. 
 
 Remember the past experience of your wife. 
 
 Level up to her character. 
 
 Stay at home as much as possible. 
 
 Take your wife with you often. 
 
200 OUR HOME. 
 
 HOW TO BE A GOOD WIFE. 
 
 Reverence your husband. 
 
 Love him. 
 
 Do not conceal your love for him. 
 
 Forsake all for him. 
 
 Confide in him. 
 
 Keep his love. 
 
 Cultivate the modesty and delicacy of youth. 
 
 Cultivate personal attractiveness. 
 
 If you read nothing and make no effort to be intelligent you 
 will soon sink into a dull block of stupidity. 
 
 Cultivate physical attractiveness. 
 
 Do not forget the power of incidental attentions. 
 
 Make your home attractive. 
 
 Keep your house clean and in good order. 
 
 Preserve sunshine. 
 
 Study your husband's character. 
 
 Cultivate his better nature. 
 
 Study to meet all your duties as a wife. 
 
 Seek to secure your husband's happiness. 
 
 Study his interest. 
 
 Practice frugality. 
 
 To toil hard for bread, to fight the wolf from the door, to 
 resist impatient creditors, to struggle against complaining pride 
 at home, is too much to ask of one man. 
 
 Another phase of home manners is presented in the 
 attitude of children toward their parents. American 
 children have not, as a rule, that deference and reverence 
 for their parents which they should have. From the 
 author of " How to Behave," we quote the following 
 
MANNERS AT HOME. 201 
 
 forcible description of the characteristics of the American 
 child :— 
 
 " Young America cannot brook restraint, has no concep- 
 tion of superiority, and reverences nothing. His ideas of 
 equality admit neither limitation nor qualification. He is 
 born with a full comprehension of his own individual 
 rights, but is slow in learning his social duties. Through 
 whose fault comes this state of things? American boys 
 and girls have naturally as much good sense and good 
 nature as those of any other nation, and when well trained 
 no children are more courteous and agreeable. The fault 
 lies in their education. In the days of our grandfathers, 
 children were taught manners at school, a rather rude, 
 backward sort of manners, it is true, but better than the 
 no manners at all of the present day. We must blame par- 
 ents in this matter, rather than their children. If you 
 would have your children grow up beloved and respected 
 by their elders as well as their contemporaries, teach them 
 good manners in their childhood. The young sovereign 
 should first learn to obey, that he may be the better fitted 
 to command in his turn." 
 
 He who does not love, respect, and reverence his mother, 
 is a boor, whatever his pretentions may be. He who can 
 allow any other woman to crowd from his heart the love 
 for his mother does not deserve the affection of any 
 woman. 
 
 One of the evil habits exhibited for the most part at 
 
208 OUR HOME. 
 
 home is that known as " sulking." This not only spoils 
 the comfort of the whole family for the time, but the habit 
 grows stronger with age, until it often ruins the person's 
 disposition and prospect of happiness in life. We have 
 seen cases where this disposition to sulk had produced 
 such effects upon the character that the persons were act- 
 ually objects of pity. When the sulky child goes out into 
 the world with his vice he will not find a mother who will 
 patiently wait until his sulks have passed away ; but 
 society will desert him and leave him alone in his bitter- 
 ness. 
 
 But the opposite condition of perpetual levity is to be 
 avoided as fatal to real earnestness and depth of character. 
 As a rule, the ludicrous is seen on the surface of things, 
 and he who is always finding something to excite laughter 
 is generally of a superficial mind. The deep mind is more 
 apt to overlook this surface coat. It is true there is noth- 
 ing so good for the health of body or mind as hearty laugh- 
 ter, and he who cannot appreciate a good joke should be 
 pitied. And yet the excess of this good thing does surely 
 indicate, if not positive weakness, a want of habitual 
 action in the more serious faculties of the mind. 
 
 We supplement this chapter with the following rules for 
 the government of conduct in society. They should be 
 read and re-read by the members of the family till they are 
 thoroughly mastered, as the student would master the 
 rules of grammar. It is not enough to read them as we 
 
MANNERS AT HOME. 203 
 
 would read a novel, from mere curiosity, but they should 
 be studied with a view to being applied. 
 
 So much has been written on the subject of etiquette 
 and conduct that it is of course impossible for us to say 
 anything new. The most we have attempted is to recast 
 and adapt to the special needs of the times that which has 
 already been written. 
 
 We have consulted the best and most unquestionable 
 authorities, and for each and every phase of life have tried 
 to give a few rules of special importance. So that the list 
 itself is virtually a condensed volume on the subject of 
 etiquette, no vital rule of conduct being omitted. 
 
 The golden rule is the embodiment of all true politeness. 
 
 Always allow an invalid, an elderly person or a lady to 
 occupy the most comfortable chair in the room, and also 
 to accommodate themselves with reference to light and 
 temperature. 
 
 Never make the weakness or misfortunes of another the 
 occasion of mirth or ridicule. 
 
 Always respect a social inferior, not in a condescending 
 way, but with the feeling that he is as good as you. 
 
 Never answer a serious question in jest, nor a civil ques- 
 tion rudely. 
 
 The religious opinions of all, even those of infidels, 
 should be respected, for religious tolerance is not only nec- 
 essary to good manners, but is a cardinal idea in the doc- 
 trine of human liberty. 
 
204 OUR HOME. 
 
 A true gentleman or lady is always quiet and unassuming. 
 The person of real worth can afford to be unassuming, for 
 others will assume for him. 
 
 To laugh at one's own jokes will take the temper out of 
 the keenest wit. It is not necessary, however, that he 
 should maintain a serious and pharisaical countenance, he 
 may laugh mildly in sympathy with those who appreciate 
 his wit, provided he is not the first to laugh. 
 
 Too great familiarity toward a new acquaintance is not 
 only in bad taste, but is fatal to the continuance of friend- 
 ship. 
 
 The most refined and cultivated always seek to avoid, 
 both in their dress and in their behavior, the appearance 
 of any desire to attract attention. Extremes in fashion 
 and flashy colors are marks of a low degree of cultiva- 
 tion. Savages are never pleased by the finer blendings 
 either in color or sound. 
 
 When in • company talk as little as possible of your- 
 self or of the business or profession in which you are 
 engaged, at least, do not be the first to introduce these 
 topics. 
 
 Every species of affectation is absolutely disgusting. It 
 is also so easily detected that no one but an actor can con- 
 ceal it. 
 
 When it is necessary to call upon a business man in the 
 hours of business, if possible, select that hour in which you 
 have reason to believe he is least engaged. And even then 
 
MANNERS AT HOME. 205 
 
 talk only of business unless he should introduce other top- 
 ics. Unless the person sustains some other relation to you 
 than that of business, do not stop a moment after you 
 have completed your business. 
 
 If you have wronged any one, not only the rules of 
 etiquette, but the most obvious interpretation of moral 
 obligation requires you to be willing and quick to apolo- 
 gize. And never, under any circumstances, refuse to ac- 
 cept an honest apology for an offense. 
 
 Pay whatever attention you choose to your dress and 
 personal appearance before you enter society, but after- 
 wards expel the subject from your mind and do not allow 
 your thoughts to dwell upon it. 
 
 Never enter a house, even your own, without removing 
 your hat. 
 
 Do not try to be mysterious in company, by alluding in 
 an equivocal manner, to those things which only one or 
 two of the company understand. 
 
 Never boast of your own knowledge, and do not, either 
 directly or indirectly, accuse another of a lack of knowl- 
 edge. Do not even manifest your knowledge of any par- 
 ticular subject in such a way and under such circumstances 
 as will cause another to appear to poor advantage. 
 
 Never leave a friend suddenly while engaged in an inter- 
 esting conversation. Wait till there is a pause or a turn 
 in the conversation. 
 
 Do not hesitate to offer any assistance, that the occasion 
 
20G OUR HOME. 
 
 may seem to demand, to a lady, even though she may be a 
 stranger. 
 
 In company mention your husband or wife with the 
 same degree of respect with which you would speak of a 
 stranger, and reserve all pet names for times and places in 
 which they will be better appreciated. 
 
 Never violate the confidence of another. Do not seek 
 to avenge a wrong by revealing the secrets of an enemy, 
 which were told to you while he was a friend. 
 
 Always dispose of your time as if your watch were too 
 fast, you will then have a few moments' margin in the ful- 
 fillment of all engagements. To break an engagement 
 almost always injures you more than the other party. 
 
 Treat a lady, whatever may be her social or moral rank, 
 as though she were a princess. 
 
 Always show a willingness to converse with a lady on 
 any topic that she may select. 
 
 Do not ask questions concerning the private affairs of 
 your friends, nor be curious in regard to the business rela- 
 tions of any one. 
 
 Wrangling and contradictions are not only violations of 
 etiquette, but they also violate the requirements of tact, 
 since they defeat the very purpose of respectful discussion, 
 viz., to convince. 
 
 Return a borrowed book, when you have finished read- 
 ing it, without delay. A library made up of borrowed 
 books is a disgraceful possession. 
 
MANNERS AT HOME. 207 
 
 When entering a room bow slightly to the whole com- 
 pany, but to no one in particular. 
 
 Make the comfort and welfare of others a prime object 
 of your life, and you will thereby fulfill all the require- 
 ments of etiquette. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing, we present another list of 
 rules which ought to be of special interest to every Amer- 
 ican citizen, not only on account of their intrinsic worth, 
 but also on account of their origin, for their author was 
 George Washington. He called them his "Rules of Civil- 
 ity and Decent Behavior in Company." They were writ- 
 ten at the age of thirteen, and have been termed "Wash- 
 ington's Maxims." 
 
 1. Every action in company ought to be with some sign of 
 respect to those present. 
 
 2. In the presence of others sing not to yourself with a hum- 
 ming voice, nor drum with your fingers or feet. 
 
 3. Speak not when others speak, sit not when others stand, 
 and walk not when others stop. 
 
 4. Turn not your back to others, especially in speaking ; jog 
 not the table or desk on which another reads or writes ; lean 
 not on any one. 
 
 5. Be no flatterer, neither play with any one that delights not 
 to be played with. 
 
 6. Read no letters, books or papers in company; but when 
 there is a necessity for doing it, you must not leave. Come 
 not near the books or writings of any one so as to read them 
 unasked ; also look not nigh when another is writing a letter. 
 
208 OUR HOME. 
 
 7. Let your countenance be pleasant, but in serious matters 
 somewhat grave. 
 
 8. Show not yourself glad at the misfortune of another, 
 though he were your enemy. 
 
 9. They that are in dignity or office have in all places prece- 
 dency, but whilst they are young, they ought to respect those 
 that are their equals in birth or other qualities, though they 
 have no public charge. 
 
 10. It is good manners to prefer them to whom we speak be- 
 fore ourselves, especially if they be above us. 
 
 11. Let your discourse with men of business be short and 
 comprehensive. 
 
 12. In visiting the sick do not presently play the physician if 
 you be not knowing therein. 
 
 13. In writing or speaking, give to every person his due title 
 according to his degree and the custom of the place. 
 
 14. Strive not with your superiors in argument, but always 
 submit your judgment to others with modesty. 
 
 15. Undertake not to teach your equal in the art he himself 
 professes ; it savors arrogancy. 
 
 16. When a man does all he can though it succeeds not well, 
 blame not him that did it. 
 
 17. Being to advise or reprehend any one, consider whether it 
 ought to be in public or in private, presently or at some other 
 time, also in what terms to do it ; and in reproving show no 
 signs of choler, but do it with sweetness and mildness. 
 
 18. Mock not nor jest at anything of importance ; break no 
 jests that are sharp or biting, and if you deliver anything witty 
 or pleasant, abstain from laughing thereat yourself. 
 
MANNERS AT HOME. 209 
 
 19. Wherein you reprove another be unblamable yourself, 
 for example is more prevalent than precept. 
 
 20. Use no reproachful language against any one, neither 
 curses or revilings. 
 
 21. Be not hasty to believe flying reports to the disparage- 
 ment of any one. 
 
 22. In your apparel be modest, and endeavor to accommodate 
 nature rather than procure admiration. Keep to the fashion of 
 your equals, such as are civil and orderly with respect to time 
 and place. 
 
 23. Play not the peacock, looking everywhere about you to 
 see if you be well decked, if your shoes fit well, if your stock- 
 ings set neatly and clothes handsomely. 
 
 24. Associate yourself with men of good quality if you es- 
 teem your reputation, for it is better to be alone than in bad 
 company. 
 
 25. Let your conversation be without malice or envy, for it is 
 a sign of a tractable and commendable nature ; and in all cases 
 of passion admit reason to govern. 
 
 26. Be not immodest in urging your friend to discover a 
 secret. 
 
 27. Utter not base and frivolous things amongst grown and 
 learned men, nor very difficult questions or subjects amongst 
 the ignorant, nor things hard to be believed. 
 
 28. Speak not of doleful things in time of mirth nor at the 
 table; speak not of melancholy things, as death and wounds; 
 and if others mention them, change, if you can, the discourse. 
 Tell not your dreams but to your intimate friends. 
 
 29. Break not a jest when none take pleasure in mirth. 
 
 14 
 
210 OUR HOME. 
 
 Laugh not aloud, nor at all without occasion. Deride no man's 
 misfortunes, though there seem to be some cause. 
 
 30. Speak not injurious words, neither in jest nor earnest. 
 Scoff at none, although they give occasion. 
 
 31. Be not forward, but friendly and courteous, the first to 
 salute, hear and answer, and be not pensive when it is time to 
 converse. 
 
 32. Detract not from others, but neither be excessive in com- 
 mending. 
 
 33. Go not thither where you know not whether you shall be 
 welcome or not. Give not advice without being asked; and 
 when desired, do it briefly. 
 
 34. If two contend together, take not the part of either un- 
 constrained, and be not obstinate in your opinions; in things 
 indifferent be of the major side. 
 
 35. Reprehend not the imperfection of others, for that be- 
 longs to parents, masters and superiors. 
 
 36. Gaze not on the marks or blemishes of others, and ask 
 not how they came. What you may speak in secret to your 
 friend deliver not before others. 
 
 37. Speak not in an unknown tongue in company, but in your 
 own language; and that as those of quality do, and not as the 
 vulgar. Sublime matters treat seriously. 
 
 38. Think before you speak; pronounce not imperfectly, nor 
 bring out your words too heartily, but orderly and distinctly. 
 
 39. When another speaks, be attentive yourself, and disturb 
 not the audience. If any hesitate in his words, help him not, 
 nor prompt him without being desired; interrupt him not, nor 
 answer him till his speech be ended. 
 
MANNERS A T HOME. 211 
 
 40. Treat with men at fit times about business, and whisper 
 not in the company of others. 
 
 41. Make no comparisons; and if any of the company be 
 commended for any brave act of virtue, commend not another 
 for the same. 
 
 42. Be not apt to relate news if you know not the truth 
 thereof. In discoursing of things that you have heard, name 
 not your author always. A secret discover not. 
 
 43. Be not curious to know the affairs of others, neither ap- 
 proach to those who speak in private. 
 
 44. Undertake not what you cannot perform; but be careful 
 to keep your promise. 
 
 45. When you deliver a matter, do it without passion and in- 
 discretion, however mean the person may be you do it to. 
 
 46. When your superiors talk to anybody, hear them; neither 
 speak nor laugh. 
 
 47. In disputes be not so desirous to overcome as not to give 
 liberty to each one to deliver his opinion, and submit to the 
 judgment of the major part, especially if they are judges of the 
 dispute. 
 
 48. Be not tedious in discourse, make not many digressions, 
 nor repeat often the same matter of discourse. 
 
 49. Speak no evil of the absent, for it is unjust. 
 
 50. Be not angry at table, whatever happens; and if you 
 have reason to be so show it not; put on a cheerful counte- 
 nance, especially if there be strangers, for good humor makes 
 one dish a feast. 
 
 51. Set not yourself at the upper end of the table; but if it 
 
8U OUR HOME. 
 
 be your due, or the master of the house will have it so, contend 
 not, lest you should trouble the company. 
 
 52. When you speak of God or his attributes, let it be seri- 
 ously, in reverence and honor, and obey your natural parents. 
 
 53. Let your recreations be manful, not sinful. 
 
 5-4. Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of 
 celestial fire called conscience. 
 
 14 Few to good breeding make a just pretense; 
 Good breeding is the blossom of good sense; 
 The last result of an accomplished mind, 
 With outward grace, the body's virtue, join'd." 
 
FAMILY SECRETS. 
 
 ^p> ATURE'S most beneficent operations are hid- 
 den from our sight beneath the surface of 
 things. The germination of all life is under 
 a veil. She will not let a seed sprout till she 
 has buried it. All Nature is one great hall of 
 free-masonry where every movement is at the 
 gesture of a spectral hand. In secrecy and 
 even deception, she is an adept. Not only 
 does she hide her operations from our sight, 
 but she actually gives false signals. She is 
 an accomplished ventriloquist, and we cannot tell whence 
 come her most characteristic sounds. The cry of the new 
 born infant comes to us from the thicket, and at the birth- 
 day party of a child the irresponsible parrot becomes the 
 orator of the day. The mocking-bird, in droll mimicry, 
 utters the wail of sorrow and the laugh of joy. The 
 spider touched, feigns death. The earthquake is prone to 
 imitate the thunder. The voices of the night are inter- 
 changeable. The stupid owl steals the voice of sorrow, 
 and the breeze whispers every sentiment. The sky pre- 
 sents the delusion of a blue tent cover, while every tree 
 
\>U OUR HUME. 
 
 that looks into the mirror of the stream sees itself a broken 
 staff. We look upon the flat stretched canvas, and through 
 t lie cunning jugglery of light and shade it becomes a liv- 
 ing, breathing reality. 
 
 Yet who shall dare prove Mature a liar and face the cor- 
 ollary? A work is never better than its author, and if we 
 regard Nature as the work of God, the awfulness of that 
 corollary should surely cause us to review our thoughts. 
 
 Nature is not a liar. No act of hers falls under any pos- 
 sible definition of a lie. Shu simply possesses the instinct 
 of secrecy. 
 
 Honesty compels no man to stop on the highway to ex- 
 plain his errand, and it' curious idlers inquire of him, there 
 i| no phrase in honesty's law that bids him divulge a right- 
 ful secret. And if the man perceives that he is watched 
 by these idlers, he may, with truth's approval, take the 
 first cross road that leads him in the opposite direction 
 from the object of his errand. Perhaps the idler's highest 
 good demands that the secret be withheld from him. 
 
 Now let us see if these limitations do not cover every 
 license of Nature. 
 
 For some wise purpose most of Nature's secrets are with- 
 held from us. We may believe that to know them would 
 harm us. Perhaps our pride demands that they be with- 
 held, or perhaps again the scheme of development and 
 spirit growth demands it. However this may be, we know 
 that most of the secrets are withheld. We are idle ques- 
 
FAMILY SECRETS. 215 
 
 tioners, and often compel her to take cross roads, or to 
 walk in brooks to destroy the scent of her trail. In every 
 case she but withholds a rightful secret. The purpose of 
 the mocking-bird is simply to defeat our pride when we 
 claim to know what Nature is about by the intonations of 
 her voice. She hides the knowledge of disease from us 
 while she attempts to cure it without frightening us. To 
 gaze forever on a ghastly skeleton would sicken us of life. 
 Hence Nature with cunning and deceptive fingers has 
 buried deep beneath her broidery of flesh the awful sugges- 
 tion of death. 
 
 Thus, while we have freed Nature from our own implied 
 charge of falsehood, we have yet learned from her a grand 
 lesson. We have learned that she is the great advocate of 
 family secrets. 
 
 Secrecy is one of the first duties that the domestic rela- 
 tion imposes. It is one of the cardinal necessities to the 
 existence of the family. Every family has its secrets and 
 must have them while it is a family. To publish the 
 secrets of any family would be to dissipate that family. 
 
 The sacred right to secrecy transcends all etiquette. No 
 rule of manners can compel one to divulge one secret of 
 his domestic relations. Without confidence the marriage 
 bond would be a rope of sand. But secrecy is the only 
 condition that can maintain confidence. 
 
 It is the custom of many married people to make no 
 secret of their love, and on all public occasions they seek, 
 
Slfl OUR HOME. 
 
 in a most sickening manner, to display their affection. 
 This is not only a violation of good taste, but it is a viola- 
 tion of the instincts of human nature as well. The senti- 
 ment of love in all its phases seeks instinctively the haunts 
 of privacy. Whether in its first pure awakening in the 
 breast of youth and maiden, or, in its maturer and grander 
 form, when crowned with fruits immortal, it alike retreats 
 from the gaze of those who cannot sympathize. 
 
 Love is poetical until we see it manifested in others. It 
 then becomes disgusting, and those who indulge in public 
 demonstrations are always the objects of ridicule. 
 
 Not that a man should feign coldness or indifference 
 toward his wife in public. This is not at all the import of 
 what we have said. Husbands and wives should appear 
 tender and considerate of each other in public places. It 
 is perfectly proper that their manner should proclaim their 
 relation. But true love between husband and wife demands 
 a more engrossing attention, the tenderer endearments and 
 caresses which society in the aggregate cannot understand. 
 They constitute a language that only love can understand. 
 Hence Nature has kindly given to us a disposition to con- 
 ceal them. 
 
 The fact that the heart shrinks from the public manifes- 
 tation of affection is the highest compliment to its inno- 
 cence and purity, a proof that it is above the comprehen- 
 sion of the world's common moods. And in this fact is 
 based the philosophy of family secrets. 
 
FAMILY SECRETS. 217 
 
 The family is the outgrowth of love, and love's eternal 
 condition is secrecy. Hence the family relation in all its 
 phases is more or less intimately connected with the in- 
 stinct of secrecy. It is a native impulse of every high- 
 minded person to keep those facts a secret which pertain to 
 the history of his family — even those facts which in their 
 nature do not demand secrecy. 
 
 Nature hides the embryo of every seed, and carries on in 
 the dark the process by which she rears and trains the lit- 
 tle plant, and the mother should follow Nature's example 
 in rearing and training her child. Children punished, or 
 in any way disciplined in the presence of others, are almost 
 always made worse thereby, instead of better. That in- 
 tuitive confidence and mutual knowledge that exists be- 
 tween mother and child is so delicate in its nature that the 
 presence of a third party, even if it be a brother or a sister, 
 is sometimes fatal to its proper action. 
 
 Parents should never censure their children, nor even 
 speak disparagingly of them, in the presence of strangers or 
 visitors. 
 
 There are certain private rights which belong to each 
 member of a family, and should not be violated, and yet 
 their rights are too often disregarded. 
 
 Every one naturally holds back the expression of the 
 greater parts of his thoughts. For every thought that we 
 express we have a thousand that never pass the limits of 
 our own consciousness. This, of course, we feel to be a 
 
318 OUR HOME. 
 
 natural right, and when it is encroached upon, we instinct- 
 ively act upon the defensive. When one's sphere of privacy 
 is trespassed upon by another, there is a spontaneous and 
 joint action of the inventive and secretive functions, which 
 results in an attempt to deceive. Hence the habit of 
 falsehood may be produced in a child by not conceding to 
 him the natural right of privacy. We quote the follow- 
 ing from the author of " The Illustrated Manners Book " : — 
 
 " One of the rights commonly trespassed upon, consti- 
 tutinga violent breach of good manners, is the right of 
 privacy, or of the control of one's own person and affairs. 
 There are places in this country where there exists scarcely 
 the slightest recognition of this right. A man or woman 
 bolts into your house without knocking. No room is 
 sacred unless you lock the door, and an exclusion would be 
 an insult. Parents intrude upon children and children 
 upon parents ! The husband thinks he has a right to enter 
 his wife's room, and the wife would feel injured if excluded 
 by night or day from her husband's. It is said that they 
 even open each other's letters, and claim as a right that 
 neither should have any secrets from the other. 
 
 " It is difficult to conceive of such a state of intense bar- 
 barism in £ civilized country, such a denial of the simplest 
 and most primitive rights, such an utter absence of deli- 
 cacy and good manners ; and had we not been assured on 
 good authority that such things exist, we should consider 
 any suggestion respecting them needless and impertinent. 
 
FAMILY SECRETS. 219 
 
 " Every person in a dwelling should, if possible, have a 
 room as sacred from intrusion as the house is to the fam- 
 ily. No child grown to the years of discretion should be 
 outraged by intrusion. No relation, however intimate, 
 can justify it. So the trunks, boxes, papers and letters of 
 every individual, locked or unlocked, sealed or unsealed, 
 are sacred." 
 
 This matter of privacy can, no doubt, be carried to ex- 
 cess, and whether we endorse all of the foregoing or not, 
 it certainly contains much truth. The tendency of civil- 
 ization has always been toward the development of indi- 
 viduality and private interest. In the rude civilization of 
 frontier life, one room serves as parlor, kitchen, and 
 sleeping room for the whole family, and all private inter- 
 ests within the family are ignored. This principle is still 
 more forcibly illustrated by comparing savage with civil- 
 ized life. Although civilization tends to the multiplica- 
 tion and development of social institutions, yet it tends 
 still more to the development of the individual. It brings 
 the aggregate interest into harmony with that of the indi- 
 vidual. This it does not so much by curtailing and modi- 
 fying the rights of the mass, as by recognizing and in- 
 creasing the rights of the individual. 
 
 We do not mean by individual rights, individual isola- 
 tion in the sense in which we find it on the first pages of 
 human history. The individual and the family were then 
 sufficiently isolated. Every family was a nation in itself, 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 but it had no rights which it could not sustain with rock 
 and club. The family and society could not then exist 
 together, but civilization finds its one great problem in the 
 proposition of their union. While society is still develop- 
 ing, the isolation of the family and of the individual is re- 
 tained, and family secrets are rendered more necessary by 
 every advance of civilization. 
 
 But family secrets does not mean family reserve or es- 
 trangement. Better a thousand times that every individ- 
 ual right should be ignored than that husbands and wives 
 and brothers and sisters should become cold and distant 
 and indifferent. This is the most fatal catastrophe that 
 can befall a family. Indeed, it is the death blow to home, 
 and what remains is but the ghastly skeleton from which 
 the spirit lias forever flown. The family whose members 
 do not mutually consult and advise and work together 
 for each other's good have virtually surrendered the char- 
 ter of home, and are living as strangers whom circum- 
 stances have compelled to live in close proximity. History 
 affords hardly an example of a man who has proved a 
 grand success, who did not make his wife a partner in his 
 schemes. Behind every brilliant career there will be found 
 a Martha or a Josephine. The very fact of legitimate 
 family secrets renders more beautiful the intercourse of 
 home, and sweetens the very associations and heart-bleed- 
 ings that are legitimate nowhere else but in the heart of 
 home. 
 
FAMILY SECRETS. 221 
 
 " From the outward world about us, 
 
 From the hurry aud the din, 
 Oh, how little do we gather 
 
 Of the other world within! 
 
 ****** 
 But when the hearth is kindled, 
 
 And the house is hushed at night — 
 Ah, then the secret writing 
 
 Of the spirit comes to light! 
 Through the mother's light caressing 
 
 Of the baby on her knee, 
 We see the mystic writing 
 
 That she does not know we see- 
 By the love-light as it flashes 
 
 In her tender-lidded eyes, 
 We know if that her vision rest 
 
 On earth, or in the skies; 
 And by the song she chooses, 
 
 By the very tune she sings, 
 We know if that her heart be set 
 
 On seen, or unseen things." 
 
DUTIES OF HOME. 
 
 HE word home seems to be inseparably con- 
 nected with certain specific duties. One can- 
 not dwell within the circle of home without 
 being morally responsible for the discharge 
 of special duties that owe their origin to the 
 home relations. 
 
 The first duty of home in the order of de- 
 velopment, since it is developed as soon as 
 the home is established, is the duty of husband and wife to 
 each other. Men too often forget that they owe any special 
 duties to their wives, and yet there is no man who has a 
 worthy wife but owes her a debt he can never pay. She 
 has given him what fortune cannot purchase, a human 
 heart. She has paid him the highest compliment that one 
 human being can pay to another. She has told him by 
 actions that cannot lie, that he is more to her than all the 
 associations of her life ; more than the sweet playmates of 
 her girlhood ; more than her sister's caress and brother's 
 pride ; more than the love and tenderness of parents ; more 
 than her dear old home. She leaves all these for him, 
 although her heart strings cannot be unwound from any of 
 
DUTIES OF HOME. 223 
 
 them, but must be broken and torn away. Does human 
 life present a more touching spectacle than that of a young 
 bride suppressing her tears and forcing a smile while she 
 kisses her mother and father and sister and brother fare- 
 well ? How hard hearted, how unworthy of her, how even 
 beastly, must be the man, if we may give him that title, 
 who does not under those circumstances feel his knees bend 
 a little with the instinctive impulse of adoration. 
 
 The husband can discharge the duties which he owes 
 to his wife only by keeping perpetually in his mind that he 
 owes her a debt to pay, which it will be necessary to take 
 advantage of every passing opportunity. 
 
 But the obligations and duties are not all on the part of 
 the husband. If the wife is the woman that she ought to 
 be, and esteems herself accordingly, and at the same time 
 considers the man whom she has accepted as worthy of 
 her, she ought certainly to feel under the deepest obliga- 
 tion to him. 
 
 The first duty that a wife owes to her husband is to ap- 
 pear attractive to him. She should dress with almost ex- 
 clusive reference to his tastes. This subject, idle as it may 
 seem, is fraught with deep consequences to the race. We 
 cannot tell the reader all about it without discussing at 
 length the broad question of "natural selection," which 
 would be out of place in a work like this. Suffice it to 
 say, that great law demands that the wife should continually 
 appeal as strongly as possible, to the sense of beauty in her 
 
IS home. 
 
 husband. No man ever yet loved a woman who was not 
 to him beautiful. It is beauty that man loves in woman, 
 and when other things are equal his love for his wife is just 
 proportionate to her beauty. 
 
 There have been, doubtless, many women so ill-formed 
 and so unsymmetrical in their features that they could not 
 possibly present to any man a single trace of physical 
 beauty, and yet they have been the objects of the tenderest 
 love. 
 
 But in every such case there will be found either an in- 
 tellectual or a moral beauty that has charmed the lover. 
 
 George Eliot and the wife of Carlyle could not lay 
 claim to very much of the " dimpled beauty," yet was 
 there not a higher beauty in their souls, that even found ex- 
 pression in their faces when closely observed, and for which 
 the giddy girl might well desire to exchange her dimples. 
 
 And yet physical beauty has its high office. Every 
 face of beauty is from the chisel of the eternal sculptor. 
 Every dimple is the finger print of the divine. Woman's 
 highest and grandest endowment is her beauty, physical, 
 intellectual and spiritual. 
 
 Thrice happy is that woman who possesses all these. 
 She is a star of the first magnitude in the firmament of 
 human society. God never endowed a woman with this 
 threefold beauty without reserving a claim upon her 
 power. Such a woman belongs to humanity, She is min- 
 istrant to human need. 
 
DUTIES OF HOME. 225 
 
 Of these three forms of beauty, the spiritual is of the 
 first importance, intellectual of the second, and physical of 
 the third. Although no amount of physical beauty can 
 fully compensate for the slightest deficiency of the spirit- 
 ual, yet it must be acknowledged that the lack of physical 
 beauty is never so painfully obvious as when accompanied 
 by a like spiritual deficiency. 
 
 It is a law established by observations made on the 
 entire animal kingdom, that the worth of offspring, other 
 things being equal, is in the ratio of the mother's beauty. 
 It may not be a beauty that would stand before the criti- 
 cism of the world, but it must be a beauty that charms the 
 husband. 
 
 In view of these facts is it not the hignest duty of 
 woman, a duty which she owes to God and to humanity, 
 to make herself at all times as beautiful in her husband's 
 eyes as possible ? It is a diviner art to maintain affection 
 than to awaken it. It cannot long be maintained, if the 
 advantages under which it was awakened are withdrawn. 
 Your husband wooed and won you in your best attire, in an 
 atmosphere surcharged with the bewilderment of roses, 
 perfume and of song, amid the sweet intoxication of wood- 
 land rambles and moonlight poetry. You come to his 
 house, take off the myrtle from your hair and cast the rose- 
 bud from your throat, and exchange the rustling per- 
 fumed robes of love for soiled calico. Can you expect 
 anything but a chilling shock to the affections of him 
 
 15 
 
226 OUR HOME. 
 
 who before had stood gazing upon you in the moveless 
 trance of love ? 
 
 Ladies need but little advice of this kind concerning 
 their personal appearance when they go into society. In- 
 deed, it would be far better for them and for the world if 
 they would appear a little less attractive in the presence of 
 other husbands, and a little more so in the presence of 
 their own. Is it any wonder that the husband grows cold 
 and indifferent towards his wife when he sees her exhaust- 
 ing every resource of invention to enhance her attractive- 
 ness in the presence of other men, while she appears con- 
 tinually in his presence with soiled dress and disheveled 
 hair? How often we hear ladies making an almost ludi- 
 crous attempt to revive the forgotten lore of their early 
 seminary culture, in the hope of winning the admiration of 
 some brilliant society man, when their conversation with 
 their husbands never rises to higher themes than the last 
 month's rent and a new dress to wear to church. 
 
 This is an almost universal vice. No creed or social po- 
 sition is free from it. It is daily committed alike by the 
 rich and the poor, in ignorance of one of the great laws 
 that govern human love. 
 
 We have told the secret of many a conjugal tragedy. 
 It costs but little to dress becomingly, to put a rose-bud 
 in the hair, and she who cannot find time to do this may, 
 perhaps, by and by find time to mourn over blighted hopes 
 and buried love. 
 
DUTIES OF HOME. 227 
 
 Important as are the duties that husband and wife owe 
 to each other, no less important are those which they owe 
 to their children. It is the duty of parents to make the 
 home of childhood pleasant and attractive, for children de- 
 velop more perfectly in pleasant than in unpleasant homes. 
 We do not mean, however, mere outward attractiveness. 
 It is not essential that the home should overlook some rich 
 and beautiful landscape ; but that the associations of 
 home should be pleasant and agreeable to the children ; so 
 that they may not become restless and desirous of leaving it. 
 
 It is the duty of parents to make their children love 
 them. Not that they should compel love with the authority 
 of the rod, for that would be impossible ; but by the wise 
 application of the law that " love begets love." No person 
 has any right to be the parent of a child that doesn't love 
 him. Thoughtlessness and narrow views of life's relations 
 are often fatal to filial love. Parents too often forget that 
 they themselves were once children with children's tastes, 
 desires, and whims. 
 
 It is natural for children to love their parents, not only 
 during the years of -childhood, but through life. And yet 
 we often see very little filial love among grown up children. 
 This is chiefly because the parents failed to make a proper 
 concession to the demands of childhood. A child cannot 
 love one, be it parent or teacher, who suppresses his child 
 nature. When once the tender bond of sympathy between 
 parent and child has thus been broken it can never be 
 
228 OUR HOME. 
 
 fully reunited ; and when the child becomes a man he is 
 very apt to dislike his parents for the needless pain they 
 have caused him, in not governing him in accordance with 
 the laws of his nature. 
 
 By sympathy we do not mean love. It is possible for 
 love to exist without sympathy, or at least without that 
 intimate, almost mesmeric sympathy that ought to exist 
 between parent and child. Such parents usually love their 
 children with much tenderness, but they somehow manage 
 to place a great gulf between themselves and the objects 
 of their affection. They do not understand that the art of 
 rearing children is the art of becoming " a child again," 
 of going back where the children are, and so growing up 
 again with them. Yes, the way to bring up a child is to 
 go back and get him and take him along with you Up 
 to manhood. You should not stand on the height and call 
 him up, for he would be very apt to lose his way. He is 
 not acquainted with the path. You know it is a narrow 
 path, only wide enough for one, and that all who would 
 climb that height must go "single file." 
 
 But the obligations of parents and children are recipro- 
 cal, and corresponding to the duties that parents owe to 
 their children are those that children owe to their parents. 
 That children owe to their parents a debt of gratitude, 
 that they owe them the duty of obedience, love and respect, 
 is a proposition that requires no demonstration, for it meets 
 the approval of every true child. 
 
DUTIES OF HOME. 229 
 
 Less recognized than the above are the duties that chil- 
 dren owe to each other. The older children owe to the 
 younger ones the duty of tenderness and consideration for 
 their age, and should not in their dealings with them apply 
 the ethics of society, " Do to others as others do to you." 
 They should rather apply the golden rule as it reads, and 
 patiently trust to a more mature age to develop in their 
 thoughtless little brothers and sisters a deeper sense of ob- 
 ligation and moral responsibility. The older children are 
 very apt to take advantage of the younger ones, and often 
 use their superior tact in pleading their own case to the 
 parents. Now everything of this sort is a violation of tne 
 duties that older children owe to the younger. 
 
 But the younger children owe certain duties to the older 
 ones. Children should always be taught to respect supe- 
 rior knowledge and experience, whether found in parent, 
 teacher, or older brothers and sisters. Hence the younger 
 children owe to the older ones the duty of respect and, to 
 a certain extent, obedience. 
 
 Brothers owe to their sisters precisely the same respect 
 and gallantry that they owe to women everywhere. They 
 will be rewarded for this in the ease with which when they 
 become older they can enter the society of ladies, and sis- 
 ters will receive the same reward for properly discharging 
 at home the duties that they owe to every man. 
 
 The duties of home then are simply the aggregate of all 
 the obligations that grow out of the family relation, and on 
 
230 OUR HOME. 
 
 the discharge of these depends the success or failure of the 
 home life. Home may be made happy or wretched, ac- 
 cording to the discharge of these obligations. It is not, 
 however, the great questions of moral obligation that most 
 vitally affect the happiness of the home, but the aggregate 
 of all those little obligations that love always imposes. 
 The crowning glory of the home life is that it draws its 
 supremest joy from the little events. 
 
 '* Our daily paths, with thorns or flowers 
 
 We can at will bestrew them ; 
 What bliss would gild the passing hours, 
 
 If we but rightly knew them! 
 The way of life is rough at best, 
 
 But briers yield the roses; 
 So that which leads to joy and rest 
 
 The hardest path discloses. 
 
 ■ The weeds that oft we cast away, 
 
 Their simple beauty scorning, 
 Would form a wreath of purest ray, 
 
 And prove the best adorning. 
 So in our daily paths, 'twere well 
 
 To call each gift a treasure, 
 However slight, where love can dwell 
 
 With life-renewing pleasure." 
 
CONTENTMENT AT HOME. 
 
 ]HE men who are discontented at home, are, as 
 a rule, discontented everywhere. There are, 
 indeed, exceptions to this rule, for there are 
 those who are better than their homes, great 
 ' souls that have sprung up out of vicious 
 homes where intemperance and still darker 
 vices have shrouded their early years in pain- 
 ful memories. In such homes those noble 
 souls who, from some favorable combination 
 of circumstances, have risen above their sur- 
 roundings, may well feel discontented. But 
 even in these cases we may believe that there 
 is still that which justifies something of the 
 spirit of content. They are discontented not 
 necessarily with the identity of the home 
 itself, but with its condition, and if they 
 were to surround themselves with the influ- 
 ences of an ideal home they would in most 
 cases retain the identity of the old. The 
 new house would rise on the foundation of the old. Like 
 the boy's jack knife that required a new blade and a new 
 
389 OUR HOME. 
 
 handle, and that when these were supplied was to him the 
 old knife still ; so many objects seem to have a subtle 
 spirit independent of their material structure, but depend- 
 ing solely on associations that constitute to us their 
 identity. With this spiritual identity of our home we may 
 be, and ought to be, content. If the influence of our home 
 be evil, if its atmosphere be injurious, then we should 
 spend our lives in making it better, and in purifying its 
 atmosphere. In this noblest of all forms of human labor 
 we should find contentment. Contentment is simply a 
 willingness to be happy. Almost any sphere or condition 
 of life furnishes the necessary material for happiness if we 
 will only appropriate it in the spirit of contentment. It is 
 questionable if there is any outward condition of human 
 life in which it does not lie within one's power to be con- 
 tent. Our desires feed upon their own gratification. One 
 is always and necessarily contented at the moment of the 
 first gratification. It is only when a desire has been unlaw- 
 fully gratified that the gratification fails to bring satisfac- 
 tion and content. Hence discontent is subjective rather 
 than objective. Now there are no pain and sorrow like 
 subjective pains and sorrows ; those which the mind experi- 
 ences within its own dominion, and to which it can assign 
 no adequate cause. In such cases the mind itself cannot 
 see why it should feel discontent. Such suffering of the 
 mind is analogous to nervousness in the body. How often 
 we hear it said of sensitive and complaining women, " noth- 
 
CONTENTMENT AT HOME. 233 
 
 ing ails her, she 's only nervous." We do not stop to con- 
 sider that nervousness is the most absolutely real of all 
 diseases ; it is the reality of the unreal, and the unreality 
 of the real. With healthy nerve and an unvitiated imagi- 
 nation we may render real, or divest of reality, whatever 
 we choose. But can the victim of delirium tremens — can 
 the nervous patient render unreal the disease which he 
 fancies is preying at his vitals? or can he render real the 
 fact that his imagination is disordered ? u nothing ails him ! " 
 There is nothing so absolutely real as a delusion. Nervous- 
 ness is the only real disease. In like manner the only real 
 sorrow is subjective sorrow, that sorrow which the suffer- 
 ing mind itself cannot account for. The great sorrows of 
 human experience arise from this inner source. 
 
 They consist in a brooding discontent, a stubborn refusal 
 of the mind to respond in a satisfactory manner to any ex- 
 ternal stimulant. The world holds up to our vision many 
 illustrious examples of human sorrow and suffering, — suf- 
 fering from outward conditions and circumstances, and, 
 perhaps, the most noted of these is that almost typical char- 
 acter, Job. But the illustrious examples of that other sor- 
 row, the world can never see, for it is the sorrow of mid- 
 night and silence. It is a sorrow which cannot be shared, 
 and one which the world will not recognize. We can, 
 however, see its fruits, for it sometimes bears the divinest 
 fruit, but, as with the tree of evil everywhere, the tree 
 which bore it must first be cut and burned. 'Tis from the 
 
234 OUR HOME. 
 
 ashes of the tree of evil that fruit divine appears. He 
 who conquers this subjective sorrow and comes trium- 
 phantly out of the dark forest of inward discontent into 
 the sweet light of peace and contentment, is a conqueror 
 in the grandest and sublimest sense of the word, and on 
 his brow there rests forevermore a crown of victory. 
 
 Discontent, then, is in almost every case the result of 
 this subjective mental action, a continual yearning for 
 something more than the present experience. That is the 
 most awful form of human disease in which the cognizable 
 objects and the cognizing faculties are out of gear. What 
 then is the remedy for discontent? We have said that 
 desires feed upon their own gratification, and the kind of 
 food determines the kind of desires. An unlawful gratifi- 
 cation produces in its turn another unlawful desire. Now, 
 since there is no natural object or circumstance that can 
 respond to an unlawful desire, it follows that in the home 
 where objects and circumstances are natural, the unlawful 
 desire must remain ungratified, and hence the source of 
 yearning and discontent must also remain, till unlawful 
 gratification has been obtained elsewhere. 
 
 A pertinent illustration of this view of the subject may 
 be seen in the behavior of a slightly depraved appetite, 
 and among a civilized people this is the condition of al- 
 most every one's appetite. Every one knows that when 
 he is hungry a simple piece of dry bread tastes good and 
 satisfies the hunger ; but let him cover it with highly sea- 
 
CONTENTMENT AT HOME. 235 
 
 soned sauce, and after partaking of it attempt to go back 
 to the dry bread, he will find that it tastes insipid and 
 does not satisfy him. If, however, he had taken a juicy 
 pear instead of the spicy sauce, he could have returned to 
 the dry bread with satisfaction. Here then lies a princi- 
 ple. The dry bread and the pear both sustain a normal 
 relation to our appetites, and gratify a lawful desire, but 
 not so with the sauce; for spices and artificial flavors 
 were never meant to satisfy a healthy appetite. There is 
 nothing in a healthy appetite that corresponds to them. 
 The dry bread and the pear, feeding nothing but a healthy 
 and lawful desire, in their turn give rise to a healthy and 
 lawful desire ; and this, dry bread can satisfy. But the 
 sauce satisfying an unnatural, and hence unlawful, appe- 
 tite, gives rise to nothing but unhealthy and unlawful de- 
 sires, and these the dry bread cannot satisfy. Apply the 
 principle involved in this illustration, and the solution 
 which it suggests to the higher faculties of the mind, and 
 you have the whole philosophy of discontent. But, says 
 one, shall we follow out this doctrine to its full extent, and 
 seek to awaken no desire which our surrounding circum- 
 stances cannot gratify ? If discontent consists simply in 
 ungratified desires, then it would be reasonable to suppress 
 all desires that we cannot gratify. But would not this be 
 fatal to all progress ? Would it not tend to keep us for- 
 ever on the dead level of the present ? There is an infi- 
 nite difference between the absolute inability to gratify a 
 
236 OUR HOME. 
 
 desire, and the mere inability to gratify it immediately. 
 The lion cannot gratify at once his desire for food, but the 
 suspension of the gratification does not result in discon- 
 tent. He, perhaps, knows that his diligent search will 
 make the gratification still keener when it comes. So the 
 young man who desires to be great and useful need not 
 crush that desire simply because he is unable to gratify it 
 at once. His highest delight may spring from his contem- 
 plation of its final gratification. There is a continual grat- 
 ification simply in the prospect of ultimate gratification. 
 
 But if one has a desire that it is absolutely impossible 
 for him to gratify, then the quicker it is crushed, the better. 
 If a cripple should become ambitious to be an acrobat, 
 then the harboring of that ambition could lead to nothing 
 but discontent. Then crush all desires that cannot, in the 
 nature of things, be satisfied. Crush all unlawful desires, 
 and seek to gratify all lawful ones, and contentment will 
 be the necessary result. 
 
 " Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content— 
 
 The quiet mind is richer than a crown. 
 Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent, 
 
 The poor estate scorns fortune's angry frown; 
 Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss, 
 
 Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss; 
 
 " The homely house that harbors quiet rest, 
 
 The cottage that affords no pride or care, 
 The mien that 'grees with country music best, 
 
 The sweet consort of mirth and music's fare, 
 Obscured life sets down a type of bliss : — 
 
 A mind content both crown and kingdom is." 
 
VISITING. 
 
 j O long as man remains a social being, visiting 
 will constitute a part of his avocations. Man 
 is a fragment of being, as each star is a frag- 
 ment of the firmanent. And as the stars are 
 never at rest; as they revolve around each 
 other ; as the smaller ones seem to select the 
 larger ones as centers whose superior attrac- 
 tion guides and maps out their path, — so men 
 arrange themselves in society in accordance 
 with a similar law. 
 
 There are suns and planets and asteroids in 
 human society, and these take their proper 
 places by an eternal law of human affinity. 
 Man is, in his individuality, an imperfectly adapted be- 
 ing. The divine declaration, " It is not good for man to be 
 alone," long before it was written by human pen was writ- 
 ten in the nature of man by virtue of this law, that man is 
 but fragmentary. 
 
 Hence the necessity and philosophy of society and of the 
 custom of visiting. A home without visitors is not a per- 
 fect home, inasmuch as the members of that home cannot 
 
238 OUR HOME. 
 
 become perfect, but must forever remain undeveloped un- 
 less they come in contact with the great world. We have 
 all seen such homes, where the frozen pride of wealth con- 
 geals the fountains of worth and usefulness. There are 
 certain families that never visit ; but the vital instincts of 
 society soon eliminate them, as a sliver or any foreign sub- 
 stance is eliminated from the flesh. 
 
 In such cases Nature disconnects the foreign substance 
 from all the vital processes and builds around it a hard case, 
 which effectually shuts it off from all relation with the vital 
 organism, as it were in a prison. Society has the same 
 instincts, and when it discovers in itself a foreign substance 
 in the form of a family destitute of fellow sympathy, a fam- 
 ily who do not visit nor receive visitors, it rapidly cuts off 
 all vital connection with them and encloses them within the 
 prison walls of their own reserve. With what pitying con- 
 tempt society looks upon such a family! How even the 
 children point to the home as the dwelling of some mon- 
 strosity, and learn to taunt the inmates as the parrot learns 
 to taunt the barn fowl. We pity the members of such a 
 family. We have often wondered what the source of their 
 enjoyment can be. That same coldness and lack of sym- 
 pathy which makes them shun the world, most certainly 
 will make them cold and distant in one another's society. 
 
 Such homes are usually the abodes of gilded misery. It 
 is a curious fact that these families soon become extinct. 
 They live but a few generations at best, become sickly and 
 
VISITING. 239 
 
 vicious, and finally die out, and leave the world no better 
 and, perhaps, no worse. 
 
 There is a lesson in this fact, not only a moral lesson, 
 but a lesson in science as well. There is no subject that 
 men have studied so little as the science of human nature ; 
 although it is the grandest subject that can engross the 
 human intellect. They have, however, developed a few 
 grand results, and one of them is the law that governs the 
 phenomenon we have just referred to. The discovery was 
 made, however, not by a direct study of human nature, 
 but chiefly by observation on the lower octaves in life's 
 scale. This law is known as the law of the "survival of the 
 fittest." It teaches that when a being or a faculty ceases 
 to act in a manner consistent with the general good it is 
 destroyed by a power of natural selection. 
 
 Nature does this in self defense. When a being violates 
 the laws of his nature he is destroyed if he persists in the 
 violation. When he persists in the violation of his moral 
 nature he dies as a moral being, although he may still sur- 
 vive as a physical and intellectual being. If he violates 
 his intellectual nature he dies as an intellectual being. If 
 his social nature, then he dies as a social being. But these 
 calamities are not confined to the individual alone. The 
 organic weakness resulting from his violation is transmitted 
 to his children, who transmit to their offspring in still 
 greater degree the iniquity of the fathers, till finally the 
 family becomes too weak to perpetuate itself. 
 
240 OUR HOME. 
 
 Now the ability to perpetuate the species is more vitally 
 related to the social nature than to the intellectual or the 
 moral ; and families that violate their social nature, as do 
 those we are considering, are striking at the tap root of 
 their family life. 
 
 Such families seldom do the world much injury, because 
 society, with the aid of nature, rids itself of the pest with 
 the greatest economy of effort and the least expenditure of 
 its forces. Since man is but a fragment he requires the 
 presence of his supplementary fragments to develop his 
 possibilities. 
 
 As woman is essential to man and man to woman in 
 order to call out and develop the latent possibilities in 
 each, so every human being, in order to call forth his high- 
 est possibilities, must first be wedded to his supplement 
 humanity. He must lose his identity in the great current 
 of human want before he can find it again in a larger and 
 grander sense. 
 
 The muscle grows strong most rapidly when it wastes 
 most rapidly. The magnet grows powerful by imparting 
 its magnetic properties to iron and steel. The teacher 
 grows wise by imparting wisdom. The rose fills all the air 
 with its sweet gift of incense, and through the little rail- 
 way tunnels fly the trains that bear from nature's labora- 
 tory the precious freight that still replenishes the ever 
 wasting stream. 
 
 Now social intercourse is simply a process of imparting 
 
VISITING. 241 
 
 to others a portion of ourselves. When the rose begins to 
 hoard its fragrance, it dies. So when man would hoard 
 his influence and wrap around him the mantle of solitude, 
 he is fading away in the noblest attributes of his being. 
 
 There is a possible interpretation of the above that we 
 would not wish to submit to the test of history. It is that 
 the love of solitude is an illegitimate love. This inter- 
 pretation meets its rebuke in the lives of poets and philoso- 
 phers. The world's grandest characters have been lovers 
 of solitude. There is something pathetically beautiful in 
 the yearning which poets have always felt for the sweet 
 breath of nature untainted by the smoke and noxious 
 vapors of the city. There is both a legitimate and an 
 illegitimate love of solitude. 
 
 Jesus loved solitude as probably no other being ever did. 
 The honey bee loves solitude, and loves it for the same rea- 
 son that Jesus and the poets love it, because guided by a 
 heavenly instinct they know that solitude alone can minis- 
 ter to the throng, and they are its ministers divinely elect. 
 The bee must leave the merry swarm and seek the silent 
 solitude where blush in unconscious beauty the wild rose 
 and the lily. So Jesus, although his heart was with the 
 dying throng, still sought the lonely heights, because it was 
 there alone from the divine flower of solitude that he could 
 extract the honey for the "healing of the nations." Poets 
 love solitude, not from selfishness. They desire it as a 
 sick man desires medicine. It ministers to the highest 
 
 16 
 
242 OUR HOME. 
 
 necessities of their being. They love to go into solitude, 
 not because their hearts do not beat with the great multi- 
 tude, but because they can get nearer to nature's heart 
 when removed from the roaring factory and the rushing 
 train, and with purer soul receive her gracious benediction. 
 All then should love solitude, but as the bee loves it, 
 because they can find something there fresh from God to 
 bring to the hive of humanity. 
 
 The poet and the philosopher can minister to the world 
 while they remain in solitude; but not so with the "com- 
 mon people " ; the toiling men and women without genius 
 must find their field of labor in the social world. Then let 
 the gates of cottage and palace be flung open to the tides 
 of humanity. Let us entertertain and be entertained. 
 Let us make it a part of our life work to give ourselves to 
 others, and in our turn derive from society what must 
 come from that source, if it ever comes to us at all. 
 
 Society does not consist in physical proximity. It does 
 not consist in vying with one another in the display of fine 
 dwellings and costly tables. Social intercourse, to be right 
 and profitable, must contain its own excuse. It must be 
 the outgrowth of an instinctive impulse to mingle within 
 the sphere of mutual interest, in spiritual as well as physi- 
 cal proximity. 
 
 We do not wish to recommend that practice so prevalent 
 among certain classes, of gadding from house to house for 
 the purpose of retailing the morning news. This is not 
 
VISITING. 243 
 
 what we mean by social intercourse. Nor would we recom- 
 mend the " formal call," where each family keeps a record 
 and returns a call as it would pay for a barrel of flour. 
 We have no faith in the book-keeping of calls. Perhaps 
 there is no other relation of life that fosters so much of de- 
 ception and falsehood as the system of fashionable calling. 
 
 Mrs. A. calls upon Mrs. B., who has just settled in the 
 neighborhood, because if she were not to do so, Mrs. B. 
 would think that Mrs. A. was not acquainted with the 
 ways of society. Mrs. B. is, of course, delighted to see 
 Mrs. A., notwithstanding she threw up her hands in hor- 
 ror when the door bell rang. When Mrs. A. departs amid 
 the mournful protests of Mrs. B., Mrs. B. has too much 
 confidence in Mrs. A.'s "society education " to have any 
 fears that she will heed the earnest and heartfelt (?) entreaty 
 to " call again " and not to be " so formal." 
 
 Such calls involve the commercial instincts of our na- 
 ture, for they are regarded as merchandise and subject to 
 the laws of debit and credit. They do not appeal to the 
 social faculty at all, and hence have no tendency in the 
 direction of its cultivation, but on the other hand they 
 weaken it, for they are in almost every case regarded as 
 painful duties, and it is a law of our being that the painful 
 or disagreeable action of any function, whether physical or 
 mental, has a direct tendency to weaken the function in- 
 volved. 
 
 Then, as the first and essential condition to the culti- 
 
244 OUR HOME. 
 
 tivation of the social faculty, let the call be divested of all 
 its formalty. Neighboring parents should learn a lesson 
 from their own children, who play in adjoining yards and 
 seek each other's presence often for • the sake of that pres- 
 ence alone. Not in their "beauty's best attire" nor at 
 the feast where pride sits queen, but in the mood and 
 dress of every day. Let them meet and spend the even- 
 ing around each other's hearthstone, nor recognize any 
 hour as fashionable or unfashionable, but " drop in " with 
 that simplicity and informality that calls forth the excla- 
 mation of surprise which no actor's skill can feign. 
 
 We cannot better close this chapter than by quoting the 
 words of that almost marvelous student of human nature, 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
 
 " There would be a great deal more obedience to the 
 apostolic injunction, 8 be not forgetful to entertain stran- 
 gers,' if it once could be clearly got into the heads of well 
 intending people what it is that strangers want. What 
 do you want when away from home in a strange city ? Is 
 it not the warmth of the home fireside and the sight of 
 people that you know care for you ? Is it not the blessed 
 privilege of speaking and acting yourself out unconstrain- 
 edly among those who you know understand you ? And 
 had you not rather dine with an old friend on simple cold 
 mutton offered with a warm heart, than go to a splendid 
 ceremonious dinner party among people who don't care a 
 rush for you ? Well, then, set it down in your book that 
 
VISITING. 245 
 
 other people are like you, and that the art of entertaining 
 is the art of really caring for people. If you have a warm 
 heart, congenial tastes, and a real interest in your stranger, 
 don't fear to invite him .though you have no best dinner 
 set and your existing plates are sadly chipped at the 
 edges, and even though there be a handle broken off from 
 the side of your vegetable dish. Set it down in your be- 
 lief that you can give something better than a dinner, 
 however good, — you can give a part of yourself. You can 
 give love, good will, and sympathy, of which there has 
 perhaps been quite as much over cracked plates and re- 
 stricted table furniture as over Sevres china and silver." 
 
 " Blest be that spot where cheerful guests retire 
 To pause from toil, aud trim their evening fire; 
 Blest that abode, where want and pain repair, 
 And every stranger finds a ready chair: 
 Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crown 'd, 
 Where all the ruddy family around 
 Laugh at the jest or pranks, that never fail, 
 Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale, 
 Or press the bashful stranger to his food, 
 And learn the luxury of doing good." 
 
UNSELFISHNESS AT HOME. 
 
 jN accordance with an eternal law, selfishness 
 defeats its own ends. The selfish man, from 
 the very nature of selfishness, declares war 
 against the universe, and in that unequal 
 fight is sure to fall. The only way we can 
 get God on our side is to enlist in his army. 
 The conditions of our own happiness are 
 so blended and interwoven with the condi- 
 tions of other's happiness, that we cannot successfully seek 
 our own highest interest while we are unmindful of the 
 welfare of others. There is but one rational and success- 
 ful way in which a man may work for himself, and that is 
 by forgetting self in his desire for the well-being of others. 
 Human society is a vast machine in which every man is a 
 wheel, but the wheels of a machine never move independ- 
 ently. No matter how small and apparently insignificant 
 they may be, they each perform an essential office, and 
 their value is represented in the product of the great 
 machine. 
 
 Man is a compound of function or faculties, and is so 
 constituted that the action of each produces pleasure and 
 
UNSELFISHNESS AT HOME. 247 
 
 only pleasure. The sum total of man's happiness, then, 
 depends on the number of faculties that he brings into 
 healthy and normal exercise. 
 
 One of these faculties is conscience, that voice in the 
 soul which bids us do right, and do unto others as we 
 would have them do unto us, a duty that cannot be per- 
 formed from selfish motives. But unless this duty be per- 
 formed, we are deprived of that exquisite pleasure which 
 comes from the approval of conscience. 
 
 Another of our faculties is benevolence, whose legitimate 
 function is to prompt us to love our neighbor as ourselves, 
 the very essence of unselfishness. But if we through 
 selfishness refuse to fulfill this function, we must forego 
 that pure and exalted pleasure of which it has been de- 
 clared u it is more blessed to give than to receive." Man 
 is a social being, and from his several social faculties de- 
 rives by far the greatest portion of his happiness ; but only 
 as he observes the golden rule. For society will not be 
 cheated. Its system of book-keeping is perfect, and he 
 who expects to receive from society more than he is will- 
 ing to give in return, will be sadly disappointed. 
 
 And so it is that all those faculties which relate men to 
 their fellow men can yield us no pleasure so long as we 
 are selfish. By selfishness we are cut off from the pleasures 
 arising from the action of a large number of the most im- 
 portant faculties of the mind. To use a paradox, the only 
 rational and consistent selfishness is that of unselfishness. 
 
248 OUR HOME. 
 
 If we desire our own highest pleasure we cannot obtain 
 it till we forget our object. 
 
 If this be true with reference to the great world, how 
 much truer is it with reference to the little world, the 
 home. Perhaps the truest picture of total depravity which 
 the mind can paint is that of a home where selfishness 
 reigns. 
 
 Selfishness is fatal to the very existence of home. 
 Home may be defined as an isolated portion of society, 
 bound together by a stronger degree of love than exists 
 between the different members of the human family in 
 general. Home and selfishness are nearly opposite in 
 their meaning, and cannot exist together any more than 
 love and hate. 
 
 Selfishness, then, is fatal to love ; and since love is the 
 basis of home, it follows that selfishness is the great de- 
 stroyer of home. 
 
 As in the outward world, he who falls in love with him- 
 self always has the field clear, no rivals ever molesting him ; 
 so in the home, he who makes his own happiness paramount, 
 to that same extent severs his connection with the family, 
 and becomes, in a certain sense, an outcast. The sister, 
 perceiving the brother's selfishness, will seek other com- 
 panions, and thus a coldness and indifference springs up 
 between brother and sister. 
 
 There are many arguments in favor of unselfishness, but 
 we have made prominent the least and lowest. We have, 
 
UNSELFISHNESS AT HOME. 249 
 
 however, had a purpose in this. It is to the selfish we 
 would speak. The unselfish require no advice or exhorta- 
 tion, and from the very nature of selfishness it cannot be 
 moved by any but a selfish argument. 
 
 Why is that little street boy so dwarfed in his mental and 
 moral nature ? Why is it usually so difficult to develop 
 one of that class and make him a noble and powerful man ? 
 Simply because the selfishness in that wretched home 
 whence he came has arrested his development, so that he can 
 never be anything but a child. He can seldom be trusted, 
 because the early selfishness at home, engendered by misery 
 and want, it may be, has left its demon cunning in his mind. 
 
 It is a fact with which all are familiar, that the character 
 is written in the face. If we cannot read it, it is not 
 because it is not written there, but because of our obtuse- 
 ness. Yet there are few so obtuse that they cannot distin- 
 guish between selfishness and generosity. Who has not 
 noticed the narrow, pinched, and indescribably repulsive 
 countenance of the miser? Who has not contrasted it 
 with the open, frank, and attractive countenance of the 
 philanthropist ? 
 
 It seems as if the very selfishness of the world should 
 make us unselfish at home. Think of the pain and suffer- 
 ing that is born of selfishness ! As you gather round the 
 board of plenty for the evening repast, or round the roar- 
 ing fire while the storm sends its fitful but harmless gusts 
 against the windows, think of the pale, sad faces that are 
 
250 OUR HOME. 
 
 pressing against the panes of dingy hovels, gazing into the 
 starless night in the imploring anguish of hunger and cold 
 and want. How, with this sad thought in mind, can little 
 brothers and sisters be selfish at home ? How can they 
 quarrel, as they sometimes do, over an apple or a pear, 
 when they remember that there are thousands who would 
 gladly gather up the leavings that they trample under 
 their feet, and devour them with the eagerness of a starv- 
 ing dog? 
 
 The young man who is selfish at home, who is eager to 
 get the largest and fairest apple, and does not seek to 
 share it with sister or brother, surely will not share it with 
 wife and children, when he becomes the owner of a home. 
 Let young ladies beware of those young men who are self- 
 ish at home ; for if they do not manifest their selfishness 
 in the society of ladies, it is only from policy, or lack of 
 opportunity. 
 
 It is a fact which mathematics alone cannot explain, that 
 the more affection we leave at home the more we carry 
 with us. 
 
 There is something in the nature of selfishness, whether 
 at home or in society, that makes it peculiarly repugnant 
 to us, and leads us instinctively to brand it as among the 
 most ignoble of vices. There is hardly another vice that 
 has not some shadow of a redeeming feature. We pity the 
 drunkard, perhaps because his almost proverbial generosity 
 appeals to our sympathies. He cannot, from the very 
 
UNSELFISHNESS AT HOME. 251 
 
 nature of his sin, be a narrow, miserly soul. Even robbers 
 and murderers may have some attractive qualities. It 
 costs us an effort not to admire such characters as Light- 
 foot and Thunderbolt, who spent their lives in robbing the 
 rich that they might give to the poor. Of course all such 
 crimes are heinous in the sight of God, and should be in 
 the sight of man, but they almost always are accompanied 
 by some virtues, and as we do not always stop to separate 
 the crimes from the attending virtues, we sometimes do not 
 hate them as we ought. 
 
 But this difficulty does not exist in the case of selfish- 
 ness, for it has no redeeming features. It stands alone in 
 its ignominy, a black picture on a background of infinite 
 hateful ness. 
 
 " Oh, if the selfish knew how much they lost, 
 What would they not endeavor and endure 
 To imitate, as far as in them lay, 
 Him who his wisdom and his power employs 
 In making others happy." 
 
PATIENCE. 
 
 )H . 
 
 ATIENCE has been defined as " the courage 
 of virtue," and the definition seems to us pe- 
 culiarly appropriate, for it is that quality of 
 the soul that bids it stand firm at the post of 
 cAluty where God has placed it, undaunted 
 by the assaults of vice. It is that which 
 closes the lips against all complaining, and 
 folds its wings over a wounded heart and 
 waits. 
 
 It is a noble thing to act, but it is a no- 
 bler thing to wait, for to act is the soul's 
 most natural tendency. It is its first and 
 simplest desire. The child takes no account 
 of time or indirect motion in the gratifica- 
 tion of its wish. 
 
 Place a brute within a few feet of food, 
 but make the only possible means of reach- 
 ing it indirect; make it necessary that he 
 should first go back from the food, perhaps 
 %> out of sight of it, for a moment, and then 
 
 by a circuitous route come around to it. Under these con- 
 ditions the brute will starve in sight of the food. This 
 
PATIENCE. 253 
 
 would not be merely an experiment upon the brute's intel- 
 lect; it would involve this principle of patience. The 
 impatience of the brute in this case would be due to the 
 fact that he had not passed that stage in which all gratifi- 
 cation is sought by direct and uninterrupted action. This 
 brute impatience cannot go from the object of its desire, 
 even when intellect declares such an act necessary. It is 
 quite essential in this experiment, however, that we select 
 the right kind of brute, for there are brutes which are en- 
 dowed with a wonderful degree of patience. We may forci- 
 bly illustrate from the brute kingdom both patience and 
 impatience. Those which are endowed with patience are 
 not usually those which are most intelligent. This shows 
 that the phenomenon in the foregoing experiment is not an 
 intellectual one. An ox, which possesses considerable in- 
 telligence, would stand and fret for hours before it would 
 go back from the food, while the rat, which possesses far 
 less intelligence, would set itself to work at once, and dig, 
 if need be, for a whole night through solid earth. He 
 would go back, or round, or over, or under ; in short, he 
 would labor patiently till his efforts were crowned with 
 success. This quality of patience in brutes does not seem 
 to bear any relation to their rank in the scale of intelli- 
 gence, and yet it must be regarded as one of the noblest 
 attributes, either of man or brute ; for the fact that a quality 
 is possessed by a brute does not prevent it from being 
 among the noblest human attributes. 
 
MM OUR HOME. 
 
 Even the great mass of mankind have not yet passed 
 that stage in which they cannot bide the lapse of time 
 between a desire and its gratification. It is a character- 
 istic of the highest souls to feel that they may be approach- 
 ing the object of their desire while they see it receding. 
 
 It is true that it requires but little intellectual power to 
 see that in many cases this may be so ; and yet there is a 
 wide difference between a mere intellectual conception 
 and that attribute of the soul which converts the con- 
 ception into a living truth. The wide gulf that stretches 
 between the mere intellectual assent to the highest 
 spiritual fact, and that element in the soul which takes 
 hold of it as a part of its own living self, is just that 
 which stretches between faith and reason, patience and 
 impatience. 
 
 In this view of the subject patience is allied to faith. 
 Patience is that which makes us willing to wait, and faith 
 is that which makes us feel that the waiting will bear us a 
 sweet fruition. 
 
 Patience is a higher and grander virtue than the world 
 has yet acknowledged. It is that noble element which 
 appreciates time and indirect motion in the gratification of 
 desires. It is allied to the divine instinct of the tree that 
 waits for the flower and the fruit. 
 
 Trials, sorrow, and death await us all. It is useless to 
 attempt to escape them, for they are inevitable. They are 
 the frosts that open the hard burrs of human hearts. But 
 
PATIENCE. 255 
 
 it is only as instruments in the hands of patience that they 
 become ministrant to our development. 
 
 God imposes upon man the obligation to no virtue which 
 he has not first woven into the constitution of nature. 
 Every cardinal virtue is first a cosmical law. Thus the 
 grand virtue of patience is eternally mated with nature's 
 law of constancy. It is the patience of nature that rears 
 and completes the proud temple of the oak. It is her pa- 
 tience through which the never-wearying rootlet embraces 
 the rocky ribs of the moveless boulder. Through what 
 long and weary ages has nature pounded on the granite 
 doors of giant mountains, pleading for the crumbs that fall 
 from the rocky tables, that she may bear them down to the 
 vales, to feed the hungry guests that wait in her halls below. 
 Through uncounted eras she has stood with patient hand 
 and sifted into river beds and ocean depths the fine alluvial 
 morsels that she begged from miser mountains. Thus does 
 patience bear the credentials of its own divinity. 'T is the 
 same patience, divinely born, that we trace through all the 
 instinctive movements and laborious life of bee, and spider, 
 and architectonic beaver. The great law of patience bears 
 the same divine approval, whether we find it in the silent 
 consecutiveness of natural law, in the tireless movements 
 of the laboring ant, in the sweet innocence of childhood 
 building its play-house, in the stern bread-battle of human 
 life, in the pale, wasting vigilance of the brain-toiling, star- 
 reading scientist, or in divine simplicity, thorn-crowned 
 
^5G OUR HOME. 
 
 and bleeding, on the quaking brow of Calvary. Thus 
 patience is divine, and to be patient is to be God-like. 
 
 Patience is the grandest representative of God. It has 
 been the captain of the divine forces ; out from the fiery 
 halls of chaos it has led, in shining battalions, the helmeted 
 stars. On earth it has produced the highest results that 
 mark the career of man. There is no shining goal of 
 human glory too bright or too remote for patience. No 
 height can tire its wing. Strike from the firmament of 
 human greatness every star that has been placed there by 
 the hand of patience, and you cover that firmament with 
 the veil of midnight darkness. It is patience that has 
 crushed mighty evils and wrought sublime reforms in hu- 
 man history ; patience, that dared to stand up and meet the 
 taunts of ignorance and bigotry ; patience, that has calmly 
 walked back into the shadow of defeat, with " Thy will be 
 done " upon its lips ; patience, that has breathed the fiery 
 smoke of torment with upturned brow. 
 
 Truly has it been said, " Patience comforts the poor 
 and moderates the rich ; she makes us humble in prosper- 
 ity, cheerful in adversity, unmoved by calumny, and above 
 reproach ; she teaches us to forgive those who have injured 
 us, and to be the first in asking the forgiveness of those 
 whom we have injured ; she delights the faithful, and in- 
 vites the unbelieving ; she adorns the woman and approves 
 the man ; she is beautiful in either sex and every age." 
 
 It is the sin of this high-pressure age, that it cannot 
 
PATIENCE. 257 
 
 wait ; and here again the accusation must rest with pecu- 
 liar emphasis on Young America. We have yet to learn 
 from orchard and garden that the best in nature ripens 
 slowest. The American child has much to learn in this 
 respect, from English and German children, especially the 
 latter ; the Germans are the world's models of patience. 
 
 The American boy reads the life of some eminent man, 
 and immediately he is fired with a desire to be like him. 
 He ignores the elements of time and indirect action. He 
 sets aside the factor of life's developing hardships, and en- 
 tertains the insane idea that he can be like his ideal in a 
 short time. He buys advanced works on his special 
 theme. He cannot stop to master the elementary works. 
 His theory is that the greater includes the less. He sits 
 up late at night, vainly trying to comprehend his ponder- 
 ous books, until he becomes discouraged and abandons all 
 further attempts to be a great man. 
 
 Now the fact of his wild enthusiasm proves that he had 
 in him the elements of greatness, a greatness that would 
 have justified his aspirations, had not the American vice 
 of impatience crushed it in the bud. The world is full of 
 such defeated greatness. Genius with patience is invinci- 
 ble and divine, but without patience it is a blind Ulysses 
 groping in the darkness. 
 
 " Full many a flower is born to blush unseen," 
 
 only because it insists on being seen before it has blos- 
 somed, and the world will not look at it. 
 
 17 * 
 
866 OUR HOME, 
 
 Young men are apt to be in too much of a hurry to 
 reach the goal of their aspiration. Now and then we find 
 one, who, in his youth* is willing to study with patience, 
 and 
 
 " Learn to labor and to wait." 
 
 But the great majority of young men seem to feel that 
 the highest triumph of life is to complete their education 
 in their teens. And such ones are apt to accomplish that 
 exceedingly lofty object, from the very fact that those 
 who commence an education with such foolish views of 
 life are pretty sure to halt in their pursuit of knowledge 
 at about that time. They are not likely to add much to 
 the stock of forced knowledge which they bring away 
 from college. And, in such cases, even this is not usually 
 a great amount, from the fact of their having gone to 
 college too early to make it of much use to them. 
 
 It is true that many great and useful men have com- 
 pleted their college education while very young, but it was 
 because they were by nature able to do this without impa- 
 tient haste. Their genius had, perhaps, a slight tinge of 
 precocity, an element, however, which constitutes no part 
 of genius. It is entirely foreign to it, and may exist, and 
 far oftener does, in connection with talents that are below 
 mediocrity. Genius consists in a special aptitude for labor, 
 patient labor. 
 
 Our common schools are a living monument of the im- 
 patience of America, and it is not impossible that the 
 
PATIENCE. 259 
 
 monument may yet crumble with its own weight, They 
 may yet thwart the very object of that intense and head- 
 long desire, of which the impatience both of parents and 
 educators is the expression. Neither Greece nor Rome 
 attained their glory through such impatient culture. 
 
 But there is another reason why we should cultivate pa- 
 tience. It is conducive to health and longevity. No im- 
 patient man ever died of old age. Impatience is a friction 
 in the wheels of life. Intemperance will not wear out the 
 machinery of life sooner than impatience. And not only 
 does the patient man live longer than the impatient man, 
 when length of life is computed in years and months, but 
 he also lives longer in another and important sense. In 
 computing the duration of a human life in the actual sense 
 of life, if we wish to obtain the result in minutes and sec- 
 onds, we must strike out from the calculation all those 
 minutes and seconds in which he does not live in the proper 
 sense of the word. This would include all periods of un- 
 consciousness, of intoxication, and of mental alienation. 
 In short, all moments which when past leave in our nature 
 no rational record of their passage. 
 
 Now the patient man has a calm and rational apprecia- 
 tion of each moment of his conscious life, and his moments 
 of unconsciousness are fewer than those of the impatient 
 man. The patient man, as a general rule, requires less sleep 
 than one who is impatient, for the brain and all the physi- 
 cal powers require time for recuperation in sleep just in 
 
260 OUR HOME. 
 
 proportion to the amount of waste during wakefulness. 
 But nothing so wastes the vital and mental power as the 
 spasmodic, fitful, ineffectual and half unconscious move- 
 ments, thoughts and feelings of the impatient man. " Well 
 I'm tired, but I haven't done anything," is the habitual ex- 
 pression of the impatient, while the patient accomplish a 
 great deal but are seldom tired. The reason is plain. The 
 impatient man cannot stop to see where to take hold, and 
 so takes hold several times, and makes as many useless 
 movements, all of which weary and exhaust. But the pa- 
 tient man takes hold in the right place the first time, and 
 thus not only saves time, but physical and mental energy. 
 And so while the patient man calmly and without friction 
 accomplishes life's mission, the impatient man wears out 
 his powers and dies of exhaustion before he gets ready to 
 begin the work. 
 
 " 'Tis mine to work, and not to win; 
 
 The soul must wait to have her wings; 
 Even time is but a landmark in 
 The great eternity of things. 
 
 " Is it so much that thou below, 
 
 O heart, shouldst fail of thy desire, 
 
 When death, as we believe and know, 
 
 Is but a call to come up higher ? " 
 
TEMPERANCE. 
 
 1 HE word temperance, from the Latin temper- 
 antia, meant simply moderation, and when it 
 came to be first applied with special emphasis 
 to the use of alcoholic beverages it meant only 
 a moderate use of them, and did not convey 
 [ Ov'V'W thi remotest idea of total abstinence. 
 
 If the fate of the temperance reform rested 
 
 f^* upon the primitive significance of dead words, 
 then, indeed, were its advocates hopeless. 
 But no, the temperance reform and the 
 words that designate its glorious sentiment were born to- 
 gether, born amid the thunder storm of oppression, born of 
 the heartless parentage of hisses and of scorn, parents who 
 tried to strangle their own offspring, but could not do it, 
 for it bore upon its forehead the birth-mark of immortality. 
 Its birth was an event that lay along the inevitable path of 
 human development. 
 
 We will not contend with those who would prostitute 
 their scholarship to rear a feeble argument upon the dusty 
 lexicons of Greece and Rome, claiming that the world has 
 never before found occasion for a word to designate the 
 
262 OUR HOME. 
 
 total abstinence from intoxicating beverages. We have 
 no wish to dispute the significance of those old roots that 
 lie dead and brittle in the soil of the ages. 
 
 These definitions were assigned by an infant world, but 
 it has outgrown them now. We well remember when the 
 word "star" signified to us only a shining speck, only a 
 "gimlet hole to let the light of heaven through." But to 
 our ampler vision they are the chariots of God that glide 
 across the longitudes of night. Words are the products of 
 human thought. They are born amid the agonizing throes 
 that accompany the aggressions of intellect. Every con- 
 quest, every victory, is marked by the birth of a new word 
 and the death of an old one. Like the corpuscles of the 
 blood, they are springing into being and dying with every 
 pulsation of the world's brain. The "dead languages" 
 are but the moss-covered monuments that mark the ceme- 
 teries of the world's perished ideals. 
 
 We do not mean, of course, that there literally comes 
 into use a new word with every new idea. Much less do 
 we mean that a word actually becomes obsolete. We 
 mean that language is a thing of growth, that it is modified 
 to meet the ever changing conditions of human unfolding, 
 and that words pass out of use or change their meanings 
 with every outgrown idea. 
 
 lie who does not dare advocate the temperance cause to- 
 day in its boldest and most radical form is a coward, and in 
 a certain sense a dead weight upon society. But those who 
 
TEMPERANCE. 2G3 
 
 steal the livery of science and clothe themselves in the cun- 
 ning drapery of sophistry and become the hired pleaders 
 for passion and for vice, deserve the everlasting execration 
 of humanity. If we summon the saddest meaning that 
 "doom" possesses it is but mild beside their crime. To 
 misinterpret the divine message of science, and thus place 
 in the hands of vice the devil's magic wand, is the crown- 
 ing sin of man. 
 
 And yet there are hundreds that incur this guilt. Men 
 w T hose names ensure their recognition seek to defend their 
 own vices with the awe inspiring weapons of high sound- 
 ing technicalities and scientific phrases. Such are those 
 who tell us that alcohol is transformed into nervous tissue, 
 that it is a respiratory food, etc. They tell us that it is 
 nerve food, because its use occasions a greater manifesta- 
 tion of strength and nervous energy. A conflagration in a 
 city is usually attended with considerable activity on the 
 part of its citizens, but fires are not generally regarded as 
 desirable stimulants to industry. War is always the occa- 
 sion of a nation's highest energy, but shall we, therefore, 
 say that war is a source of strength, and that it feeds a 
 nation with the elements of energy ? Is it not rather a 
 wasting process, and is not the strength manifested in its 
 expenditure rather than in its accumulation ? We see the 
 energy as it goes out from the nation in a wasting stream, 
 and not as it goes in. 
 
 Just so with the nervous energy, it manifests itself in its 
 
2G4 OUR HOME. 
 
 outward passage. The alcohol simply worries and frets 
 the nervous system, and causes it to act in self-defense to 
 cast out the intruder, just as war worries and frets a 
 nation. When a sliver is lodged in the flesh the vital 
 instincts are at once summoned to the spot, and, with 
 might and main, strive to cast out the foreign substance, 
 the intruder which has no right to be there. Every one 
 knows how this is accomplished. There is first a redness, 
 an increased vital action in the part and a swelling. This 
 is because the vital forces are aroused and rush to the 
 spot to see what is the matter. Just as the forces of the 
 city, at the cry of fire, rush to the spot. There is a swell- 
 ing of the city, in the part affected, an increase of its vital 
 action attended with symptoms of morbid inflammation, 
 almost exactly what happens in the vital system. The 
 analogy is striking, and indicates beyond a doubt that a 
 common principle is involved in both cases. When these 
 vital instincts have ascertained what is the matter, they set 
 themselves to work to cast the sliver out. They throw up 
 around it a secretion which cuts it off from all connection 
 with the system, and isolates it, and after a short time it 
 falls out of its own accord. 
 
 Exactly in the same way these vital instincts drive the 
 alcohol to the surface, through the skin, and lungs, and 
 kidneys, and brain. This is why long after alcohol has 
 been drunk, its odor may be detected in the breath. With 
 every breath it is thrown out from the lungs. The odor 
 
TEMPERANCE. 265 
 
 may also be detected in the perspiration. As it is borne 
 along the circulation to the brain, it excites that organ to 
 an unnatural degree of activity, or if the dose is too great, 
 the vital instincts give up the attempt for a time, the brain 
 sinks into a torpid state, and the person is said to be dead- 
 drunk. 
 
 But alcohol is said to be a respiratory food, meaning 
 that it is burnt in the body like the carbon of our food, 
 that it unites with the oxygen in the lungs and thus in 
 many cases prevents the tissues from consuming them- 
 selves. 
 
 There is but one solitary fact that by any method of 
 manipulation can be made to take the semblance of an ar- 
 gument in support of this theory, and that one fact is that 
 alcohol warms the system. But cayenne pepper warms 
 the system, so does quinine, so does sulphuric acid, so 
 does pain, so does intense joy, so does laughter, so does 
 love, so does hate, so do spasms and convulsions, so does 
 rheumatism, so does a fever, so does the cramp colic. 
 
 All these, of course, are respiratory food, since they 
 " warm the system." It is true that our scientists (?) 
 have not yet succeeded in demonstrating that the cramp 
 colic is oxidized in the lungs, but we can't tell what the 
 future may develop. 
 
 When one is suddenly awakened from sleep to find that 
 he must engage in a hand to hand fight with a midnight 
 assassin, we have a striking illustration of what takes place 
 
2(j6 OUR HOME. 
 
 when the assassin alcohol enters the dwelling of the hu- 
 man soul. That vital instinct which allows no foreign 
 substance within its domain at once grapples the intruder, 
 a sharp contest ensues, in which the alcohol is beaten and 
 driven out through the open door of the skin, the kidneys, 
 the lungs, or the brain. And just here is the origin of the 
 heat which alcohol occasions. It is due to the overaction 
 of the vital forces in their attempt to rid themselves of a 
 deadly foe. The midnight fight, just referred to, would 
 naturally be a warming process, but we have never known 
 physicians to prescribe midnight assassins as respiratory 
 food. We presume, however, that they might take the 
 place of most of the nostrums of the materia medica with 
 little disadvantage to the suffering part of the community. 
 
 We must look beyond the Sons of Temperance or the 
 Good Templars for the secret of success in the temperance 
 reform. 
 
 Organization is essential to the success of any great re- 
 form, but it is simply the machinery that is driven by an 
 unseen principle. It never yet of itself wrought a revolu- 
 tion. The solution of the great problem lies deeper than 
 the mystery of the " pass word." It lies in the knowledge 
 of natural law, in the thorough education of the people. 
 When the people learn that alcohol is a poison in all quan- 
 tities and under all circumstances, when they learn that it 
 is never necessary either in health or disease, then we may 
 look for gratifying results in the temperance reform. 
 
TEMPERANCE. 267 
 
 The world has too little faith in nature and too much 
 in medicine. Disease itself is a curative effort of na- 
 ture, and is not a thing to be conquered by a poison, 
 but an action to be regulated by favorable conditions. So 
 long as people possess that insane faith in the efficacy of 
 medicine, so long will they believe anything that unprinci- 
 pled physicians (?) may choose to tell them about alcohol. 
 The contest is between true philosophy and the lingering 
 superstition of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Perhaps the most conspicuous mental feature of the sav- 
 age man is his superstitious fear of medicine and the 
 " medicine man." The world has always advanced just as 
 fast as it has lost faith in medicine. 
 
 There is one fact with which the temperance reform has 
 to contend, more formidable than all others combined. It 
 is the fact that people so readily yield to the argument of 
 their feelings. It requires much intellectual courage not 
 to believe what our feelings tell us. 
 
 It is a fact that alcohol often makes people feel better. 
 It elevates their spirits and makes them feel strong, buoy- 
 ant and hopeful. Under such circumstances it requires 
 almost a divine argument to convince them that they are 
 not being benefited. 
 
 Temperance will triumph when the argument of reason 
 becomes stronger than that of feeling with the masses. 
 We are so constituted that our feelings are generally final 
 in their authority. Hence the necessity of distinguishing 
 
868 OUR HOME. 
 
 between the significance of the natural and the artificial. 
 People must be taught to do this before we can expect 
 them to abandon the use of alcohol. 
 
 How then shall this be brought about ? Surely not by 
 legislation, not by seizures and fines, but by the slow and 
 laborious process of education. This education must be 
 specific, and must be directed for the most part to the ris- 
 ing generation. The pathetic stories of reformed drunk- 
 ards may have their influence in shaping public sentiment, 
 but at best they can be only subsidiary to a more substan- 
 tial and abiding force. Legal measures may serve their 
 purpose, but the reformatory efforts should be directed 
 mainly to the securing of that condition which shall ren- 
 der legal measures unnecessary. This condition must be 
 sought in the education of the children, who not only must 
 be taught to distinguish the significance of natural and 
 normal appetites from the unnatural and abnormal, but 
 their training and education must be such that they shall 
 have no unnatural and abnormal appetites. Unnatural 
 appetites are the product of wrong physical training, and 
 intemperance is the product of unnatural appetites. Hence 
 wrong training is the origin of intemperance. 
 
 In our chapter on home training we have spoken of the 
 process by which wrong physical training produces drunk- 
 ards. We repeat its substance, however, for the sake of 
 special emphasis. All that is necessary to make a drunk- 
 ard is, first, a good healthy boy as material ; and second, 
 
TEMPERANCE. 2G9 
 
 plenty of candy, pastry, pickles, and medicine as tools. 
 Any mother with such an outfit can manufacture a drunk- 
 ard. The process is extremely simple. Drunkenness, as 
 we have said, is the product of a diseased or unnatural 
 appetite, and the appetite may be diseased or rendered 
 unnatural by taking advantage of the slight caprice which 
 all appetites possess, especially in the civilized world, thus 
 causing it to accept at times that which it otherwise would 
 not, and which it does not naturally crave. 
 
 Unnatural appetites crave unnatural food, and accord- 
 ingly unnatural food will in its turn induce an unnatural 
 appetite ; so that all a mother who desires to experiment 
 in this direction has to do is to give her boy unnatural 
 food, and every mother knows what we mean by unnatural 
 food. It is not necessary for us to enumerate the many 
 articles to which this adjective is applicable. The phrase 
 at once suggests to the ordinary mind the abominations of 
 spice, pickle, pork, and pastry, that fill the dining-halls of 
 civilization with their sickly odors, that would nauseate 
 the healthier appetites of the South Sea Island cannibals. 
 
 The mother who desires to make a drunkard must tam- 
 per with her boy's appetite by offering him that which 
 he does not crave; by compelling him to go without a 
 meal as a punishment for some offense, and thus become 
 very hungry, so that he will be sure to overeat at the next 
 meal ; by compelling him always to eat all that he happens 
 to have in his plate whether he desires it or not, instead of 
 
270 OUR HO mi:. 
 
 iching him to drop his knife and fork at the first sugges- 
 tion of sated appetite. Of course we take it for granted 
 that she believes root beer, etc., etc., to be u very whole- 
 some." She should use a great deal of spice in her 
 cooking. She should aim to take away as completely as 
 possible, the natural flavor of fruits and vegetables, and 
 substitute an artificial one. She should always manifest 
 great anxiety lest her boy should not eat enough to " keep 
 up his strength." She should, of course, give him plenty 
 of candy — it is good for the teeth, that is, for false teeth. 
 But what is of more importance than everything else, she 
 should dose him freely with medicine whenever he is 
 slightly indisposed. By the way, we came near forgetting 
 to advise a free use of tea and coffee. 
 
 We have said but little about intemperance in the ordi- 
 nary way. We have told no stories of neglected wives 
 and broken-hearted mothers. We leave that phase of the 
 subject to the sentimental lecturer. But we have given in 
 language somewhat ironical, that which we believe the peo- 
 ple need, and that which every mother ought to reflect upon. 
 
 The one fact which we have tried to make prominent is 
 that the appetite for alcoholic beverages is not necessarily 
 induced by the use of these beverages themselves, but may 
 be created by the use of whatever inflames the system, or 
 vitiates the taste. 
 
 It is sufficient simply to state that the predisposition to 
 alcoholic intemperance may be, and often is, transmitted 
 
TEMPERANCE. 271 
 
 from parent to child. This is a fact which is very gener- 
 ally known, but it is not, perhaps, so generally known, 
 that it is often transmitted from grandparent to grand- 
 child, thus passing over one and sometimes two generations 
 of temperate parents. The fact that intemperance, or a 
 tendency to intemperance, is thus hereditary, should render 
 all parents doubly vigilant in the training of their children. 
 We have aimed in this chapter at a deeper considera- 
 tion of the subject of temperance in its relation to the 
 home life than a mere enumeration of those superficial 
 evils of which society is chiefly cognizant. The follow- 
 ing poem with sufficient accuracy portrays this class of 
 evils : — 
 
 " Now horrid frays 
 Commence, the brimming glasses now are hurled 
 With dire intent; bottles with bottles clash 
 In rude encounter, round their temples fly 
 The sharp-edged fragments, down their battered cheeks 
 Mixed gore and cider flow; what shall we say 
 Of rash Elpenor, who in evil hour 
 Dried an immeasurable bowl and thought 
 To exhale his surfeit by irriguous sleep, 
 Imprudent ? him death's iron sleep oppressed, 
 Descending from his couch; the fall 
 Luxed his neck-joint and spinal marrow bruised. 
 Nor need we tell what anxious cares attend 
 The turbulent mirth of wine; nor all the kinds 
 Of maladies that lead to death's grim care, 
 Wrought by intemperance, joint racking gout, 
 Intestine stone, and pining atrophy, 
 Chill, even when the sun with July heats 
 Fires the scorched soil, and dropsy all afloat, 
 Yet craving liquids: nor the Centaurs' tale 
 Be here repeated: how, with lust and wine 
 Inflamed, they fought, and spilt their drunken souls 
 At feasting hour." 
 
ECONOMY OF HOME. 
 
 JF 
 
 L 
 
 t 
 
 iHE institution of home is in itself a divine 
 application of the law of economy. It con- 
 tains the first suggestion of the " division of 
 abor." 
 
 It is a fact within the observation of soci- 
 ety in general, and has almost become an 
 adage, that man and woman can live at less 
 expense together than separately. This is 
 certainly a benevolent provision, offering as it does another 
 inducement to the only legitimate life, the home life. 
 
 Nature is the model economist. She never wastes a leaf, 
 and yet she is the most benevolent of all givers. She will 
 give you without stint of her golden cheeked and luscious 
 flavored fruits, and yet she never throws away even her de- 
 cayed products, but turns them into her laboratory and 
 makes them over into good fruit, a subtle reproof to the 
 unfrugal housewife who throws away the remains of the 
 supper, that might be warmed over for breakfast. Nature 
 knows the secret of being both economical and generous, 
 she knows how to be frugal without being penurious. She 
 is not lazy, and yet she always takes the shortest path. Of 
 
ECONOMY OF HOME. 273 
 
 two equally good conductors the electric charge always 
 takes the shorter. It will even choose the poorer con- 
 ductor rather than take the longer one. The principle of 
 " least action " in mechanics is of the same nature. These 
 facts show that economy is a law of nature, and pervades 
 the very soul of the universe. 
 
 But not only is it a law of the outward universe, it is an 
 innate sentiment or instinct of human nature, — and not 
 only of human nature, but of all conscious existence. We 
 see it manifested in the squirrel, when he gathers during 
 the autumn his store of nuts and corn for his sustenance 
 during the coming winter. 
 
 The same instinct that prompts the squirrel to do this is 
 the moving impulse of the great commercial world. In 
 both instances it is simply an instinct, a faculty that brings 
 its possessor into sympathy with the economic law that 
 governs the movements of nature. It is the instinct of 
 economy that tells the worm, the bee, the cat, the dog, and, 
 in short, all animals, that a straight line is the shortest dis- 
 tance between two points, and that makes it to the human 
 intellect an axiom. 
 
 The law of economy, then, is simply that by which all 
 necessary results in nature are brought about with the least 
 possible expenditure of force, and what we call economy in 
 man is an instinctive appreciation and application of this 
 law. 
 
 To the low and mean the word economy signifies dishon- 
 
 18 
 
274 OUR HOME. 
 
 est acquisition and theft. To the honest but hard working 
 man it means industry and frugality. To the moralist and 
 philosopher it means social science, civilizing tendencies, 
 and universal culture. So it is that one's definition of 
 economy to a certain extent defines his character also. But 
 he who takes his definition from nature's lips cannot err. 
 
 Nature will not allow an idle atom in her realm. She 
 compels every rain-drop to become her minister, to bear 
 her proffered treaty between the warring clouds and earth, 
 and thus disarm them of their wrath, and with its subtle 
 diplomacy to reconcile them to the pledge of peace. And 
 with an eye to the economy of travel she bids her messen- 
 gers pause upon the mountain summit, as they pass from 
 cloud to earth, and take down with them from decaying 
 rocks and mountain gorges a load of timber from which to 
 form her fertile soil. 
 
 She makes the birds and zephyrs her husbandmen to 
 garner and sow the seeds of myriad plants. She bends 
 the neck of the proud lightning, and makes it her scaven- 
 ger to purify the atmosphere. She lays her shaggy moun- 
 tains on the toiling backs of earthquakes, and bids them 
 lift the burden to the sky. She makes the omnipresent 
 oxygen her domestic servant, and tasks his eyesight and 
 skillful fingers to unravel her snarled and complicated 
 skeins of chemical elements ; or, if she will, exalts him to 
 the higher office of attorney, and pleads through him for 
 the divorce of unhappily wedded constituents. 
 
ECONOMY OF HOME. 275 
 
 The home is the reproduction of nature on a small scale, 
 and not the least so in this matter of economy. 
 
 Nature is the pattern for the home, and every man and 
 woman who in any capacity represent a home should 
 take advantage of her example, and learn a lesson from 
 the way in which she scrapes up her "odds and ends," 
 and utilizes them. To all of us she says, " Accumulate all 
 you can ; employ every moment ; let no opportunity pass 
 without grasping its hand to see if there is not hidden in 
 its palm a golden coin." 
 
 But nature is no miser. Her economy does not consist 
 in meanness. She accumulates that she may give. She is 
 honest and will do as she agrees. We need not take her 
 note, her word is good. It is a law founded in the eternal 
 beneficence of things, written on every tree whose friendly 
 foliage shields us from the scorching sun ; on every spark- 
 ling rivulet that weeps soft tears of rain upon the thirsty 
 land, which in its turn gives back the gracious tribute of 
 its shrubs and flowers, and with an answering compliment 
 flings its rich gift of roses to deck the river banks; on 
 every circling satellite, upon the moon's sweet face, who 
 in her modesty sends down to us the flood of kisses which 
 the sun, her gallant lover, showers upon her blushing 
 brow,— on all of these is written the great law, that to give 
 is to receive, and whoever would receive must give. 
 
 The prudent farmer, while he is generous and free, will 
 still allow no stream of fertility to run to waste. While 
 
276 OUR HOME. 
 
 he is industrious and ever active, he will still compel the 
 wind and water to saw his wood and thresh his grain and 
 grind his corn. He will make the forest mold fertilize his 
 corn field. There is no dishonesty in turning our labor 
 over to nature. She expects to do all of our work before 
 long, but not, however, till she is requested to do so. She 
 never forces her services on us. We must first tell her 
 ju*st what we wish her to do, and how we wish her to do 
 it. We must furnish the tools for her to work with. 
 And even then, if they do not suit her, she will not work. 
 She will not draw a train of cars, unless she can have a 
 delicately constructed engine expressly for her. 
 
 The reason why men employed nature so little in the 
 past ages is because she was so particular about her tools 
 that they could not suit her. 
 
 Now the highest economy is the highest invention. 
 That is, he is the most economical man, other things being 
 equal, who is the most skillful in devising tools for nature 
 to work with. 
 
 Home is a broad field for the exercise of invention. It 
 is chiefly in the home, or in some way connected with do- 
 mestic life, that we find that large class of inventions 
 which minister directly to human comfort. 
 
 It is not necessary, however, that every great and use- 
 ful invention should be the product of an inventive genius. 
 On every farm and in every home there are thousands of 
 opportunities for the exercise of this faculty. The inven- 
 
ECONOMY OF HOME. 277 
 
 tive farmer will make his horses load his logs, while the 
 uninventive one must load them himself. The inventive 
 man can repair his broken implements, while the uninven- 
 tive must take them to the blacksmith's or the carpenter's, 
 and there pay so much out of the profits of his daily labor. 
 There is no good reason why every farmer should not be a 
 blacksmith, a carpenter, and a wheelwright. He could 
 then repair his own buildings, shoe his own horses and 
 oxen, and make his own carriages. Few, perhaps, have 
 ever stopped to estimate how much might be saved in this 
 way. Nearly all that sort of work may be done during 
 days in which nothing profitable could be accomplished on 
 the farm. Since the farmer's work is so varied he requires 
 but little absolute rest. Hence, if he were familiar with 
 these trades, the rainy days might be made the most prof- 
 itable ones of the year. While nature is irrigating his 
 farm, he might be devising tools for her to perform some 
 other service with. 
 
 Again, the recreation, the discipline, and the exercise of 
 mechanical ingenuity thus afforded would have a devel- 
 oping influence on mind and body. It is a fact worth re- 
 membering that the men who have made farming pay in 
 rocky New England have nearly all been of this sort. 
 
 Every wife and mother should be a tailoress, a milliner, 
 and a dress-maker. She should know something about 
 every article needed in the household. There is no reason 
 why she should be obliged to take the sewing machine to 
 
278 OUR HOME. 
 
 the shop, or call her husband to repair it ; she should have 
 inventive talent enough, and might have it if she would 
 cultivate it, to take the machine to pieces and put it 
 together again. She should be able to repair the churn 
 and solder the milk pans. Even if she cannot find time to 
 make use of these accomplishments, they will enable her 
 more readily to tell others what she wishes them to do for 
 her. She can make better selections of clothing for herself 
 and family. She can make wiser bargains in whatever she 
 purchases. Numberless are the ways in which knowledge 
 and inventive skill will enable one to save money. 
 
 The highest economy, however, does not consist merely 
 in saving. Much has been said, and very prettily and 
 poetically too, about the saving of pennies. But the pen- 
 nies must first be earned. That economy which exercises 
 itself wholly in saving and does not stimulate the inventive 
 and intellectual powers in the direction of acquisition is 
 almost sure to degenerate into meanness and penurious- 
 ness. It is very frequently the case that the saving pro- 
 pensity is carried so far as to be a positive obstruction to 
 the earning. As when the farmer refuses to hire help 
 because it must be paid for, and thus allows his crops to 
 deteriorate on account of a too late harvesting, or when 
 the wife refuses to employ a domestic servant and becomes 
 sick on account of overwork. It is not economy to mow 
 all summer with a scythe, when a few days' use of a 
 machine would accomplish the same result. True eco- 
 
ECONOMY OF HOME. 279 
 
 nomy consists in that broad and comprehensive knowledge 
 of affairs, that clear foresight and calculation, that willing- 
 ness to spend money lavishly in the procuring of the proper 
 means, which in the moving of circumstances gives us the 
 long arm of the lever. 
 
 There is no more disgusting spectacle than that of a 
 penurious farmer whose prosperity is crippled by his own 
 avarice. Such a man is likely to be found using a wooden 
 plow which his father left him. He goes barefooted week 
 days in order to make his boots last two years of Sundays. 
 If he buys a new coat he must pay for it with beans or 
 some product of the farm. He must change directly too. 
 He could not think of selling the beans for money and 
 buying the coat, for that would be paying money for the 
 coat. Indeed, he has well nigh dispensed with that instru- 
 ment of civilization — money. He has gone back so far 
 toward barbarism that he desires to barter instead of buy 
 and sell with money. Not because he has no love of 
 money, but because he does have that irrational love which 
 becomes the " root of all evil." 
 
 But some may ask how that can be the root of all evil 
 which owes its existence to a God-given instinct, and finds 
 its guarantee in an eternal law of nature. 
 
 The irrational love of money finds its guarantee in no 
 law or instinct. It is not the moderate and normal love of 
 money which is the root of all evil, nor is such love an evil 
 at all, but a great blessing. 
 
280 OUR HOME. 
 
 The sentiment of economy is one of those which manifest 
 themselves within very narrow limits. It seems to be 
 always leaning to the one side or the other, and getting 
 out of its path. It is apt to become prodigality or penuri- 
 ousness. It requires much skill in navigation on life's sea 
 to sail safely between these two rocks. When we first 
 embark we are very apt to run against the rock of prodi- 
 gality, but after we have had more experience, unless we 
 profit well by that experience, and learn the golden mean, 
 we are prone to the opposite extreme and run against the 
 rock of penuriousness. It is the inordinate love of money 
 for its own sake that is the root of all evil; while true 
 economy is the trusty helm that guides us safely between 
 two dark and threatening rocks. 
 
 This disposition to hoard money for its own sake, inde- 
 pendent of its proper function, is not, however, to be wholly 
 condemned. There is a ministry of good in the very con- 
 sciousness of possession. It is usually easy to distinguisli 
 the men of wealth in a crowd of people, by their bearing of 
 conscious power. It is the natural and legitimate condi- 
 tion of man to feel that he is in a certain sense the con- 
 queror and possessor of nature. 
 
 The lion is called the king of beasts, not because he is 
 the largest or the strongest, but because he calls himself 
 the king of beasts. He does this by his noble bearing, and 
 the consciousness of power. Now man, like the lion, should 
 feel and manifest a sense of power, only in a far higher de- 
 
ECONOMY OF HOME. 281 
 
 gree. It is this conscious power manifesting itself in the 
 human eye which accounts for the fact that no wild beast 
 can withstand the human gaze. 
 
 All that is necessary to cause the lion to skulk away to 
 the den like a whipped cur, is to gaze full in his eye 
 while you calmly maintain a consciousness of victory in id 
 superiority over all that moves upon the earth. 
 
 This feeling in man is the strongest safeguard against 
 low and mean acts. It places one above meanness. The 
 lion is the most magnanimous of beasts. He never does a 
 mean act. This is because of his consciousness of power 
 which makes him feel too noble to be mean. 
 
 This, then, is our plea for wealth, that its moderate pos- 
 session makes men noble and magnanimous. One noble, 
 generous, wealthy man in a community is sometimes a 
 source of inspiration for hundreds of young men. 
 
 Let it be remarked, however, that the kind of wealth 
 which produces this desirable result is that which is born 
 of toil and economy. No man can become suddenly 
 wealthy without being injured thereby, for the mode of 
 thought and the whole character must change to meet the 
 conditions of wealth. Whole new lines of thought, new 
 schemes, new -plans of life must be originated, and this 
 change cannot take place suddenly without too great a 
 shock to the character. 
 
 We claim that no man has any moral right to extreme 
 wealth. No man can possibly have any moral right to 
 
881 OUR HOME. 
 
 anything in this life which he does not earn, for otherwise 
 lie must trespass on the rights of his fellows. 
 
 Men are born destitute of all possessions. No one brings 
 anything into the world. What right, then, has one to 
 her riches through another's toil and misfortune? The 
 man who has the ability to begin with nothing and accu- 
 mulate ten thousand dollars by his own industry and 
 economy, has just ability enough to take care of ten thou- 
 sand dollars and be made better and nobler thereby. 
 
 But the accumulation of wealth, grand as is its possible 
 ministry, is not, by any means, the only object that con- 
 cerns the instinct and spirit of economy. 
 
 It is not the chief object of the economy of home. The 
 object of home is to mold character, and the object of home 
 economy is, or should be, the accumulation of all those 
 means and instrumentalities that minister to that end. 
 
 Those things which minister to the intellectual and 
 aesthetic nature are as properly the objects of the economi- 
 cal faculty as dollars and cents. 
 
 Let children be taught to believe that good books are 
 among the most desirable of earthly possessions. Let them 
 begin to accumulate books even before they can read. It 
 would be infinitely better than to give them a little bank 
 and teach them that the accumulation of coppers is all that 
 is desirable. They may be allowed to vie with each other 
 in the accumulation of good books and works of art, and 
 when they become old enough to appreciate them, they will, 
 
ECONOMY OF HOME. 283 
 
 perhaps, have a respectable library. They will also have 
 what is far better, a true idea of life and its significance. 
 
 If all parents would follow this course with their chil- 
 dren, the world's mad scramble for money would be trans- 
 ferred to books, facts, principles, thoughts, beauty, art, 
 education, culture, righteousness, and all that can lift the 
 soul, and bring the spirit and genius of humanity nearer to 
 its God. 
 
 In all cases the children should be made to earn these 
 books with their own hands, that they may early learn that 
 labor is the price of thought as well as of bread. They 
 cannot too early be taught that labor is necessarily the 
 price of all honest possessions. 
 
 " Thus is it over all the earth, 
 That which we call the fairest, 
 And prize for its surpassing worth, 
 Is always rarest. 
 
 " Iron is heaped in mountain piles 
 And gluts the laggard forges, 
 But gold-flakes gleam in dim defiles 
 And lonely gorges. 
 
 " The snowy marble flecks the land 
 With heaped and rounded ledges, 
 But diamonds hide within the sand 
 Their starry edges. 
 
 " The finny armies clog the twine 
 That sweeps the lazy river, 
 But pearls come singly from the brine 
 With the pale diver. 
 
 " God gives no value unto men 
 Unmatched by meed of labor; 
 And cost of worth has ever been « 
 
 The closest neighbor. 
 
Mi 
 
 OUR HOME. 
 
 " Were every hill a precious mine, 
 And golden all the mountains ; 
 Were all the rivers fed with wine 
 By tireless fountains; 
 
 " Life would be ravished of its zest, 
 And shorn of its ambition, 
 And sink into the dreamless rest 
 Of inanition. 
 
 " Up the broad stairs that value rears, 
 Stand motives beck'ning earthward, 
 To summon men to nobler spheres, 
 And lead them worthward." 
 
 1 
 
 :i/%C 
 
HOME ADORNMENTS. 
 
 v9 AN is an aesthetic being. The love of beauty 
 constitutes a vital part of his existence. Not 
 a mere appendage; not one of the finishing 
 touches of his creation that might have been 
 omitted without seriously deranging the sym- 
 metry of the whole, — but it constitutes a great 
 motive power in man's constitution. It is 
 the uplifting element ; it is that in us which 
 makes us hunger and thirst after perfection 
 of character. 
 
 The law of beauty is the law of complete- 
 ness, and that law in the soul gives the desire 
 for spiritual completeness and perfection. 
 
 The law of material beauty is, doubtless, 
 that by which matter tends to assume the 
 form of completeness, which is that of the 
 circle. The circle everywhere prevails. Na- 
 ture always makes a perfect circle when she 
 can ; and when she cannot she usually makes 
 a compromise with the opposing forces and together they 
 make an ellipse, or some form of the curve. The stars are 
 
 5 
 
286 OUR HOME. 
 
 spheres; atoms are by common consent regarded as spheres. 
 The paths of all the heavenly bodies are ellipses. The 
 transverse sections of trees and almost all forms of vegeta- 
 bles are circular. Most of the animal tissues are circular, 
 or are made up of circular parts. 
 
 But it is not alone in the geometrical figure that we see 
 the spirit of the circle. We see it in the repetitions of 
 history, in the ceaseless round of the seasons, in the death 
 and resurrection of the roses, in the successive pulses of 
 music, in colors that suggest their complements, in the bud 
 that suggests the completion of the flower, in the unuttera- 
 ble emotions that come to us while gazing upon the "breath- 
 ing canvas and speaking marble," in the soul-lifting sugges- 
 tion of the poet's metaphor, which is always the segment 
 that completes a circle of consistent thought. 
 
 It is our imagination that supplies these missing seg- 
 ments, and accordingly imagination and fancy are found to 
 be essential faculties in the production or appreciation of 
 beauty. Imagination is that faculty which gives us a 
 desire to complete all our mental operations, and thus give 
 to them something of the spirit of the circle. The law of 
 uty is nature's imagination, which tends to complete all 
 her operations and give to everything a circular tendency. 
 
 Since, then, the principle of beauty is so far-reaching in 
 nature, and since it forms so large and vital a part of man's 
 nature, is not its cultivation of the utmost importance ? 
 We cannot do violence to this part of our nature without 
 
HOME ADORNMENTS. 287 
 
 violating the whole. To withhold the influences that tend 
 to develop a love of beauty is as sure to cause a one-sided 
 and un symmetrical growth, as to withhold a needed ele- 
 ment of food. Beauty is one of the elements of the soul's 
 food. The cultivation of beauty in the soul requires no 
 costly tutorage. Beauty's lessons may be learned without 
 a teacher. The universe is one vast cabinet open to our 
 inspection. Every gate of nature turns upon golden 
 hinges. The sky each morning is broidered by the rosy 
 fingers of the dawn, arid every evening the sun, amid 
 beauty that awes the soul to silence, like a gallant knight 
 rides down the perilous cataract of molten gold. The 
 beauty of the clouds, the sweet simplicity of nature's 
 drab dress, is past all description of novelist or poet. A 
 spirit may grow divine by gazing on the clouds, and it 
 costs us nothing to appropriate this beauty except the 
 trouble of taking our nooning in the open air. There is a 
 flower in every nook and corner of nature's domain, which 
 it costs us nothing to look at. 
 
 But it is not alone in nature that beauty may minister 
 to our souls. It is the chief object of this chapter to show, 
 in a general way, how art may serve this purpose. 
 
 Nature hangs no landscapes on our parlor walls, nor does 
 she set bouquets in our windows. She will cause the 
 bouquets to grow and blossom, however, if we will but take 
 the trouble to plant them. 
 
 Flowers are the soul's best friends. There is the breath 
 
288 OUR HOME. 
 
 of the angels on their petals. It is needless to contend 
 that there is no deep meaning in the tribute which the uni- 
 versal heart of man in all ages has paid to flowers. 
 
 A flower garden is within the reach of every family that 
 has the control of a house ; for the beds may be made 
 close about the house, and there are few tenements even in 
 the denser parts of cities where there is not a sufficient 
 quantity of land for a flower-bed. 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that there has been much dis- 
 cussion concerning the wholesomeness of house plants, it is 
 
 vertheless the opinion of the most eminent scientists 
 that they are positively beneficial to health. Indeed, to 
 suppose otherwise would be a violation of the logic of 
 analogy, for the whole vegetable kingdom constantly con- 
 sumes carbonic acid, an invisible gas which is poisonous to 
 us, but which constitutes the food of plants. They also 
 exhale oxygen, which is the all-sustaining element of ani- 
 mal life, and which in civilized homes is usually deficient, 
 owing to the lack of proper ventilation. Thus house plants 
 in part neutralize the bad effects of imperfect ventilation. 
 One of the most striking provisions of nature is seen in 
 the mutual adaptation of plants and animals. Plants give 
 to us just what we require, while we give to them just 
 what they require. How admirably then are men and 
 plants adapted to live together. 
 
 The beauty of art is not alone for the mansion of 
 
 alth. Artistic and tasteful adornments are the products 
 
HOME ADORNMENTS. 289 
 
 of ingenuity and not of wealth. Trees may be planted 
 about the house, also vines and roses. Arbors and shady 
 nooks may be made to render home attractive, and to give 
 an added charm in after years to its memories. It is true 
 that " be it ever so humble there's no place like home," 
 but that home would be sweeter and would touch a ten- 
 derer chord in the spirit's harp if we could look back to 
 a cottage vine-wreathed and rosy-decked. There is some- 
 thing in the nature of beauty when it surrounds our early 
 home, that never loses its power, and never ceases to exert 
 a molding influence over us. 
 
 There is no end to the tasty and pleasing devices by 
 which an intelligent wife or daughter may adorn a home, 
 and that with little expense beyond the time it requires, 
 and this is usually mere pastime. The plot about the 
 house may be either a sand desert covered with barrel 
 hoops, broken cart wheels, and decaying rubbish, or it may 
 be clean, wholesome, and beautiful. One cannot live in a 
 wretched hovel where there is no -beauty, where the lawn 
 suggests a lumber yard, a cattle yard, and a slaughter 
 yard combined, without sharing in the degradation of the 
 surroundings. 
 
 It is as much the duty of parents, then, to adorn and 
 beautify their home as it is to keep the moral atmosphere 
 of that home pure. 
 
 Indeed, the latter cannot exist without the former. The 
 best characters and the noblest men come from the modest 
 
290 OUR HOME. 
 
 homes which taste, refinement, and labor have adorned 
 and beautified. 
 
 Beauty is a positive force, a developing potency in the 
 universe. The language of beauty everywhere is the lan- 
 guage of aspiration. If our dull ears could be quickened 
 till we could hear and understand the divine dialect of the 
 opening flowers, we should hear them say : — 
 
 " All things have their mission, and God gives us ours, 
 And this is a part of the mission of flowers: 
 To give life to the weary and hope to the sad, 
 Fresh faith to the faithless, new joys to the glad; 
 To cheer the desponding, give strength to the weak; 
 To bring health's bright bloom to the invalid's cheek; 
 To blush on the brow of the beautiful bride; 
 To cheer homes of mourning where sorrows betide; 
 To rob dreaded death of a part of his gloom, 
 By decking the dear one arrayed for the tomb ; 
 To furnish the home with a lasting delight, 
 With our perfumes so lovely, our blossoms so bright; 
 To hallow the homestead, embellish the lawn, 
 Reflecting the tints of the roseate dawn." 
 
DIGNITY AT HOME. 
 
 |IGNITY is self-respect, or rather the mani- 
 festation of self-respect. It is the involuntary 
 and unconscious expression of one's appraisal 
 of himself. Hence dignity may be called a 
 secondary or dependent virtue. It is not in 
 itself a cardinal virtue, but the language of 
 one. Politeness is not absolutely necessary 
 to a noble character, but that virtue of which 
 politeness is the expression is one of the 
 grandest in the world. It is that of benevo- 
 lence. 
 
 In exhorting one to be polite, it is more 
 philosophical to exhort him to cultivate the 
 Christian grace of benevolence than merely to study eti- 
 quette. So with dignity. There is no use in studying the 
 postures, gestures, and bearing of dignity, if there be not 
 behind it the true source of dignity, self-respect. It is dis- 
 honest to appear to be what we are not ; and if we have 
 not the true spirit of dignity, it is better for us to appear 
 undignified. Then the world will know better how to 
 measure our worth. Artificial dignity and artificial polite- 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 ness are to be condemned as dishonest and hypocritical. 
 Let young men and women be dignified, but let it be a 
 true expression of their self-respect. Self-confidence is a 
 trait of character whose worth is usually underestimated, 
 especially in the young. At some stage of their mental 
 growth, young men are almost always considered con- 
 ceited; but in the majority of cases the conduct that gives 
 rise to this belief originates in other sentiments than that 
 of self-esteem. Most people have this element of their 
 character too feebly developed. The more self-esteem one 
 possesses, if he be not haughty and overbearing, the better. 
 This function of the mind gives us noble thoughts, and 
 makes us hate anything that is low or mean. It makes the 
 possessor feel that he is better than any mean act; hence 
 it is one of the strongest fortifications of virtue. 
 
 The dignified man always receives more respect than the 
 undignified. Society is inclined to take a man at his own 
 appraisal. The world, while it may question a man's claims 
 to its homage, always believes all the accusations which he 
 brings against himself, and if a man by his downcast head, 
 his low and mean associates, his vulgar thoughts and pro- 
 fane words, in short, by his lack of dignity, proclaims to 
 the world that he is unworthy of its esteem, it will surely 
 take him at his word. 
 
 To the dignified man everything that he does becomes 
 dignified. If he is a wood-chopper, then wood-chopping 
 becomes as dignified and honorable as statesmanship. 
 
DIGNITY AT HOME. 293 
 
 Wherever the dignified man or woman goes, there goes 
 before a sense of honor and respect. He seems to be a 
 kind of balance wheel to the society in which he moves. 
 The laugh is never too long or loud; mirth and hilarity 
 never go too far when he is present. At the same time he 
 is not a burden or a painful restraint upon the natural flow 
 of sentiment, and the play of social forces. 
 
 Nations and individuals usually attain a height corre- 
 sponding to their own ideals. The beautiful, ideal life of 
 the Greek was the necessary prelude to the glorious reality, 
 and those individuals who have climbed the rugged heights 
 and poised themselves on glory's giddy summit, have been 
 those who with bleeding feet, calloused hands, and toiling 
 brains have worked out a cherished ideal. The dignity of 
 a being measures the worth of his life's ideal. So that, 
 other things being equal, he who is most dignified is most 
 rapidly advancing along the path of his own possibilities. 
 
 These facts are as applicable to the little world of home 
 as to the great world of human society. The boy who is 
 dignified at home receives the confidence of his sisters, 
 brothers, and parents. Just as the world takes the man at 
 his own price, and grants its confidence only as his dig- 
 nity shows him worthy of it, so the parent takes the child 
 at his own price. In proportion as children are dignified 
 will parents grant them liberties, and place them in posi- 
 tions of honor and trust in the family economy. The dig- 
 nified girl need not be a premature woman. She may 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 romp and play with her brothers, as she should do, and 
 still be dignified. Dignity, as we have intimated, does not 
 consist of outward acts ; it has no necessary ritual ; it is 
 not " studied gestures or well-practiced smiles." 
 
 The father who gets down on the floor to please his 
 little child is not undignified. The mother who joins in 
 the happy sports of her children, even with all the mirth 
 and merriment of her early girlhood, is not undignified so 
 long as she has a noble purpose in life, and sees a grand 
 object in being. 
 
 Indeed, we believe that those who walk with measured 
 step, and whose faces suggest a lengthened cloud, are not 
 the finest embodiments of true dignity. Everything which 
 is counterfeit betrays its spuriousness, whatever may be 
 the skill of the counterfeiter. The sly, giggling, and sim- 
 pering false modesty need never be mistaken for the open 
 frankness and fearlessness of true modesty. So there is 
 always something about the bearing of a false dignity that 
 betrays it. It is false dignity that cannot afford to smile, 
 but true dignity can afford to be light hearted. We find 
 it enthroned upon the mother's brow as she shakes the 
 rat tie, and smiles and creeps upon the floor to please her 
 baby. But how grandly, when suddenly called upon to 
 perform a higher duty, does she step out of the enchanted 
 atmosphere of her baby's life, unwreathe the nursery smiles 
 from her face, and stand forth in the glory of her woman- 
 hood. It is then that she displays a dignity that awes us. 
 
DIGNITY A T HOME. 295 
 
 a dignity before which the vile insulter slinks back like 
 the hyena at the gaze of day. 
 
 This is what we mean by dignity. It is something 
 which the little girl may cultivate as much as she chooses. 
 It will not hurt her. It will not make her prematurely 
 old. It will not cause her to ripen too quickly like a 
 shriveled fall apple, but it will help to develop her and 
 make her a true and noble woman. 
 
 There is always a certain degree of reserve that accom- 
 panies true dignity, so that its possessor is never quite 
 transparent. He may be, and in fact must be, free, open 
 and social, but there is always a reserved force of individ- 
 uality. He may be translucent, but not transparent. And 
 there is always a charm in that which we have almost but 
 not quite seen. Hence the mind of the dignified man is 
 an inexhaustible fountain of pleasure to his friends. He is 
 always courted and never shunned. The boy who is dig- 
 nified will be a central figure among his brothers and sis- 
 ters and schoolmates. 
 
 There are certain virtues that have corresponding vices, 
 resulting not from the absence but from the excess or 
 wrong direction of the virtue. Dignity is one of those pe- 
 culiar virtues, separated from the vice of conceit only by a 
 thin veil. Economy is a virtue that all boys and girls are 
 exhorted to cultivate, but how thin is the partition that 
 separates this virtue from the hateful vice of penurious- 
 ness, that vice which has shriveled the soul of many a 
 
our no mi:. 
 
 miser like the foliage of a girdled tree. Even the worship 
 of God may be but a hair's breadth from idolatry. The 
 flower of every virtue grows close to the precipice of a 
 vice. 
 
 It is a law without exception that the lower the plane 
 the more stable the virtue, while the higher the plane, the 
 more unstable. 
 
 The heavenly gift of love trembles over the abyss of 
 sensuality, while the crowning sentiment of divine worship 
 is easily tumbled from its lofty pedestal into the mire of 
 idolatry. 
 
 Hence dignity finds its highest complement in the fact 
 that it is separated by a thin partition from the vice of 
 pride and haughtiness. Let us then cultivate dignity, but 
 weed the flower with a careful hand. 
 
 A man of haughty spirit is daily adding to his enemies; 
 
 He standeth as an Arab in the desert, and the hands of all men are against him. 
 
 A man of a base mind daily subtracteth from his friends, 
 
 For he holdeth himself so cheaply, that others learn to despise him. 
 
 But where the meekness of self-knowledge veileth the front of self-respect, 
 
 There look thou for the man whom none can know but they will honor. 
 
 Humility is the softening shadow before the statue of Excellence, 
 
 And lieth lowly on the ground, beloved and lovely as the violet. 
 
 mS. 
 
SUCCESS OR FAILURE 
 FORESHADOWED AT HOME. 
 
 i UCCESS and failure are relative terms. What 
 would be success to one might be failure to 
 another. Success is simply the best possible 
 results under existing circumstances. He 
 who was born without the use of his arms 
 and hands, and also without artistic ability, 
 and yet who, by patient effort, has learned to 
 write with his toes, even though his writing 
 be but a miserable scrawl, if it be legible, has 
 surely achieved a wonderful success in the 
 art of penmanship. But for him who possesses the free 
 use of his hands, and has in addition the taste of an 
 artist, such a result would certainly be but moderate suc- 
 cess. The pious rural maiden, who spends her life in 
 ministering to the sick, the poor, and the ignorant in her 
 little neighborhood, even though her name is never heard 
 beyond a radius of ten miles, has achieved a success of 
 which the record is in heaven, but had she been endowed 
 with the ten talents that God gave to Florence Nightin- 
 gale, she surely would have shuddered to offer so meager a 
 return to her master. 
 
298 OUR HOME. 
 
 When one asks himself the question, "Can I succeed?" 
 he must have before his mind a definite standard of suc- 
 cess, or his words become meaningless. Circumstances 
 and native ability must determine the scope of the ques- 
 tion. The first stage in all success is a preparation for 
 success, and the number of stages is limited only by 
 natural capacity and length of life. He who has prepared 
 for success, even though it has required his lifetime, has 
 succeeded better than he who has passed over a thou- 
 sand stages, but has missed one stage that he might have 
 
 According to this definition of success, which is the only 
 proper one, all may succeed, and failure is never necessary. 
 All can certainly do their best, and the result will be suc- 
 cess. Failure, as the word implies, is simply the failure to 
 act according to our highest possibilities. The world is 
 full of the brilliant failures of fortune's sons — those who 
 seemingly possessed every advantage that fate could be- 
 stow. On the other hand, the poor-house has been the 
 theater of many a sublime success. 
 
 He has succeeded well who has met and conquered the 
 dark hosts of evil passions that assail so many unfortunate 
 souls. If he has subdued self, that mightiest enemy of 
 humanity, he may count his life a grand success, even 
 though the victory came but with the death angel's rein- 
 forcement. Success is his if he can greet his stern ally 
 thus : — 
 
SUCCESS OR FAILURE. 299 
 
 " Were the whole world to come before me now,— 
 Wealth with its treasures; pleasure with its cup; 
 Power robed iu purple; beauty in its pride; 
 And with love's sweetest blossoms garlanded ; 
 Fame with its bays, and glory with its crown, — 
 To tempt me lifeward, I would turn away, 
 And stretch my hands with utter eagerness 
 Toward the pale angel waiting for me now, 
 And give myself to him, to be led out 
 Serenely singing to the land of shade." 
 
 We are glad, however, that the world contains but few 
 who must buy success at such an awful price. 
 
 Success or failure is the natural fruit of character. The 
 apple tree cannot bear anything but apples, neither can a 
 good character bear anything but success. Failure is the 
 only fruit we can reasonably expect to reap from a bad 
 character. 
 
 But some may object to this, and point us to the fre- 
 quent and brilliant success of bad men ; but what they 
 would call success would not probably fall within our defi- 
 nition. If dishonest acquisition is success, then is the 
 highway robber the most successful of men ; and on that 
 roll of honor the brute-hearted pirate must be allowed to 
 write his name. Hence the word success loses all signifi- 
 cance unless we restrict it at least to honest acquisition. 
 This must be dope even by those who claim that dollars 
 and cents are its only standard. Yes, it is character that 
 determines our success or failure. Our deeds, both the 
 good and the bad, are the visible herd which the unseen 
 shepherd, character, drives across the desert of our lives. 
 
300 OUR HOME. 
 
 If lie be a good shepherd, the herd also will be good, and, 
 fearless of the prowling wolf, will move in orderly proces- 
 sion straight to the fold of success; but if he is a bad shep- 
 herd, the flock will not obey him, but will scatter in wild 
 confusion, and hide themselves in the dark and noisome 
 caves of failure. 
 
 Since, then, it is the character that brings us success or 
 failure, we must go where characters are formed, to the 
 home, in order to speak our words of warning and advice. 
 
 The chief cause of all failures is a lack of persistency. 
 He who begins life as a fruit vender, wkh nothing but a 
 persistent mind, has a better chance of success in life, than 
 he who begins with a million dollars and a vacillating mind. 
 
 In America, financial success is possible to every young 
 man of ordinary ability. It is certainly important that he 
 should choose the vocation for which nature has best fitted 
 him, but it is far more important that he persist in the one 
 which he does choose. 
 
 There are certain excesses and deficiencies which are 
 national peculiarities, and this lack of persistency is surely 
 a deficiency in Americans. With the Germans the reverse 
 is true, thoroughness with them is almost an excess. Fail- 
 ures are very rare in Germany, because every man is so 
 thoroughly taught in his one special subject that he has 
 the advantage both of a perfect knowledge of his business, 
 and a natural tendency to be contented for life with one 
 occupation. 
 
SUCCESS OR FAILURE. 301 
 
 By failures we do not mean what is generally called a 
 " financial failure." But rather the failure to do justice to 
 one's native powers, failure to attain to what most men 
 regard as success. 
 
 Perhaps there are more failures of this kind among 
 Americans in proportion to the population, than among 
 any other people in the world, and the fact accords well 
 with their known fickleness. 
 
 The young American has much difficulty in deciding 
 what occupation he shall follow. He is usually undecided 
 whether he shall be a shoe-maker or statesman. He gener- 
 ally thinks quite favorably of all the intermediate trades 
 and professions. As a rule, he tries as many of these as 
 time and circumstances will permit. He enters a store as 
 a clerk, and while the novelty lasts his mind is fully made 
 up that he will be a merchant, and have a store on Broad- 
 way, but after a time his work becomes prose instead of 
 poetry. His hasty decision was based on no abiding rela- 
 tion between himself and trade. He leaves the store and 
 obtains a position in a bank, and immediately he decides 
 that he will be a great banker. He reads and studies 
 about the mysteries of Wall Street. But in a few weeks or 
 months it occurs to him that he didn't stop to measure the 
 distance between a chore boy in a country bank and a 
 great stock operator on Wall Street, so he thinks he won't 
 be a banker or a broker, but perhaps decides to be a printer, 
 and goes into a printing office fully determined that he has 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 at last found out what nature intended to do with him. 
 He is well satisfied for a time. He reads the life of 
 Benjamin Franklin. His ambition is awakened. He be- 
 gins to see, too, that the printer is only the servant of the 
 writer. This touches his pride, and he conceives the idea 
 of going to college, and becoming a great writer and 
 speaker. So his father's little farm is mortgaged and he 
 starts for college, carrying with him that same indecision, 
 and after four years of aimless study comes home to 
 choose his life work, having forgotten all about his last 
 resolution to be a great writer. So habituated has he be- 
 come to frequent change of occupation, that it is now abso- 
 lutely impossible for him to be satisfied in any sphere of 
 life. 
 
 There is no objection to a mere change of occupation if 
 circumstances render it desirable. The evil is in the men- 
 tal condition that prompts a change. A young man may 
 be a clerk, a banker and a printer if he chooses, and be the 
 better for it, provided these occupations are used simply as 
 means for the accomplishment of some definite and specific 
 purpose. If a boy chooses to be a printer, let him be a 
 printer, and if circumstances render it necessary or desira- 
 ble that he should for a time engage in some other occupa- 
 tion, let him do it feeling that he is simply for a time work- 
 ing out of his element. It is the mental change, the 
 change of motive and desire, and not the mere physical 
 change which produces the best result. 
 
SUCCESS OR FAILURE. 303 
 
 Now, since success and failure are products of the char- 
 acter, and since character is formed by the influences of 
 home y it is easy to determine with approximate certainty 
 from an inspection of the home, what are the prospects of 
 success or failure in life. 
 
 Moreover, one derives a feeling of fortunate relief from 
 the thought that all evils which can be foreseen, and which 
 owe their origin to human volition, can be prevented. 
 
 Children should be (aught the importance of persistency. 
 It is not necessary that they should early choose their 
 vocation ; yet it is necessary that when they do choose it, 
 they should choose it for life. An occupation once chosen 
 should be entered upon with a feeling that there is no 
 other occupation. The ships should be burned behind. So 
 long as there is in the mind a lingering thought that after 
 all some other occupation will constitute the life work, 
 failure is almost certain, for the mind is not concentrated, 
 and its acts are like the acts of those who are half in jest. 
 
 Young men who contemplate a profession are sometimes 
 advised to learn some trade first, then, they are told, if they 
 fail in the profession they will have something to "fall 
 back on." This is a first rate way to make certain their 
 failure in the profession. If you wish to ensure the defeat 
 of an army make elaborate preparations for an easy retreat, 
 but if you wish to make them invincible, tear up the roads 
 and burn the bridges behind them. So if you would en- 
 sure success in your boy's career don't foster nor tolerate 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 the feeling that it isn't absolutely necessary that he should 
 succeed in that particular trade or profession. 
 
 But what if the man has made a mistake? Suppose he 
 has entered the medical profession, and then discovers that 
 he was doubtless intended for the law ? J a that case it is 
 a matter to be settled by his own judgment and the advice 
 of his friends whether he shall continue in the medical 
 profession or change to the law. If he is young and cir- 
 cumstances are favorable, perhaps it would be advisable to 
 make the change. It would not as a rule be advisable. 
 
 We have said that it is less important that a young 
 man should choose just the occupation for which he is best 
 adapted, than that he persist in the one which he does 
 choose. There may be exceptions to this, but it is true as 
 a rule, from the very fact that without persistency failure is 
 certain, even in the occupation for which he is best adapted. 
 With persistency he is sure of a moderate success at least, 
 even in the vocation to which he is poorly adapted ; but 
 without this quality he is sure of failure in any vocation. 
 
 We would not convey the impression that we attach but 
 little importance to the right choice of pursuits. There 
 are few things in human life more important than a right 
 matrimonial selection, and yet it is far less important than 
 a firm determination to live through life peacefully and 
 lovingly with the one who has been chosen ; so it is very 
 questionable whether one should attempt to correct any 
 mistake that may have been made in choosing his calling. 
 
SUCCESS OR FAILURE. 305 
 
 It is not to be presumed that the young man has made 
 any mistake in the choice of his occupation. If he has 
 been advised and counseled by wise and cautious parents, 
 there is but little probability that he has made a wrong 
 choice. Nature has so kindly and wisely blended our 
 tastes and talents that what we desire to do most, that, as 
 a rule, we can do best. 
 
 But unmingled success is not always the best thing for 
 a young man. There are few who would not be spoiled 
 by it. There is hardly a great orator whose biography 
 does not contain some story of an early failure. He who 
 has never failed is necessarily a weak man. Temporary 
 failure is the best cure for egotism. It reduces our stand- 
 ard of self measurement to the denominations of the 
 world's system. 
 
 Temporary failure sustains the same relation to the 
 character that sorrow does ; if not administered in over- 
 doses, it strengthens and develops. 
 
 " What most men covet, wealth, distinction, power, 
 
 Are bawbles nothing worth; they only serve 
 
 To rouse us up, as children at the school 
 
 Are roused up to exertion ; our reward 
 
 Is in the race we run, not in the prize. 
 
 Those few, to whom is given what they ne'er earned, 
 
 Having by favor or inheritance 
 
 The dangerous gifts placed in their hands, 
 
 Know not, nor ever can, the generous pride 
 
 That glows in him who on himself relies. 
 
 Entering the lists of life, he speeds beyond 
 
 Them all, and foremost in the race succeeds. 
 
 His joy is not that he has got his crown, 
 
 But that the power to win the crown is his." 
 20 
 
FALLACIES ABOUT GENIUS. 
 
 yENIUS may be defined as an irrepressible im- 
 pulse to work for work's sake. He whose 
 whole soul does not quiver in response to 
 the very name of work is not a genius and 
 never can be. 
 
 There is, perhaps, nothing that more forci- 
 bly betrays the weakness and folly of human 
 nature than the tendency in almost every 
 young man, to fancy himself a genius and hence beyond 
 the necessity of labor. The object of this chapter is to ex- 
 pose that folly, and to show the wide-spread misconception 
 concerning the nature of genius. 
 
 If work costs you effort, you may be talented but you 
 are not a genius. If it is easy for you to work, and costs 
 but little self-denial, you are on the border-land of genius: 
 but if you cannot help working, if work is your spirit's 
 breath, if when the spell is upon you the very spheres must 
 hush their music to give you sleep, if the insanity of cease- 
 less impulse lays its frenzied fingers on your brain at mid- 
 night, you may pitch your tent upon the star-lit heights, 
 and your mission is to reach up to God and down to man. 
 Great achievements, although they always accompany 
 
FALLACIES ABOUT GENIUS. 307 
 
 genius, do not constitute it, they only indicate it, they are 
 the natural language, the gestures of genius. 
 
 We are told that intense application, and concentration 
 of effort and purpose will accomplish the results of genius. 
 And why should they not, for they are genius itself. It is 
 wonderful that men who are so remarkable for common 
 sense in the e very-day affairs of life should show to BUch 
 poor advantage when they attempt to elucidate the princi- 
 ples of mental science and human nature. There are no 
 subjects on which the popular writers become so hopelessly 
 confused as on those pertaining to psychology. Let it be 
 understood once and forever by the world, that there can 
 be no act of being that is not the outgrowth of an organic 
 function, and this pernicious indefiniteness which makes 
 ludricrous and insignificant distinctions between synony- 
 mous words, will vanish from our literature. Concentra- 
 tion of purpose and intense application are as truly ele- 
 ments of genius as the imagination of the poet. From 
 these writers we should gather that there may be one or 
 two faculties essential to greatness, which may be native 
 and individual, but that all the other elements, such as will, 
 concentration, perseverance, self-reliance, etc., etc., are 
 possessed in equal quantities by all, and those who do not 
 use them as extensively as the greatest men, are to be 
 censured. 
 
 Now it is as reasonable to censure a boy because he can- 
 not compose music like Beethoven as to censure him be- 
 
308 OUR HOME. 
 
 cause he " does not want to." The elements that give the 
 desire are the same that give the ability. You may as 
 well exhort him to write poetry like Shakespeare as to ex- 
 hort him to have the concentration, the perseverance, or 
 the self reliance of Shakespeare, for all these qualities are 
 much parts of genius, and are just as dependent on 
 hereditary and organic influences as those which are recog- 
 nized as the prime factors of genius. 
 
 Genius has many and unmistakable characteristics, and 
 among them the earliest, if not the most marked, is in- 
 tellectual boldness. The first symptom of genius is a 
 scorn for the opinions of men. Genius sees through 
 the clouds that intercept the world's vision, and hence 
 the world never sympathizes with genius. Hisses are the 
 highest compliment the world can pay to genius. He 
 who does not sometimes enrage his fellow men may well 
 question his claim to genius. 
 
 This rule, however, applies with less force in certain 
 spheres of genius, as music, painting, sculpture, etc. Yet 
 even here the grandest efforts have been scorned by the 
 critics, the interpreters of genius. But in that highest 
 sphere, in which it rough-hews the timbers of the world's 
 new thought, it cannot receive the sympathy of men. 
 " Loose unto us Barabbas " is the world's cry. It is 
 genius they would crucify, for it is genius that moves 
 them to wrath. For it reveals itself not in soft words and 
 " pretty thoughts," but in discordant words and ugly 
 
FALLACIES ABOUT GENIUS. 309 
 
 thoughts ; tumultuous thoughts ; thoughts that burn into 
 the tablet of the centuries with a hiss. It is the honied 
 words of talent that please the ears of mankind. 
 
 Another distinguishing characteristic of genius is that it 
 always tells the world something that it did not know be- 
 fore. Genius stands nearest to the source of all wisdom, 
 and catches whispers that never reach the common ear. It 
 is God's interpreter. It reveals and interprets the unwrit- 
 ten language of nature's pantomime ; hence the world, in 
 spite of its antipathy for genius, instinctively recognizes its 
 power. For in all ages men have made the words of 
 genius canonical. Homer was the world's first Bible. 
 
 Genius works without regard to the value of the prod- 
 uct. It works, as we have said, because it cannot help it. 
 And herein seems to consist the divinity of genius, for it 
 appears to be guided by a divine influence. It forgets 
 that it is hungry and works all night. Tested by the re- 
 ceived canons, it is radical and fanatical. It recognizes no 
 formulated law of thought or logic. It both walks upon 
 the earth, and flies in the air. It knows that which talent 
 doubts, and believes that which talent laughs at. 
 
 It is not our purpose to discourage young men, yet we 
 do not hesitate to do so, if thereby we may dispel from 
 their minds the foolish fancy that they are geniuses. Nor 
 need this discourage them. Every mind is satisfied with 
 its own sphere. Talent does not suffer from disappoint- 
 ment because it cannot be genius, any more than the child 
 
310 OUR HOME. 
 
 suffers because it cannot be a man. The child is ambi- 
 tious only to be noted among his playmates as possessing, 
 in a remarkable degree, the qualities of a child. So talent, 
 unless there be a want of harmony in the mental constitu- 
 tion, is satisfied with its own sphere, and does not seek to 
 rise in its aspirations into the cloud heights of genius. 
 We do not mean that a person without genius does not 
 frequently wish that he might occupy the highest place in 
 the estimation of his fellows. There are few to whom 
 this wish is a stranger, yet it causes no suffering and does 
 not touch the question of disappointed aspirations. In its 
 relation to genius we have used the word aspiration with 
 its strongest meaning, that in which it signifies not merely 
 a wish to be great, but a burning, sleepless impulse, which 
 suffers all things, forgets the weak pleadings of sense, and 
 labors unceasingly for the accomplishment of its purpose. 
 
 So we are not actuated by a malicious desire to dash the 
 cherished hopes of college boys who mistake that indefinite 
 desire for greatness which every one has felt, for that 
 divine uplifting which not only seeks the goal of greatness, 
 but actually rejoices that the path to glory is so rough and 
 steep. It is a characteristic of genius that it loves to tread 
 stony paths, for the sake of crushing the stones. 
 
 No ! no ! young man, don't wait any longer for genius 
 to blossom, for the fact that you are waiting proves that 
 there is no bud to blossom. 
 
 We have paid this exalted and possibly extravagant 
 
FALLACIES ABOUT GENIUS. 311 
 
 tribute to genius solely for the purpose of placing in the 
 hands of that class of young men who fancy themselves 
 geniuses, a means of detecting their own folly. These 
 young men are proverbially the lazy young men ; they are 
 those who from some strange cause have conceived the 
 idea that to work would be to surrender their claim to 
 genius. Hence they abandon themselves to idleness. They 
 have been told that Poe and Byron were idlers. But if 
 the truth were known it would, doubtless, be found that 
 these unhappy geniuses through sleepless nights of wast- 
 ing toil worked themselves into untimely graves. 
 
 Since genius consists solely in spontaneous and involun- 
 tary labor in contradistinction to the irksome effort of 
 mediocrity, it follows that these young men are barred, 
 at the outset, from all claim to genius. 
 
 Probably more talented young men have been rendered 
 useless by the delusion that genius is a compound of wine 
 and laziness than by any other one cause. But let no 
 young man entertain the foolish idea that by getting 
 drunk and being lazy he can be a Poe. 
 
 In the first place, Poe was not lazy. Genius, it is true, 
 often works somewhat irregularly, because the moving 
 power in genius is impulse, whereas in talent it is usually 
 motives of economy or duty. And in the second place, Poe 
 would probably have been a much greater poet had he 
 been temperate. But there seems to be in perverted 
 human nature a propensity to copy after the incidental 
 
312 OUR HOME. 
 
 Weakness of greatness. Let a man of genius display one 
 trait of the idiot and hundreds of young men will appropri- 
 ate it and complacently consider themselves possessed of 
 at least one characteristic of genius. 
 
 So long as the young man of talent can readily find a 
 field for the full exercise of his powers, and one in which 
 the rewards of toil are worthy of his highest effort, he need 
 not feel discouraged because he cannot be a genius. As 
 well might he lament because he was not born into a more 
 refined and beautiful world than this. So long as he ful- 
 fills the duties which his talent imposes, he should be con- 
 tent and happy in his sphere, and never stop to consider 
 whether he be a genius or a mediocre. The semi-idiot, if he 
 employs to the best possible advantage the weak talents 
 that he possesses, may be as deserving of praise as Plato, 
 Paul, or Newton. 
 
 It is the function of genius to go in advance of the world's 
 march, and " set the stakes " to guide the advancing col- 
 umn. But our genius can do this for an army of ten thou- 
 sand, while the lieutenants and corporals of talent must be 
 scattered all along the line. Genius in every relation of 
 life is more or less independent of experience. It knows 
 tilings without learning them. It exemplifies the doctrine 
 of "innate ideas." Talent knows only what it sees, but 
 genius does not see what it knows. In its loftiest moods 
 the beams of truth flash into its inmost chambers, and it 
 cannot tell from whence comes the light. It is awed at its 
 
FALLACIES ABOUT GENIUS. 313 
 
 own achievements, and looks Avitli wonder upon its own 
 offspring. It sees, as mere talent can never learn to see, 
 the infinite significance of wholeness. 
 
 Genius is creative rather than executive. It may exist, 
 however, in the line of any one of the several faculties of 
 the mind, and hence may find its expression in the execu- 
 tive faculties themselves. Yet even in this case genius 
 finds its chief function in marking out the lines of action 
 and in telling others what to do and how to do it, thus 
 leaving the ultimate execution in the hands of talent. 
 So it may be true that genius is always creative and not 
 executive. The girl may surpass Beethoven in the mere 
 execution at the piano-forte, yet it is the fiat of Beethoven's 
 genius that directs every quiver of her flying fingers. The 
 inventive genius is proverbial for its lack of executive 
 ability. This quality, together with intuitiveness, to 
 which it is closely related, and upon which it chiefly 
 depends, is, doubtless, the most distinguishing character- 
 istic of genius. 
 
 But talent and genius may and often do exist together. 
 There is nothing in the nature of the one that necessarily 
 precludes the other. Those in whom they exist together 
 will exhibit that same irrepressible impulse to labor, but 
 there will be, in their labor, the method and regularity and 
 moderation which characterizes that of talent. It is doubt- 
 ful if pure genius is ever of the highest order. Poe was 
 perhaps one of the best illustrations of pure genius in all 
 
314 OUR HOME. 
 
 history, and yet we cannot regard him as worthy of the 
 highest honor. Pure genius is fitful and irregular. It is 
 only when it is mixed with talent that it becomes grand, 
 imposing and effective. The genius of Caesar, Napoleon or 
 Shakespeare would not have produced the grand results 
 that it did, had it not been mixed with talent, whereby it 
 
 B tempered and made self-regulating. Goethe, perhaps, 
 furnishes the best illustration of the combination of genius 
 and talent. 
 
 We have indicated a very sharp contrast between genius 
 and talent, or rather between the results of genius and 
 talent. But the question, what is genius, remains un- 
 answered. 
 
 There are all degrees of genius, as there are all degrees 
 of talent, and the line where the highest degree of talent 
 meets the lowest degree of genius is a question that can be 
 determined only by the arbitration of mankind. There is 
 no natural law by which we can say with certainty that 
 one mind is on this side and another on the other side of 
 that line. There are doubtless thousands far below the 
 line who have passed for geniuses, while thousands more, 
 as far above the line, have hardly received the rank to 
 which mediocrity should entitle them. Yet notwithstand- 
 ing such injustice, resulting from weakness and prejudice, 
 the fact of genius still remains. The distinction of kitten 
 and cat, of cub and lion, of child and adult, are genuine 
 ami natural distinctions, yet who shall designate the mo- 
 
FALLACIES ABOUT GENIUS. 315 
 
 ment when a boy becomes a man ? This moment cannot 
 be ascertained with certainty within several years. A 
 margin of at least five years must be allowed for variation 
 of opinion concerning definitions. 
 
 Genius, then, is but developed talent, and the lowest 
 degree of talent holds in potentiality the highest degree of 
 genius. 
 
 Talent in man corresponds to strength of material in the 
 engine, which is approximately indicated by the figures 
 on the steam gauge. It is the steady power of resist- 
 ance. But there is another quality of the engine of a sub- 
 tiler nature. It may be called sensitiveness. This qual- 
 ity depends not upon the size and strength of material, 
 but upon the " finish " and the nice adjustment of parts, 
 whereby friction is diminished. It enables us to deter- 
 mine the per cent, of discount that must be made, on the 
 indications of the steam gauge, in estimating the efficiency 
 or working power of the engine. 
 
 Now genius is that in the organization which corre- 
 sponds to this quality in the engine. It may be termed 
 organic quality. It is the finish of the brain, and by it 
 the mental powers are made responsive. It is great just 
 in proportion to the per cent, of organic power utilized. 
 Hence spontaneity is the one word that approaches near- 
 est to a synonym of genius. 
 
 Since genius results from a quality of the organism, we 
 see why it often seems to defy the organic law that size 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 measures power. Emerson is a puzzle to the phrenologists, 
 even with all the qualifications implied in their " caeteris 
 paribus." This fact, however, is no disparagement to the 
 science. Even astronomy, the oldest of sciences, must 
 recognize its insolvable problems. It cannot trace the 
 comet through its hyperbolic and parabolic orbits. So 
 mental science cannot solve the " mystery of genius." For 
 genius lies beyond the reach of science. It is a comet 
 whose orbit is the infinite parabola. 
 
 There are degrees of organic quality far above that 
 which the phrenologist marks "seven," and in these rare- 
 fied realms dwells genius. Nay, genius is the reigning 
 spirit of the realm itself. 
 
 It should be a pleasing thought to the great mass of man- 
 kind, that the most glorious achievements of the race, the 
 aggregate of which constitutes most that we prize in his- 
 tory, have not been the products of what men term genius. 
 But talent, with toiling brain and sweating brow, has 
 wrought the revolutions whose issues are the landmarks 
 of history. ' But this does not debase the glorious mission 
 of genius. Had it not been for genius, the great problems 
 that talent has solved, would never have been formulated. 
 
 Let the young man, whether he has talent or genius, be 
 content to labor in his own sphere, and let his motto be — 
 
 " Seize thi9 very minute, 
 W T hat you can do, or dream you can, begin it. 
 Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. 
 Only engage, and then the mind grows heated, — 
 Begin, and then the work will be completed." 
 
COURAGE 
 TO MEET LIFE'S DUTIES. 
 
 •— ^ UM AN life is fraught with duties. The 
 $ fact of existence imposes them upon 
 every one. There is no hour of our lives 
 that does not hold a note against us. 
 ' Every moment is a creditor. Our lives 
 and what they signify are so woven into 
 the web of universal being that there is 
 never a moment of release. 
 
 But by far the larger portion of life's 
 duties lie along the soul's path of ag- 
 gressive movement, and require some- 
 thing of courage to meet them. 
 
 Courage is that quality of the soul 
 which makes it fearless of consequences in the presence of 
 opposition. With this definition, courage becomes an ele- 
 ment in the performance of every duty of life, for the 
 human soul is confronted by no duty which is not armed. 
 Every duty demands an aggressive act, and hence courage — 
 and he who shrinks from a duty is a coward. The duties 
 of life consist in the aggregate of all the acts toward which 
 the sense of right, of honor, and of self respect impel us. 
 
318 OUR HOME. 
 
 Life is the arena of many forms of courage, as many as 
 there are possible lines of human action. There is physi- 
 cal courage, which dares to meet and overcome physical 
 opposition. It is that which makes us willing to take the 
 possible consequences of the physical danger, in the accom- 
 plishment of an effort. This form of courage is by no 
 means low. It is true that it is the form of courage which 
 defends the cub of the wild beast, and which belongs to 
 that department of man's nature which he possesses in 
 common with the brute creation, yet without it all the 
 higher powers of man would be helpless prisoners in the 
 hands of circumstances. We would not exalt physical 
 courage to that position which we would assign to reason, 
 and yet we must regard it as one of the noble attributes of 
 man. Washington's integrity and honor and patriotism 
 might have existed in vain, for without physical courage 
 they could never have made a nation grand. The early 
 Christians might have died from the very excess of their 
 joy, but without the physical courage that scorns the flame 
 there would never have been a martyr. 
 
 But there are higher forms of courage. To be a martyr 
 one must have something more than the courage to meet a 
 high degree of temperature. He must have the courage to 
 think the unthought and speak the unspoken, and not 
 only to think and speak thus, but to do it amid the jeers 
 of hatred and the hisses of calumny. Without this form 
 of courage no triumphant vessel would to-day move upon 
 
COURAGE TO MEET LIFE'S DUTIES. 319 
 
 the waters, no engine would jar the earth with its iron 
 hoofs, no magic wires would belt the globe with zones of 
 love. 
 
 History would be unstained with blood, and the simple 
 record would read as sweetly as the story of a maiden's 
 life ; and yet out of the rayless midnight of that history 
 would rise no star. The darkness of the past has been 
 illumed by the fagot fires kindled at the feet of courage. 
 No grand libraries would adorn our cities, had not moral 
 courage dared to pen its own doom. 
 
 Every great book in history was born amid the death 
 throes of its heroic author. 
 
 The steps of the world's progress have been over the red 
 altars of human sacrifice. 
 
 Physical, intellectual, and moral courage have been the 
 grand leaders in the ceaseless conquest of thought. God 
 bless the martyrs to science and religion ! bless those 
 whose pale, thoughtful brows have pressed through weary 
 days and lingering nights against the bars of prison win- 
 dows ! 
 
 It is often said that the age of heroism is past, since, as it 
 is claimed, there is no longer any demand for great displays 
 of courage. The inventor is no longer pointed at with 
 scorn, nor accused of too intimate association with the devil. 
 
 The authors of new thought are not now doomed to 
 starvation. But notwithstanding all this there never was 
 a period in the history of the world when life demanded bo 
 
320 OUR HOME. 
 
 much of courage as to-day. The most dastardly form of 
 cowardice is that which makes us afraid to be ourselves. 
 
 The highest need of human society to-day is a bold and 
 fearless spirit of individuality. A thousand years ago one 
 could be conservative and not fall behind the race. But 
 now, while humanity rides on steam and lightning, one 
 cannot afford to imitate the clumsy gait of those who went 
 through life on foot. 
 
 With the momentum of six thousand years behind him, 
 man is now rushing with terrific speed toward the goal of 
 his destiny. He started as a long train starts from its sta- 
 tion, with snail pace and amid the tolling bells of dying 
 martyrs. One did not need then to have a high degree of 
 individuality. He could keep with the race while he re- 
 mained almost at rest. There was little demand then for 
 this form of courage, for every one was like every other, 
 and individuality was an attribute of the nation rather 
 than of the man. Then the individual man was a part of 
 the mass with no visible line of demarcation between, but 
 now he is a detached fragment, and must maintain his 
 own identity and assert his own individuality by a cease- 
 less act of courage, or be hurled as refuse into the world's 
 intellectual and moral sewer. 
 
 No age of human history has offered such a grand re- 
 ward to courage as the present. In politics and religion 
 we see the disgusting cowardice that makes men slaves to 
 base schemes and cunning tyranny. 
 
COURAGE TO MEET LIFE'S DUTIES. 321 
 
 There are few men who dare to think for themselves ; 
 they must see what the political paper or the minister says 
 before they have the courage to say what they believe. 
 Few ever consider what a powerful factor in life's pro- 
 gramme is moral courage. Let the young man learn to think 
 for himself. The feeblest thought that was ever born of a 
 human brain, if it be the unrestricted product of that 
 brain and comes forth unfettered by fear of nonconformity, 
 is a grander thing than the proudest creation of genius, 
 if that creation be shaped in trusting subservience to man. 
 
 One courageous thought is worth more than volumes of 
 prostituted genius. Originality is not a peculiarity of 
 great minds. The smallest minds may become wonder- 
 fully original simply through courage, by daring to ques- 
 tion that which they read and hear. Of course the disa- 
 greeable habit of egotism is not to be encouraged. One 
 should presume himself ignorant of all things and then 
 dare to question all things. 
 
 Authority should not be disregarded, and yet it should 
 be taken as affording merely a presumption, and not a 
 demonstration. The truths that fall within the ken of 
 human vision are few. All truths cannot be seen even by 
 the most gifted. The spider sees many things that the 
 eagle overlooks. As much depends upon the attitude of 
 the eye as upon its power, and there are little truths and 
 certain aspects of great truths which must, from their na- 
 ture, be discerned by little minds alone. It is cowardice 
 21 
 
322 OUR HOME. 
 
 to believe or disbelieve because Plato says so. The first 
 
 i upturn of genius is the hold daring with which it dis- 
 putes the fables of the nursery. We would not, however, 
 have it understood by young men that the disagreeable 
 and unmannerly habit of disputing for the sake of disput- 
 ing is in any way a symptom of greatness. 
 
 We have used the word dispute in a broader sense, that 
 in which it means to question why, to weigh the probabili- 
 ties, to demand consistency, and to doubt, if need be. The 
 ( i\ ilization of the nineteenth century was born of doubts 
 and questions, whose answers have been hisses. Emerson 
 says: "Have courage not to adopt another's courage." 
 
 That certainly means much. It means that we should 
 stand upon our own individuality, and dare to respond to 
 our own name in the roll call of life. 
 
 Courage gives a man a kind of magic control over every- 
 thing in nature. It actually strengthens the muscles of 
 the body. 
 
 The courageous man can lift a heavier weight, other 
 things being equal, than the timid man; he can do more 
 work in the same time and with less exhaustion. 
 
 Courage adds to one's peace of mind. The timid man 
 is never at peace. To him life's duties assume the form 
 of living, malicious intelligence, whose only desire seems 
 to be to defeat his efforts and cause him pain. 
 
 Fear weakens every fiber of our being, physical, intel- 
 lectual, and moral ; which, in effect, is the same as 
 
THE IMPORTANT STEP. 
 
 |N the history of every one there comes a time 
 when an important step must be taken and a 
 momentous question decided. The period in 
 which this step is taken is a most critical one, 
 3 one fraught with the mightiest consequences 
 for weal or woe. It holds the destiny of hu- 
 man life. An error here cannot be corrected. 
 A happy decision is a fortune to which 
 nothing on earth can be compared. 
 
 It is the custom to speak lightly on this subject, and to 
 consider the most awful issue of life as a fit occasion for 
 mirth and idle jest. There can be no doubt that this cus- 
 tom lies at the root of a large percentage of the miseries 
 that mar the happiness of the race. 
 
 So long as young boys and girls are allowed to trifle 
 with each other's affections, as if that were their highest 
 use, the world will be the theater of untold sorrow. It is 
 true that the love element will not bear to be reduced to 
 the standard of a commercial transaction. It must have 
 the liberty to spread its wings in the atmosphere of its own 
 divine romance. We must not take away the poetry which 
 is its vital breath. 
 
THE MISTAKE. 
 
THE IMPORTANT STEP. 325 
 
 And yet there are certain phases of it that may and 
 should be submitted to the tribunal of reason. We do not 
 believe that reason can in any sense furnish the motive 
 power of love. We even doubt if nature intended it to 
 play any part whatever in the programme. 
 
 We belong to that school which teaches that each and 
 every part of man's nature contains a principle of wisdom 
 in itself, and holds the elements of its own regulation. It 
 is not the natural office of reason to dictate the amount or 
 quality of food that we should take, and yet in the case of 
 dyspepsia it often becomes necessary that reason should 
 perform this function, for the natural instinct is then de- 
 throned and there is no longer any trustworthy guide, and 
 reason may in this case serve as a poor substitute. 
 
 The foregoing illustration contains the whole truth con- 
 cerning the relation of reason to the love principle. If the 
 delicate sentiments have not been outraged, and the tastes 
 are unvitiated, they will invariably lead to desirable re- 
 sults, when the proper conditions are supplied. But in 
 most cases this subtile instinct is but an imperfect guide, 
 because it has been perverted by improper action. 
 
 Under these circumstances it becomes necessary to sub- 
 mit the dyspeptic caprice of the unregulated love to the 
 sound judgment of reason. 
 
 It is said that " love is blind," but this fancy originated 
 in the observed phenomena of its perversion, and not of 
 its normal action. There is nothing that can see so well 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 as pure love. It is all eyes. No nicely adjusted lenses of 
 science can detect the motes which its naked eye discerns. 
 The young man or woman whose love intuitions are 
 unclouded will seldom make a mistake in the disposal of 
 the affections. 
 
 There is, however, a danger from one other source, which 
 we will presently mention. It is the theory of most par- 
 ents that girls and young ladies should never be permitted 
 to associate freely with gentlemen until they contemplate 
 'matrimony. There seems to be a sickly sentiment preva- 
 lent on this subject. The young lady must feel that there 
 was a kind of special providence in her love affair, and 
 that it would have been absolutely impossible for her to 
 love any one else. This diseased sentiment is common to 
 both sexes, but its exists for the most part in those who 
 Lave been excluded from the society of the other sex. 
 The fact that girls who have brothers and boys who have 
 sisters always make the wisest matrimonial selections, is 
 one that bears significantly on this subject. The lady who 
 has never been permitted to associate with gentlemen, and 
 who has no brothers, is very likely to make a mistake in 
 the bestowal of her affections. The conjugal choice is 
 made through an instinct that is attracted by the con- 
 genial, and repelled by the uncongenial. But there is, 
 however, a faint attraction between the sexes even when 
 the parties are not conjugally adapted, and if the young 
 lady has never had an opportunity to compare this faint 
 
THE IMPORTANT STEP. 327 
 
 attraction, which she may have felt, with stronger ones, she 
 will be very apt to misinterpret its significance, and regard 
 this slight attraction as a positive impulse of her nature. 
 This, then, is the source of danger. It is the fact that 
 nature seldom permits an absolute repulsion between ladies 
 and gentlemen, even between those who are ill adapted as 
 conjugal partners, but simply a weakening of the attraction. 
 
 Hence it becomes necessary in order to rightly interpret 
 our impulses that we should have the opportunity to com- 
 pare them. 
 
 If nature had sharply drawn the lines of attraction and 
 repulsion between the compatible and the incompatible, 
 there could be no such thing as a matrimonial mistake. 
 But since she prefers to suggest, by a weakened attraction, 
 rather than to command by a positive repulsion, it requires 
 a little acuteness to understand her suggestions. 
 
 It is a fact proved from every realm of natural history 
 that it is the female's rightful function to make the matri- 
 monial selection. The lioness accepts her mate only after 
 ample opportunities for comparison and choice. In this, 
 as in many other respects, the higher intelligence may 
 learn a lesson from the lower. The young lady should 
 have the opportunity of making her selection from a wide 
 circle of gentlemen friends, otherwise she cannot so easily 
 distinguish the false from the true. 
 
 The highest possible compliment that can be paid to a 
 young man is to be " singled out " by the divine instinct 
 
328 OUR HOME. 
 
 of a pure maiden who has been the idol of her brothers, 
 and who through her early years played with the little 
 boys of her acquaintance. 
 
 We are not by any means advocating that fatal vice 
 known as flirting. A flirt is one who purposely wins, or 
 tries to win, the affections of the other sex with no serious 
 intention, or simply for sport, and the wicked pleasure 
 that some experience in being able to pain another's heart. 
 Perhaps more hearts are won by cunning coquettes for the 
 ruthless purpose of seeing them bleed when cast aside 
 than for any other purpose. 
 
 We do not hesitate to express our firm belief that the 
 
 Is of flirtation are more widespread and disastrous in 
 their consequences than those of intemperance. They 
 blight the tenderest sentiments as the frost blights the 
 buds. They freeze the holiest emotions of the soul, and 
 leave the heart a barren waste. Like the cornfield whose 
 fences have been burned away, they leave the heart open 
 to the devouring herds of vice. 
 
 But young ladies and gentlemen may associate without 
 flirtation. There is nothing better for a young man than 
 to associate as a friend with a pure-minded young lady, 
 and the benefit is equally great to the young lady. 
 
 When love begins in friendship it rarely makes a mis- 
 take. Love should never be contemplated between par- 
 ties who cannot first be firm friends. But such exclusive 
 association is not at all necessary. It is, perhaps, as well 
 
THE IMPORTANT STEP. 329 
 
 that the young man or woman should have a circle of 
 friends and acquaintances made up of both sexes. In this 
 case, if the early training has been what it should have been, 
 and the natural and pure impulses of the child have not 
 been interfered with, there will seldom be a need of any 
 other form of association. 
 
 One of the worst things a parent can do is to shame a 
 little girl because she is inclined to play with little boys. 
 She should be taught to feel that there is nothing wrong 
 or unladylike in such conduct. So the boy should not be 
 teased by his parents or older brothers and sisters because 
 he smiles upon a little girl, or manifests a preference for 
 her society. Such preferences, of course, should not be 
 strong, since they would then be unnatural and would in- 
 dicate precocity, which should be dreaded as among the 
 worst calamities to which childhood is subject. 
 
 Young ladies may allow themselves to be frequently es- 
 corted by gentlemen, but should not permit the exclusive at- 
 tention of any particular one unless from the divine motive 
 of pure affection, which alone can sanctify such association. 
 
 The best girls, the best sweethearts, the' best wives, and 
 the best mothers are those who have been the intimate but 
 innocent associates of young men. 
 
 But so long as so many, especially of young ladies, have 
 not been permitted to associate with the other sex, and 
 still more have, by flirtations, so vitiated their intui- 
 tive perceptions of congeniality that these are no longer 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 safe guides, it is, perhaps, as well to give some advice in 
 regard to those cases in which it becomes necessary to sub- 
 stitute reason in place of instinct. 
 
 In the first place, it is necessary to ascertain what direc- 
 tion, under the given ciivnmstances, instinct would take if 
 it were in a healthy state, or if it were to act under more 
 favorable conditions. 
 
 Its action is as strictly subject to law as that of gravita- 
 tion and may be studied with the most satisfactory results. 
 Love's preferences are not unreasonable. The tall, spare 
 dark-eyed, young man does not single out the plump, 
 blonde, blue-eyed maiden without a cause. 
 
 The rosy cheeked brunette, with face and shoulders 
 shaped like her father's, does not toss her raven locks invit- 
 ingly to the blue-eyed, fair-skinned, short, stout and san- 
 guine young man, from any mere whim of lawless caprice. 
 The hand that guides the stars is not more unswerving 
 than the law of sexual preferences. Nor is this law hid- 
 den and inscrutable. It lies upon the surface and may be 
 easily discovered and formulated. 
 
 Briefly stated, it is simply the law by which individual 
 eccentricities are prevented from coming under the law of 
 entailment, or more properly, by which the law of entail- 
 ment is made to neutralize them. Without this provision, 
 eccentricities would perpetually accumulate and reinforce 
 themselves until all the affinities of the race would be lost 
 in unapproachable differences. 
 
THE IMPORTANT STEP. 331 
 
 Just in so far as one departs from symmetry in his own 
 physical or mental make up, this law causes him to prefer 
 in the other sex, those opposite peculiarities which will 
 counterbalance his own, and which, when blended, and 
 subjected to the law of heredity, re-establishes the lost 
 symmetry. Each sex desires in the other the complement 
 of its own eccentricities. There is a neutral point where 
 each desires its own likeness. This point is absolute sym- 
 metry and perfection. It corresponds to the neutral point 
 of a magnet. On either side of this point like eccentrici- 
 ties repel, and unlike attract. 
 
 If a human being could be found perfect and symmetri- 
 cal in all respects, that person would be drawn toward one 
 of the other sex exactly like himself. This law of sexual 
 preference would in his case be entirely suspended, as 
 there would be nothing for it to do. 
 
 He would be left to act in accordance with another law, 
 which is antagonistic to that of sexual preferences. It is 
 that by which we are drawn toward those possessing the 
 same peculiarities as ourselves. 
 
 These two tendencies, though antagonistic, are not in- 
 consistent. The one acts between the sexes, the other 
 between those of the same sex. In the case of perfect 
 symmetry which we have supposed, the latter law would 
 act even between persons of opposite sexes. 
 
 Human eccentricities may be conceived as arcs of circles 
 circumscribed about the point of absolute perfection. The 
 
332 OUR HOME. 
 
 field of this sexual law lies within these circles, and the 
 strongest affinity is that between corresponding arcs which 
 would be joined by a line passing through the center. 
 
 Having discovered the law then, all that is necessary in 
 order to make application of it when our instinctive per- 
 ception of conjugal adaptation becomes untrustworthy, is 
 simply to ascertain our own peculiarities, excesses and de- 
 ficiencies, and match them with opposite ones in the other 
 sex. 
 
 There is a limit, however, to the degree of difference 
 that is permissible. It should never be so great that each 
 cannot sympathize with the other, and take an interest in 
 those things which interest the other. The lady who is 
 unusually refined will naturally be attracted by a man not 
 over refined, but somewhat gruff, and she will often be 
 proud of his deep voice and uncombed hair. Yet coarse- 
 ness and vulgarity she cannot sympathize with, and should 
 never seek that degree of difference. One who is musical 
 need not select one who cannot distinguish one tune from 
 another; but the one should be sufficiently endowed, at 
 least, to appreciate the superiority of the other. 
 
 It is not so necessary that there should be a diversity 
 in respect to talent, as in respect to character and disposi- 
 tion. The talents, tastes and proficiencies may be in the 
 same general line in both parties, but all physical peculiar- 
 ities and all eccentricities of disposition should be consci- 
 entiously submitted to the law of sexual preference. 
 
THE IMPORTANT STEP. 333 
 
 But a right matrimonial selection is not all that is nec- 
 essary. The preservation of love is the finest of the fine 
 arts. To win a heart is within the capacity of most men, 
 but to keep it lies within the power of few. He who shall 
 discover the magic secret of preserving love, and shall in- 
 duce the world to adopt it, shall confer the grandest bless- 
 ing ever yet conferred by mortal. He shall deserve a 
 prouder fame than ever draped a funeral car, or marched 
 beneath a nation's drooping banners. Humanity shall 
 write his name close beside that winch is written upon the 
 universal heart. 
 
 This tribute will not seem overwrought to those who 
 understand and realize how much of human sin is traceable 
 to the absence of love in parentage. The world can never 
 know how large a part of its idiotic, its intellectually and 
 morally deformed, were the unwelcome offspring of un- 
 loved and unloving mothers. 
 
 It cannot be that love was intended only for life's rosy 
 dawn, that its first thrill is its death throe. Could God so 
 mock the brightest and sweetest hopes of earth as to or- 
 dain that love should grow cold and vanish like a summer 
 dream while yet the fragrance of the orange blossoms lin- 
 gers, and the bridal vow still trembles on the unkissed lips? 
 Is it true that love is but the brilliant rainbow that spans 
 the storm wrapt arch of life, and trembles for a moment 
 through the silver mist of human tears, then fades forever 
 while we gaze ? 
 
334 OUB HOME, 
 
 We cannot, will not, believe that God has made the hu- 
 man heart to single out this one gay hour from all the 
 hours of life, as the brightest star in all the firmament of 
 human joys, while yet that star is but a meteor which darts 
 a moment, flame-winged and glorious, then sinks and falls, 
 consumed by its own breath, leaving behind its brilliant 
 train a darkened path forever. Ah no! the very law of 
 heredity demands the preservation of love. Nature pun- 
 ishes its withdrawal with intellectual and moral idiocy. 
 
 The magic secret of which we spoke lies not in the 
 means of preserving love, but in securing the world's con- 
 sent to use the means that lie within its reach. There is 
 no secret in the means. 
 
 They are contained in the formulated expression of a 
 well # known law that love cannot live unless its physical 
 phase is entirely and completely subjected to its spiritual. 
 
 Spiritual love lives by its own right, but the physical 
 lives only by lease of the spiritual. They can live together 
 only on one changeless and eternal condition, and that 
 condition is the perfect supremacy of the spiritual over 
 the physical. This then is all that is necessary to the pres- 
 ervation of wedded love. When this condition is reversed 
 the spiritual phase soon dies altogether, and at last even 
 the physical itself, and two hearts that once beat together 
 are severed past reuniting. 
 
 Tis passing strange that the world so stubbornly re- 
 el to profit by its own experience. Every untried ship 
 
THE IMPORTANT STEP. 335 
 
 that sails so proudly from the port with its "freight of 
 spirits twain " passes on every side a shivering wreck ; yet 
 they heed not the wailing cries from the perishing, but 
 sail straight onward to the fatal rock on which nature has 
 set the seal of her deepest dam nation. 
 
 We have pointed out the divine means by which alone 
 love can live. Try it, O man ! O woman ! and be blessed. 
 Try it by all the holy visions of thy hopeful youth. Try it 
 by all the divine significance of heredity, by all that being 
 signifies, by all the prayers and tender yearnings at the 
 cradle side, by your hopes of heaven, try it. 
 
 Let woman remember that this doctrine appeals to her 
 with doubled force. It is through you, O woman, that the 
 world must heed it. Whatever other wrongs you may sub- 
 mit to, whatever rights may be denied you in the social 
 world, remember that in this matter you should proclaim 
 yourself the sovereign ruler, nor brook a question why. 
 Your voice may be silenced in the roaring mart, you may 
 be pushed aside by the mad crowd, but behind the silken 
 folds that hide the sanctity of wedded joy you are the 
 sovereign divinely ordained. By the necessities and consis- 
 tencies of your being, by every argument from the exhaust- 
 less realm of natural history, by every law of nature and 
 of God, you bear the badge of rightful sovereignty. 
 
 " Fair youth, too timid to lift your eyes 
 To the maiden with downcast look, 
 As you mingle the gold and brown of your curls 
 Together over a book ; 
 
336 OUR HOME. 
 
 A fluttering hope that she dare not name 
 
 Her trembling bosom heaves; 
 
 And your heart is thrilled, when your fingers meet, 
 
 As you softly turn the leaves. 
 
 '* Perchance you two will walk alone 
 Next year at some sweet day's close, 
 And your talk will fall to a tenderer tone, 
 As you liken her cheek to a rose ; 
 And then her face will flush and glow, 
 With a hopeful, happy red; 
 Outblushing all the flowers that grow 
 Anear in the garden-bed. 
 
 "If you plead for hope, she may bashful drop 
 Her head on your shoulder, low; 
 And you will be lovers and sweethearts then 
 As youths and maidens go: 
 Lovers and sweethearts, dreaming dreams, 
 And seeing visions that please, 
 With never a thought that life is made 
 Of great realities; 
 
 " That the cords of love must be strong as death 
 Which hold and keep a heart, 
 Not daisy-chains, that snap in the breeze, 
 Or break with their weight apart; 
 For the pretty colors of youth's fair morn 
 Fade out from the noonday sky; 
 And blushing loves in the roses born 
 Alas! with the roses die! 
 
 " But the love, that when youth's morn is past, 
 Still sweet and true survives, 
 Is the faith we need to lean upon 
 In the crises of our lives: 
 The love that shines in the eyes grown dim, 
 In the voice that trembles, speaks; 
 And sees the roses that a year ago 
 Withered and died in our cheeks; 
 
 " That sheds a halo round us still, 
 Of soft immortal light, 
 When we change youth's golden coronal 
 For a crown of silver white; 
 
THE IMPORTANT STEP. 
 
 337 
 
 A love for sickness and for health, 
 For rapture and for tears; 
 That will live for us, and bear with us 
 Through all our mortal years. 
 
 ' And such there is; there are lovers here, 
 On the brink of the grave that stand, 
 Who shall cross to the hills beyond, and walk 
 Forever hand in hand ! 
 
 Pray, youth and maid, that your end be theirs, 
 Who are joined no more to part; 
 For death comes not to the living soul, 
 Nor age to the loving heart! " 
 
 22 
 
LEAVING HOME. 
 
 VERY one must leave his home. The young 
 eaglet cannot forever nestle beneath the pro- 
 tecting wing of its mother. It is a law of 
 life itself that we cannot always stay at 
 home. If the children were to remain at 
 home through life, if this were the natural 
 order of things, the institution of home would 
 be impossible, for each home would grow 
 with the accumulating generations, till at 
 length it would outgrow the boundaries that 
 must define a home, and the institution would be lost in 
 general society. To avert this disaster nature has ar- 
 ranged that the child shall leave his home when he has be- 
 come competent to care for himself, and should organize 
 another home. Thus each generation repeats the pro- 
 gramme of the preceding. 
 
 The proper function of the home is to serve as the nur- 
 sery of the race, to protect the young germs of manhood 
 and womanhood till they have become sufficiently strong 
 to compel society and the world to yield them the required 
 physical and mental sustenance. And yet this metaphor 
 
LEAVING HOME. 339 
 
 hardly serves our purpose, since the child does not leave 
 his home to enter into the great tide of the world and be- 
 come a floating speck on the turbulent surface of society, 
 but, like the young tree, he is simply transplanted from 
 the nursery to become the fruitful source of another nur- 
 sery. There is no natural requirement of life that is not 
 preceded by a desire and impulse in that direction. Ac- 
 cordingly the young man, as he approaches the age of ma- 
 turity, begins to feel the gentle stimulus of a curious 
 enterprise urging him to look beyond the walls of the old 
 home out into the great world. He hears the distant hum 
 of the great city, he feels the electric throb of the rushing 
 train, and longs to mingle in the ceaseless tumult of life, — 
 
 In the strife of brain and pen, 
 
 'Mid the rumble of the presses 
 Where they measure men with men. 
 
 Under the impulse of this feeling, he leaves the old 
 home, but not forever. No young man or woman ever 
 leaves home with the intention of abandoning it forever. 
 The dutiful child carries away the home with him. He is 
 himself a product of the home. Every feature of his char- 
 acter reflects the character of the home. As the tree re- 
 cords the character of the soil and climate, so the young 
 man carries ever with him the old home. Every mother 
 is carried into the city on the brow of her son. Her care, 
 her love, her examples, her prayers, are all written there. 
 The city knows the country in this way. It reads the 
 
MA OUR HOME. 
 
 history of the country on the brows of the farmer boys. 
 How careful, then, should parents be in regard to these 
 reports which they are sending into the cities. The little 
 borne t hiit nestles among the hills shall be published to the 
 world, and the silent influence of its daily life shall blend 
 with the surging paauonfl that drive the tide of human life 
 along the crowded streets. 
 
 Mother ! your life is not insignificant. It is not and 
 cannot be isolated from universal significance, for your 
 boy shall bear it into the great tide that never ebbs. The 
 story of the fireside is written upon the altars of great ca- 
 thedrals, in senate chambers, and in the busy mart. It is 
 inseribed in invi>il>le diameters upon the sides of steam- 
 boats and railway trains, and on the marble fronts of the 
 brilliant temples of trade. The great outward world of 
 commercial storm and sunshine, of laughter and weeping, 
 of honor and dishonor, draws its life from the home. It is 
 linked to the hearthstone by a thousand ties that run far 
 under the surface of society. The leaving of home is an 
 experience in one's life freighted with momentous conse- 
 quences. It is a fact in botany that the critical period in 
 the life of a plant is when it has consumed all the albumen 
 red up in the seed for its support, and is just beginning 
 to put forth its tender little rootlets into the outer soil, to 
 draw henceforth in independence its life from the earth's 
 great storehouse. So the critical and dangerous period of 
 -a child's life is when he has burst the environments of 
 
LEAVING HOME. 341 
 
 home, and steps out from the little quiet circle to earn his 
 first morsel of bread with his own hands, and to negotiate 
 independently with the great crafty world. This is the 
 period that tries the character and tests its genuineness. 
 If the young man withstands the shock that comes with 
 the first wild consciousness that he is in a city, and that 
 the currents and counter currents of life are dashing 
 in bewildering torrents at his feet, if amid the surges and 
 the clinging spray, he stands firmly anchored to the rock 
 of home-born principle, if he does not grow dizzy and mad 
 with the ceaseless roar and rumble, if he, in safety, passes 
 for the first time the brilliant fronts of illuminated hells, 
 and with mother's benediction on his lips, turns coldly 
 from the first alluring invitation of the tempter, he has 
 passed the fearful crisis of his life. We would not, of 
 course, contend that the only danger to this young man 
 from city influences comes with his first actual entrance 
 into the city, that he is never in danger after he has once 
 passed by a brilliantly lighted den of iniquity. 
 
 We simply mean that if the young man succeeds in 
 resisting the temptations that beset him during that period 
 in which he feels the elation of his independence, he has 
 passed the most critical period. This is the period in 
 which the young man's character is particularly suscepti- 
 ble to evil influences, and if he succeeds in establishing his 
 social relations in the city on the proper basis, and becomes 
 himself established as a permanent member of society, he 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 is comparatively safe. There is always a feeling of romance 
 which accompanies the young man on his first entrance 
 into the city. There is a poetry in the rhythmic vibrations 
 of the living mass. He feels himself a part of this mass, 
 and in a certain sense he feels that he is the mechanical 
 equivalent of its never ceasing motion. Under such cir- 
 cumstances one is peculiarly susceptible to social influences. 
 
 Those things which awaken the sense of the poetical and 
 the romantic are the most powerful in their influences over 
 one who is trying to veil the rural and take on the airs of 
 city life. Unfortunately for the race, the most poetical 
 and romantic in life is often that which is in some way 
 associated with profligacy and vice. Thousands of young 
 men of literary aspirations and brilliant talents, through 
 the glittering but deadly romance of Poe's life, and the 
 poetry of Byron's gilded vice, have gone out like stars 
 which the veil of the storm has hidden. 
 
 Hence the evil influences of the city which appeal most 
 strongly to the young country lad, suddenly transformed 
 into a poet through the inspiration of the great city, are 
 those which clothe themselves with the livery of beauty, 
 which sparkle with the gems of wit, and lull to sleep on 
 enticing couches with the drowsy strains of'tinkling music. 
 
 Were it not for that perverted principle in human nature 
 that sees poetry in vice, the leaving of home would not be 
 such a catastrophe to the young man. Parents should be 
 careful not to allow their children, except in cases of neces- 
 
LEAVING HOME. 343 
 
 sity, to leave home until their characters are so far estab- 
 lished as to be comparatively safe from the evil influences 
 that must surround them elsewhere. Young children are 
 never safe away from home. 
 
 There is no age in which a person can enter for the first 
 time into general society away from home with absolute 
 safety, yet the danger is particularly great to the young. 
 If a child is of a romantic turn of mind and enjoys the 
 reading of novels, his parents should be particularly solici- 
 tous concerning his welfare when he goes for the first time 
 into society. 
 
 Even a fondness for poetry, which would seem to be the 
 purest and most innocent affection of the mind, indicates 
 the presence of those characteristics which render one pe- 
 culiarly susceptible to the temptations of the great city. 
 The wisest precaution that a parent can take when his 
 child is about to leave home, is to arrange his social rela- 
 tions in advance for him. Arrangements can almost al- 
 ways be made for his introduction into those circles of 
 society where he may find desirable amusements, and at 
 the same time be surrounded by good and wholesome in- 
 fluences. 
 
 Probably the most frequent cause for which children 
 leave home earlier than they ought, is for the purpose of 
 attending school. The practice of sending young children 
 away to boarding schools is, however, not so common as 
 formerly, from the fact that the common schools are be- 
 
;U4 OUR HOME. 
 
 coming more efficient. Boys can now be fitted for college 
 in many of the free public schools, while they still remain 
 at home and under the supervision of their parents. 
 
 This is certainly better than sending them away. In- 
 deed, except in rare cases, the latter practice should be 
 abandoned altogether. There are several circumstances 
 that combine to render children at boarding school pecu- 
 liarly liable to danger. In the first place, they are usu- 
 ally at that age when they would be most easily led astray; 
 and, second, the occupation at school being of course 
 wholly mental, the body is left without sufficient exercise, 
 and, in consequence, the whole physical being feels a buoy- 
 ancy which is very dangerous unless under the guidance 
 and oversight of parents. Again, the stringent rules of 
 conduct at most boarding schools always have a tendency 
 to awaken the mischievous in boys and girls. 
 
 1 1 is a fact which has been proved by the experience of 
 every educational institution in which such rules exist, 
 that the tendency to violation is almost in direct ratio to 
 the stringency of the rules. Consider, for example, the 
 ordinary boarding school rules relative to the association 
 of the sexes. In many cases the young man might call 
 upon a lady school-mate with profit to both parties, if there 
 were no rules prohibiting such an association, but when a 
 young man calls clandestinely upon a young lady, the se- 
 cret sense of having violated rules whose authority they 
 are supposed to recognize often has a disastrous effect upon 
 
LEAVING HOME. 345 
 
 their whole moral nature. But whatever we may believe 
 concerning the propriety or impropriety of such rules, it 
 cannot alter the fact of their existence in almost every sem- 
 inary and boarding school. The rules may be the choice 
 of the smaller evil. On this subject, however, we have our 
 doubts, and yet we do not deny that there might be danger 
 without them. 
 
 Under the circumstances we think the wisest course for 
 parents is to secure the education of their children where 
 they can exercise a personal supervision over them. What- 
 ever may be the occasion for leaving home, whatever may 
 have been the character of the home, there comes to 
 every soul at that moment a pang of regret which scorns 
 the finest ministries of language. Earth has no more pa- 
 thetic scene than that divine tableau of youth's departure 
 from the old home where mother and child, beneath the 
 changing colors of joy and sorrow, stand folded in the final 
 embrace amid the silence of tears and kisses. That gush 
 of holy emotion serves a purpose in the economy of our 
 nature ; it is to bind the soul with cords of everlasting 
 remembrances to that firm anchor in the great deep of life, 
 the home of childhood. ' 
 
 " I never knew how well I loved 
 The little cot where I was born, 
 Until I stood beside the gate 
 One pleasant, early summer morn, 
 And listened to my mother's voice. 
 She spoke such words as mothers speak — 
 Of cheer and hope— and all the while 
 
346 
 
 OUR HOME. 
 
 The tear drops glistened on her cheek. 
 And soon she turned and plucked a rose 
 That grew beside the cottage door, 
 And, smiling, pinned it to my coat, 
 As she had often done before. 
 I went away: 'twas long ago, 
 Still ever, till my life shall close, 
 The dearest treasure I can know 
 Will be a faded little rose." 
 
MEMORIES OF HOME. 
 
 EAR to us still are the friendships we formed 
 at the public schools, and hard was the 
 breaking of those ties, yet we cherish no 
 such memories of our school-mates as we do 
 of home and mother. 
 
 If we have not already sundered the ties of 
 home, the time will come all too soon when 
 the silken cord must be severed. This 
 thought should make us eager to enjoy all 
 we can the sweet dream of childhood. If we 
 are making preparations for a new home 
 which the poetry of youth has painted with 
 brilliant colors, we should not forget that the 
 walls of that new home must be forever dec- 
 orated with the picture of the old one. You 
 may place the wide expanse of ocean between 
 the two homes, but memory will paint the 
 home of your childhood, and whatever you 
 may say or do, will persist in hanging the 
 picture on the walls of your parlor, your chamber, and 
 your library. We may make our new home all that wealth 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 and taste can produce, we may lavish upon it all the rich 
 accumulations of youth and manhood, but beside the costly 
 paintings that adorn the walls of its parlor, there must hang 
 that old picture. Do what you will, it must hang there 
 forever. If you take it down, an invisible hand rehangs 
 it. It is a magic picture, and it requires not the light of 
 day to see it. You can see it better in the hushed still- 
 ness of the night than in the light of day. If the associa- 
 tions of that old home have been unpleasant, if there is in 
 that picture a mother, who, in the little room you used to 
 occupy, sits weeping over your waywardness, with the 
 dark autographs of sorrow written across her brow, if 
 there is a sister with downcast look, a father sitting by the 
 ti reside with his head resting upon his hands, prematurely 
 old because you broke his heart, how will that picture 
 haitllt your guilty soul in the night, how will its sadness 
 embitter every cup of joy, and turn to wormwood every 
 pleasure. 
 
 You cannot ask that father's forgiveness, it is too late. 
 You cannot go to mother, whose loving hand might, per- 
 haps, put a veil over that hateful picture, or hang in its 
 place a more beautiful one. It is too late for this, for you 
 helped bring a coffin to that old home, long, long ago, and 
 be assured that coffin will be painted in one corner of the 
 picture. You can go to the old home, but the shed where 
 you played with your little sister will be torn down, the 
 house will be changed, everything will look strange except, 
 
MEMORIES OF HOME. 349 
 
 perhaps, the old orchard. But this will revive no pleasant 
 memories, nothing but the sad day when you quarreled 
 about picking the apples, and struck your little brother, 
 who is now sleeping just back of the house in the garden 
 beside his mother. You can go out there and call his 
 name, but he will not hear you. You may strew with 
 flowers the grave of father, mother and brother ; you may 
 erect costly stones, but these will not atone. 
 
 No: do not wait for that sad day, but while mother and 
 father are still alive, and your little brother is with you, 
 make home cheerful. Keep mother's forehead smooth, and 
 father's hair unsilvered just as long as you can. 
 
 If you cannot love mother and make her happy, you 
 cannot truly love and make happy the heart of any woman. 
 
 We exercise the greatest care in selecting the real pic- 
 tures with which we adorn our homes, and if we do not 
 afterwards like them, we can dispose of them and forget 
 them. Why should we not, then, be infinitely more care- 
 ful concerning the character of that picture on which we 
 shall be compelled to gaze through life? 
 
 Through the power of memory the influences of home 
 again become active in our lives. The peculiar circum- 
 stances of any particular portion of our lives after we have 
 left the old home, seldom produce lasting impressions upon 
 our minds. We are not likely to remember vividly our 
 experiences between the ages of thirty-five and forty, at 
 least, not in such a way that the remembrance exerts an 
 
800 OUR HOME. 
 
 influence over our lives and thoughts. But by a wise and 
 beneficent plan we are so constituted that the memories 
 of our early home, the memories of that period in which 
 our characters were shaped, shall be influential through 
 life. There seems to be a subtile and peculiar propriety in 
 this fact. 
 
 The ordinary influences of life leave a sufficiently deep 
 impression upon our characters as they pass without being 
 repeated, or, at least, not oftener than their periodical na- 
 ture may ensure. But here we find a special provision 
 made to meet a required exception. Just at that period 
 in our lives when the good and kindly influences of home 
 are supposed to mold into consistent form the chaotic ele- 
 ments of our character, a principle is introduced whereby 
 those influences are made to be self repeating through life. 
 The instrumentality through which this is effected is the 
 spirit of poetry which pervades the memory of these early 
 years. No other period of our lives so lends itself to the 
 play of our own imaginations. 
 
 There is nothing in life's experience that so quickly and 
 effectually awakens in the heart those better elements that 
 ally us " to angels and to God " as the sacred memories of 
 home. This fact constitutes a positive power in our lives, 
 and growing out of this fact is the highest duty of life, the 
 duty to make the character of our home such that its cher- 
 ished memories shall be a developing and gladdening influ- 
 ence through life. 
 
MEMORIES OF HOME. 351 
 
 " O memory, be sweet to me — 
 Take, take all else at will, 
 So tbou but leave me safe and sound, 
 Without a token my heart to wound, 
 The little house on the hill! 
 
 " Take all of best from east to weit, 
 So thou but leave me still 
 The chamber, where in the starry light 
 I used to lie awake at night 
 And list to the whip-poor-will. 
 
 " Take violet-bed, and rose-tree red, 
 And the purple flags by the mill, 
 The meadow gay, and the garden-ground, 
 But leave, Oh leave me safe and sound 
 The little house on the hill! 
 
 " The daisy-lane, and the dove's low plain 
 And the cuckoo's tender bill, 
 Take one and all, but leave the dreams 
 That turned the rafters to golden beams, 
 In the little house on the bill! 
 
 " The gables brown, they have tumbled down, 
 And dry is the brook by the mill; 
 The sheets I used with care to keep 
 Have wrapt my dead for the last long sleep, 
 In the valley, low and still. 
 
 u But, memory, be sweet to me, 
 And build the walls, at will, 
 Of the chamber where I used to mark, 
 So softly rippling over the dark, 
 The song of the whip-poor-will! 
 
 " Ah, memory, be sweet to me! 
 All other fountains chill ; 
 But leave that song so weird and wild, 
 Dear as its life to the heart of the child, 
 In the little house on the hill! " 
 
TRIALS OF HOME. 
 
 E shall consider in another chapter, under 
 the head of sorrow and its meaning, those 
 great sorrows which sometimes visit individ- 
 uals, but which are not universal. They 
 constitute the heroic treatment of the few 
 who languish in the silent and more terrible 
 wards of earth's great hospital. 
 
 But by the trials of home we mean those 
 thousand little annoyances of life whose 
 sphere of action is for the most part home. 
 In their individual capacity they are insignifi- 
 cant, and perhaps unworthy of notice, and 
 yet their aggregate significance is written in 
 dark and heavy lines on many a mother's brow. They are 
 the crosses from which none escape, the inevitable experi- 
 ences of every human being. Those who scorn them as 
 unworthy of notice do not understand their meaning. 
 
 If every human desire were adequate to its own immedi- 
 ate gratification, there would be no such thing as trials and 
 disappointments. But every want of humanity is sepa- 
 rated from its gratification by the length and breadth of an 
 effort, and the greater the want, the longer and broader the 
 
TRIALS OF HOME. 353 
 
 required effort. And it often happens that the effort is too 
 short to span the chasm. There is no system of measure- 
 ment by which we can adapt the effort to the intervening 
 chasm. Every effort of man is an experiment. It is like 
 building a light bridge on land, with which to span a 
 stream, the breadth of which we have not measured. 
 When we come to lay it across the stream it may be too 
 short. 
 
 Trials and disappointments for the most part owe their 
 origin to this fact, that human effort is found falling short 
 of its goal. 
 
 The path of life runs so crooked that we cannot see 
 around the curves. Then there are so many junctions that 
 the time tables are forever getting mixed up. 
 
 Under these circumstances life can never run smoothly. 
 There will be trials as long as humanity exists. 
 
 The mind desires ease, and only so much exercise as is 
 prompted by its own spontaneous impulse. When it is 
 required to step aside from the path of its own preferences 
 there is a spiritual resistance, and a tendency to chafe and 
 fret. These little tendencies and influences are what we 
 mean by the trials of home. 
 
 One has said, " It may not seem a great thing to have a 
 constantly nagging companion, or boots that always hurt 
 your corns, or linen that is never properly starched, or to 
 have to read crossed letters, or go to stupid parties, or 
 consult books without indexes, — but to the sufferer they 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 are very tangible oppressions, and in our short space of 
 working life not to be made light of." 
 
 No truer words were ever uttered. Who has not no- 
 ticed the almost absolute control which an uneasy boot 
 will sometimes assert over the whole mind ? 
 
 A sermon to-day may sound almost divine to us in a 
 pair of slippers, but yesterday, in a pair of new boots, we 
 should have regarded the same sermon as intolerably 
 stupid. 
 
 A star actor, if thrown suddenly into the presence of 
 his lady love, in a pair of overalls, will appear awkward in 
 his movements. 
 
 How fretful we sometimes feel when we are hungry. A 
 baked potato will produce such ■ change in us that we 
 hardly know ourselves. The toothache has been known 
 to transform in half an hour a saint into a sinner. How 
 quickly will music calm an angry child. 
 
 " The trifles of our daily lives, 
 The common things scarce worth recall, 
 Whereof no visible trace survives, 
 These are the mainsprings after all. 
 Destiny is not without thee, but within, 
 Thyself must make thyself." 
 
 All these facts only show what a powerful influence lit- 
 tle things may have over us. Our lives are made up of 
 moments, and the character of each moment depends upon 
 the influences of that moment; and it requires but a very 
 small influence to change the character of a moment. 
 
TRIALS OF HOME. 355 
 
 All growth is but a perpetual conquest over opposing 
 forces. There can be no growth, physical, intellectual, or 
 spiritual, except through the resistance to that element in 
 which it grows. It is not necessary, however, that these 
 conquests should come as the issue of great efforts or over- 
 whelming sorrows. The triumphs of life are those which 
 we win over self, and these are won on little battle fields ; 
 in the kitchen, in the nursery, at the breakfast table, on 
 Mondays at the wash-tub, in the stable with a fractious, 
 exasperating horse, in the field with the cattle, or amid the 
 little vexations and annoyances of every day; as the 
 breachy sheep, the broken mowing machine, or the disap- 
 pointment of a rainy day. 
 
 It is by trifles like these that human souls are tested. 
 
 In overlooking these little trials, we overlook a very 
 important principle along with them. It is that principle 
 which distinguishes the effects of little sorrows from those 
 of great ones. Simultaneously with the great sorrows 
 there is developed in the soul a power of heroic endurance. 
 Most of us have experienced at least one great stroke of 
 grief, one which we had contemplated with such a shrink- 
 ing that we believed it would be impossible for us to stand 
 up beneath its weight ; but when the blow came we were 
 surprised at our own heroic calmness. This experience 
 will always be found to accompany a great sorrow, and 
 serve in part as a compensation. This arises from the 
 sense of the inevitable which always accompanies a great 
 
356 OUR HOME. 
 
 stroke. There conies over every one in the moment of 
 utter despair u feeling that approaches to satisfaction, and 
 BO Strong i> this tendency in some that when the despair 
 has been found to be groundless, there has actually come 
 with the first instant of relief a wish that it might have 
 been otherwise, that they might have seen the worst. 
 
 The testimony of Du Chaillu concerning his feelings 
 when he had been stricken down by a lion confirms the 
 
 -tence of this principle in human nature. He expresses 
 his feelings as those of perfect satisfaction and resignation 
 to his fate. Edgar A. Poe, with his almost divine intuition, 
 makes one of the characters in his " Descent into the Mael- 
 strom " experience something of this same feeling. 
 
 These feelings of course are but momentary flashes of 
 insanity, but they show that God has implanted in us an 
 instinctive satisfaction with the inevitable, however deeply 
 it may involve our own souls in pain and sorrow. When 
 one refuses to be reconciled to a great bereavement, there 
 is still in his heart a secret feeling of rebellion. It may be 
 because he possesses this instinct in a less degree than 
 others, since all the instincts of human nature vary in dif- 
 ferent individuals; but in most cases it will be found that 
 his sorrow is superficial and does not take hold on the 
 depths of his nature. 
 
 In the little sorrows of life this principle is seldom mani- 
 fested. This is why small troubles weigh far more heavily 
 upon the heart in proportion to their magnitude than the 
 
TRIALS OF HOME. 357 
 
 great ones. We are of the opinion, however, that it was the 
 divine plan that this principle should manifest itself even 
 in the smallest sorrows and trials of life, but that through 
 constant rebellion the race have come to that condition in 
 which they do not experience it except in the emergency 
 of great sorrow or danger. 
 
 But however this may be, the cultivation of that instinct 
 in us can do no harm, and if we can so cultivate and 
 develop it that we shall feel a sense of acquiescence and 
 resignation in every little trial of our lives, till the gnat 
 and the mosquito shall seem to us to have rights equal to 
 our own, we have surely won a triumph that would become 
 an angel's crown. 
 
 This, then, is our advice to those who are weighed down 
 with the little trials of life : cultivate the instinct of resig- 
 nation, try to feel satisfied with every fate that befalls you. 
 This is not an impossible task. Your efforts will be re- 
 warded. It will become easier and easier for you to at- 
 tempt to do it, until at last your trials will become joys. 
 If you cannot feel that God ordained your trials, if you 
 cannot regard them as a part of the infinite plan, you must 
 certainly consider them as the just penalty for your own 
 transgressions. In either case you can reason yourself into 
 a feeling of satisfaction. 
 
 Little sorrows, like the great ones, are disciplinary in 
 their nature, and if the sufferer does not degenerate into a 
 fretful and irritable being, they will develop his spiritual 
 
358 OUR HOME. 
 
 health. If he keeps ever in mind that he suffers chiefly 
 because his soul is divinely receptive, that his very suffer- 
 ing but measures his spirit's capacity for joy, — his charac- 
 ter will in the end blossom forth and bear fruits all the 
 sweeter for the trials. 
 
 " What's the use of always fretting 
 At the trials we shall find 
 Ever strewn along our pathway ? 
 Travel on, and never mind. 
 
 "Travel onward, working, hoping, 
 Cast no lingering look behind 
 At the trials once encountered; 
 Look ahead, and never mind. 
 
 M What is past, is past forever; 
 Let all the fretting be resigned; 
 It will never help the matter — 
 Do your best, and never mind. 
 
 14 And if those who might befriend you, 
 Whom the ties of nature bind, 
 Should refuse to do their duty, 
 Look to heaven, and never mind. 
 
 " Friendly words are often spoken 
 Wkea the feelings are unkind; 
 Take them for their real value, 
 Pass them on, and never mind. 
 
 " Fate may threaten, clouds may lower, 
 Enemies may be combined ; 
 If your trust in God is steadfast, 
 He will help you,— never mind." 
 
SORROW AND ITS MEANING. 
 
 | HETHER sorrow should be regarded as pos- 
 sessing a rightful place in the economy of 
 being, or simply as an intruder, for whose 
 stealthy entrance into the halls of joy and 
 beauty man is wholly responsible, is a prob- 
 lem which many regard as too difficult for 
 solution by finite mind, and which it is 
 blasphemy to attempt to solve. 
 Yet we cannot help asking : Why the mighty wail of 
 anguish and pain that goes up unceasingly from the lips 
 of Nature ? Why does the rose conceal a thorn ? Why 
 blossoms the loveliest flower just where the deadly-night- 
 shade distills its poison dew upon its snowy petals? Why 
 are the heavens deaf to the cry of wounded innocence ? 
 Why are the fairest and the loveliest in the armies of the 
 just and good permitted to fall like withered roses before 
 the iron hail of treason's hosts ? Why has all that is 
 good and lovely in human history been bought with blood, 
 while virtue's victorious shout is preceded by the martyr's 
 shriek ? Can an agency so wide-spread and vast in its 
 relations as that of pain and suffering exist in nature, and 
 implicate no higher instrumentality than human folly? 
 
360 OUR 110 ME. 
 
 It may be said that, since all suffering comes from the 
 breach of natural law, and since God has given us the fac- 
 ulty of caution, by which we are enabled to guard against 
 danger and accidental suffering, it cannot be true that sor- 
 row and suffering are natural, and hence divinely sanc- 
 tioned, bllt, on the contrary, they must owe their origin 
 wholly to the voluntary action of man. 
 
 But God has given us no faculty by which we can pre- 
 dict an earthquake. He placed us upon the earth before 
 he had finished it, while yet his engines were roaring, and 
 his furnaces glowing, while the deadly sparks were still 
 living from his mighty anvil. 
 
 Now, in order that man should be wholly responsible for 
 pain and suffering, he should have faculties sufficiently 
 powerful to grasp and analyze the divine plan, so. that he 
 might anticipate and make provision for all possible 
 movements in the universe. The fact that man cannot 
 thus anticipate the changes of direction in the universal 
 movement, proves danger and pain and sorrow to be di- 
 vinely appointed* The ant cannot anticipate the move- 
 in* -iit of the foot that steps upon its little mound. 
 
 Is it not possible, after all, that history with all its crim- 
 son blots, with all its agony uttered and unuttered, with 
 all of that which we call evil, but which to God may be 
 but a necessary and momentary discord in the tuning of 
 being's mighty orchestra, — is it not possible that all this, 
 just as it is, constitutes a mighty whole, of whose sublime 
 
SORRO W AND ITS MEANING. • 361 
 
 and infinite meaning we catch as yet but a feeble hint? 
 Does not any other philosophy necessarily assign to the 
 hnman will the power to intercept at any desired point 
 the Divine plan ? Is not the highest and grandest philos- 
 ophy after all, that which lays the human will itself in the 
 hands of God, the only " Uncaused Cause," and acknowl- 
 edges the endorsement upon the parchment of human his- 
 tory, of him who holds in his volition the potentialities of 
 all history ? 
 
 Sorrow and pain when projected into the atmosphere of 
 divine and eternal significance may lose the superficial 
 qualities that we assign to them, and find their places in 
 the "eternal fitness of things." 
 
 Perhaps, if we could see creation in its entirety, and know 
 the inter-relations of its myriad parts, we should rejoice 
 over that which now causes us sorrow. To us, the grand- 
 eur of the ocean is marred by the sight of a wreck, but to 
 him who holds that ocean in the hollow of his hand, the 
 wreck, the pale lips and the despairing cry may be nec- 
 essary to the expression of a higher and grander meaning. 
 The toad sees evil and only evil in the crushing wheel of 
 the fire-engine as it flies on its errand of good. So we, in 
 our worm-like ignorance and isolation can see nothing but 
 evil in the engines of sorrow that pass over our souls, where 
 they must pass, since our souls lie across their path. 
 
 The universe is all of one purpose, " so compact " that if 
 we could know perfectly any nook or corner we should 
 
362 OUR HOME. 
 
 know all, for the awful secret of the Absolute is concealed 
 in every finite entity. If we could read all the meaning 
 there is in a single strain of music, we could translate the 
 infinite harmonies of the universe. Could we tell why an 
 atom of oxygen prefers an atom of potassium to one of gold 
 -hould know not only the secret of love's caprice, but 
 the essence of the Divine Fatherhood. 
 
 " Flower in the crannied wall, 
 I phuk you out of the crannies;— 
 Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
 It tiower, — but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is." 
 
 Human knowledge cannot reach the essence of things. 
 We cannot know our dearest friend only a few manifeeta- 
 
 is of him. The ulterior essence that makes all things a 
 unit, we can never know. We are like insects viewing the 
 motions of a machine. To them each wheel moves independ- 
 ently and from its own caprice. So we regard each move- 
 ment in the universe as separate and independent. The 
 belts and bars and gears by which each and every move- 
 
 it is linked with every other, lie beyond the horizon of 
 our vision. If we could but discern the inter-relations of 
 tilings, we might learn that the grandest event in human 
 
 ory is linked in sequential relation with the flutter of 
 an insect's wing, and that the annihilation of an atom and 
 a star would be equal catastrophes. Perchance we might 
 see, in the ineffable light of that awful vision, how po- 
 
SORRO W AND ITS MEANING. 363 
 
 tential joys unspeakable have been born in darkened cham- 
 bers; how every wreathed casket bears a universal min- 
 istry, and that, 
 
 " The brightest rainbows ever play 
 Above the fountains of our tears." 
 
 But sorrow has a more obvious ministry than that which 
 is discerned only by such generalization. If, then, sorrow 
 is a natural agency; that is, if we have been made capable 
 of sorrow, and then placed in a world of danger and disas- 
 ter where the causes of sorrow cannot be anticipated, 
 surely this sorrow and affliction must have an individual 
 ministry commensurate with its cost, or the wisdom of Him 
 who ordained it is implicated. We may rest assured that 
 sorrow serves some purpose in the economy of being, as 
 definite as that of magnetism and light. We cannot reach 
 the secret of its deepest meaning, and yet there seems 
 to be within us a spiritual instinct that seeks to justify its 
 existence and to find in it a ministry. 
 
 " The gods in bounty work up storms about us, 
 That give mankind occasion to exert 
 Their hidden strength, and throw out into practice 
 Virtues that shun the day, and lie concealed 
 In the smooth seasons and calms of life." 
 
 Pain and sorrow are wasting processes of the soul, just 
 as labor is a wasting process of the muscles. But who 
 does not know that this very waste is the only condition 
 under which a muscle can grow strong ? If you wish to 
 strengthen any muscle, the first thing to do is to weary 
 
364 OUR HO Mi:. 
 
 that muscle by labor. A muscle grows strong only in the 
 process of recuperation, the act of recovering a loss. It is 
 a universal law of nature that every loss is just a little 
 more than repaid. 
 
 Now sorrow is the labor of the spirit. It is the instinct- 
 struggle of the spirit against the effects of maladjust- 
 ment, and sustains to it precisely the same relation that 
 physical labor sustains to the muscle. Every adult soul 
 that has never known a pang of sorrow has long since 
 >ed to grow. 
 
 It is true that the soul does not require pain with that 
 degree of regularity with which the muscles require labor, 
 but it is simply because, through memory and reflection, 
 the influence is distributed. A single great stroke of sor- 
 row will often soften, subdue, and ripen a whole life, for, 
 since it is lived over and over again in the silent solitude 
 of thought, it becomes life-long in its ministry. Who has 
 not read this sacred ministry of sorrow on those brows of 
 >aintly triumph, — the thrones of peace? 
 
 We have not yet, it is true, caught the divine secret of 
 how justice is maintained in the unequal distribution of 
 human suffering. 
 
 We must, at once, and forever, abandon the idea that it 
 <in be found along the narrow line of individual merit. 
 The world has sought it there long and diligently, and 
 found it not. 
 
 One student is compelled by his instructors to practice 
 
SORRO W AND ITS MEANING. 365 
 
 more hours a day in a gymnasium than another. The 
 practice is irksome, and the other is allowed to sit with 
 folded arms in smiling complacency, while his companion 
 toils at the rope and bar. To this young toiler there 
 could be nothing more unjust, for, like most students, he 
 does not look forward to the effects of the discipline to 
 which he is subjected. And yet in the future years his 
 proud physique and glow of health beside his friend's 
 puny form and pale cheek, may prove that the injustice 
 was on the other side. There may not, however, be in- 
 justice in either case. 
 
 Perhaps the gymnasium is not the treatment best 
 adapted to the weak student. Perhaps his constitution is 
 such that he is incapable of developing a strong physique, 
 and, perhaps, he could more surely reach the height of his 
 physical capacity through the ministry of some gentler ex- 
 ercise. It is wisest to allow the physician under whose 
 superintendence he is placed to decide these questions. 
 Perhaps, again, these physicians may see in the stronger 
 student the germs of a possible ministry, whose fruition 
 will require the fullest development of all his physical 
 powers. It may be that the forces of creation have con- 
 spired to make him by nature a performer of great physical 
 deeds, a builder of bridges, and a leveler of mountains. 
 One, at sight of whose mighty achievements, his fellows 
 will bow in the willing acknowledgment of conscious in- 
 feriority. All these conditions and qualifications may 
 
366 OUR HOME. 
 
 have been discovered by those having charge of the two 
 stud. 
 
 Now let us suppose the students actually incapable of 
 perceiving the reason for the difference in treatment to 
 which they have been subjected. They cannot understand 
 that the purpose which nature intended them to serve in 
 the economy of being has any relation whatever to this 
 problem of justice which they are trying to solve. 
 
 Does not this illustration cover all phases of the great 
 problem of human sorrow? Are we not all in a vast gym- 
 nasium, under the superintendence of one who not only is 
 the architect of the gymnasium, but who has adapted its 
 every appliance to the requirements of our Spiritual mus- 
 cles? Every obstacle to our spiritual progress, every 
 temptation, even pang of sorrow, is a weight or a cross- 
 bar in that great gymnasium, and we in our iniinitesimal 
 knowledge and prescience can weigh only the justice or 
 injustice of apparent discrimination. We murmur as we 
 bend beneath the weight of grief, and bitterly complain as 
 we are made to revolve in agonizing contortions around 
 the cross-bar of adversity. Yet could our eyes be tem- 
 pered to the light of an universal sun, and we permitted 
 to pierce the starry vistas of infinite meaning, with one 
 glance through the lens of infinite intelligence, beneath 
 the burning focus of that lens how would the nebulous 
 haze burn from off the shining disk of this great problem, 
 ice. 
 
SORRO W AND ITS MEANING. 367 
 
 Perhaps the divinest ministry of bereavement and sorrow 
 is seen in the lofty moods that grow out of it, and that lift 
 the soul above the reach of its own discipline ; till it can 
 stand with face wreathed in the smile of peace, subdued 
 and tender and god-like, while with never a sigh it beholds 
 the waves of desolation sweep over its fondest hopes. Thou- 
 sands of souls have been educated in sorrow's school till 
 they were able to do this. Almost every one has experi- 
 enced certain exalted moods in which he has felt himself 
 above and beyond the reach of all outward conditions; and 
 clinging to the one fact of his existence and its inward re- 
 lations, he has felt that he could smile at every possible 
 catastrophe. • It is sorrow alone that gives us the capacity 
 for this the divinest of moods. How weak and useless are 
 those " pulpy souls M that never have known affliction ! Such 
 are the ones that cover their faces and flee from the scene 
 of suffering. They are the feeble characters that tremble 
 and fall when shaken by great emergencies. But who are 
 they that stand calmly and firmly against the fiercest charge 
 of calumny. It is they who know the meaning of midnight 
 watching and buried hope. It is they who have put the 
 cup of sorrow to their lips and held it there till they have 
 drained the bitter dregs. 
 
 " The grape must be crushed before 
 Can be gathered the glorious wine ; 
 So the poet's heart must be wrung to the core 
 Ere his song can be divine." 
 
 We cannot doubt that every pang, every disappointment, 
 
368 OUR HOME. 
 
 every blinding stroke of grief, holds in potentiality, a bless- 
 ing that in some way follows a law analogous to that phys- 
 ical law of recuperation by which wasting, wearying toil 
 ministers to muscular strength. The blessing may not 
 always be immediate and visible, it may not, indeed, always 
 be to our own seliish selves, but somewhere in eternity to 
 the sum of all being. It would be impious to attempt to 
 trace its divinely appointed course. It may require eternity 
 to solve the problem of a blighted hope. We are silent 
 when they ask us to point out the hidden blessing in war's 
 dread scourge; or when the scorpion lash of pestilence 
 smites the back of dying Memphis ; or when the brilliant 
 foot-lights with fiery fingers have caressed the oily scenery 
 and the public hall becomes a tomb for charred and un- 
 known corpses. We are staggered by the awful mystery 
 when the light-hearted girl steps from out the merry throng, 
 and reappears in sable drapery with a story on her brow. It 
 requires a quick ear to catch the secret from the frozen lips 
 of death, when the fair youth who but yesterday plucked 
 the wild roses to twine in golden hair, comes to-day to 
 those same woodland haunts to gather roses for love's 
 speechless tribute, that he may lay them on the pulseless 
 bosom of the maiden he adores. 
 
 But notwithstanding all this, we cannot resist the con- 
 viction, which comes to us with the force of an instinct, 
 that sorrow is a natural phenomenon and bears the en- 
 dorsement of the Divine hand. How else can we explain 
 
SORRO W AND ITS MEANING. 369 
 
 the philosophy of that instinctive acquiescence in the 
 inevitable, of which we have spoken in the preceding 
 chapter ? Why, when the shadow of the angel's wing falls 
 on the face of one we love, do we almost instinctively turn 
 to the physician to learn if no power could have saved ? 
 and why that sigh of relief when he assures us that the 
 result could not have been otherwise. The inevitableness 
 of a friend's death will partially reconcile us to our be- 
 reavement. When one knows that he must die, he is usually 
 calm and resigned, but he is wild while there is hope. Why 
 is this? Why does utter despair always gives birth to 
 calmness and resignation? Is it not a hint from the infalli- 
 ble book of human instinct, that whatever may be true of 
 moral accountability and free agency, it is not inconsistent 
 with a higher and grander. truth that, in the infinite alti- 
 tude of divine meaning, "Whatever is, is right?" We 
 cannot see the purpose that is subserved in the universal 
 economy by the poisonous plant, by thorn and sting, and 
 deadly fang, yet the highest philosophy assigns to them a 
 consistent meaning, even while it acknowledges that mean- 
 ing to be above and beyond the proudest effort of human 
 analysis. I cannot say that I ought not to suffer, till I am 
 able to analyze every relation of my being. This I can 
 never do. I cannot find in the great machine a single 
 gearing by which one wheel is connected with another. 
 
 " Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
 And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." 
 
370 OUR HOME. 
 
 Is it not possible, nay, probable, that the same great 
 principle in the universe which creates the deadly night- 
 shade, and arms the insect with a fatal gland, also arms 
 even ignorance with that which slays the objects of our 
 fondest love ? 
 
 The mother who bends over a little casket to leave her 
 triune gift of roses, tears, and kisses, upon lips that never 
 more will lisp her name, may yet perceive, in the light of a 
 higher revelation, that though the rose-wreathed casket 
 bears the ashes of her cherished hopes, it is also ministrant 
 to a need she knows not of. 
 
 Who knows of this inward life of ours ? 
 
 Of the pangs with which each joy is born ? 
 Who dreams of poison among the flowers, 
 
 Or sees the wound from the hidden thorn, 
 
 O'er which we smile when most forlorn ? 
 
 Who knows that the change from grave to gay 
 
 Was wrought by the deadly pain we bore, 
 As we lay the hopes of years away, 
 
 Like withered roses, to bloom no more 
 
 Upon life's desolated shore ? 
 
 Who knows, as we tread these careless ways, 
 That we think of our sainted dead the while, 
 
 That the heart grows sick, in summer days, 
 For a blessed mother's tender smile, 
 That held no taint of worldly guile ? 
 
 Who knows of the tremulous chords of love, 
 
 To the lightest touch that vibrate still, 
 As under her wing the stricken dove, 
 
 Unmurmuring folds — although it kill — 
 
 The cruel mark of the archer's skill ? 
 
THE WIDOW'S HOME. 
 
 WORK treating of home and the various 
 1 liases of the home-life, could not be con- 
 side red complete, were no chapter de- 
 voted to the widow's home. For the 
 widow's home finds its justification in the 
 normal and primitive constitution of 
 things, as proved by the undisputed facts 
 that marriage is an institution of nature, 
 and that no organic law demands the 
 simultaneous dissolution of husband and 
 wife. Indeed, such a coincidence is of re- 
 markably rare occurrence. 
 
 Widowhood, then, is an ordinance of 
 nature, and perhaps the strongest evi- 
 dence that sorrow holds a rightful place 
 in the universal economy is to be found 
 in this fact. 
 
 If, then, widowhood is inevitable, it 
 seems right that provision should be 
 made for its possible occurrence, at least, in so far as 
 occasional and wholesome contemplation can so dispose 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 our minds that the dark angel cannot come to us or 
 ours by absolute surprise. We do not mean by this 
 that husbands and wives should perpetually dwell upon 
 tin* possible catastrophe of each other's death. This 
 would be entirely unnatural. Indeed, nothing so surely 
 indicates a morbid condition of the whole being as a con- 
 stant tendency to dwell upon the possible death of our- 
 selves or our friends. It indicates a disordered state of 
 the nerves to be unable to sleep in consequence of a con- 
 stant dread of fire. And yet it is surely the duty of all to 
 make due provisions for such a catastrophe by way of fire- 
 escapes. So while we should not allow ourselves to be in 
 constant dread of bereavement, we should in our thought 
 and meditation frequently acknowledge to ourselves the 
 possibility of such an event, with an effort to realize that 
 which we acknowledge. In this way we may prepare our- 
 selves for almost any affliction, so that when the alarm 
 comes we may not be suffocated and bewildered in the 
 blinding smoke of our own grief. 
 
 But the liabilities to widowhood impose the duty of a 
 more substantial provision. This affliction falls most heavily 
 upon her who has leaned with the most childlike dependence 
 upon the support of her husband. It is, perhaps, natural 
 for woman to look to her husband for support and protec- 
 tion, but that complete surrender of her individuality which 
 makes her a mere household pet, is to be condemned, not 
 only as unnatural, but as a sin against herself and society. 
 
THE WIDOW'S HOME. 373 
 
 Those who wear the badge of widowhood with the most 
 heroic fortitude are those who, in the stern battle of life, 
 have stood abreast with their husbands, who have never 
 shirked the awful responsibility of womanhood, wifehood, 
 and motherhood. When the fearful summons came that 
 left them to fight alone, it found them with weapon in 
 hand. And it was then that the glory and majesty of their 
 womanhood shone through a veil of tears with a beauty 
 that was divine. It is not the bereavement alone that 
 lends sadness to the thoughts of widowhood, but it is the 
 fact of added responsibility. There are often young chil- 
 dren dependent upon their sorrowing mother, and no mat- 
 ter how nobly that mother may have performed her part 
 in the conflict of life, in the present conditions of society 
 there are few in whose homes would not be felt the sudden 
 interruption and suspension of the husband's business, 
 though it were preceded by years of industry and economy. 
 
 It requires something of a fortune, at least more than 
 most men possess, in order that the interest alone may be 
 sufficient to maintain the home, and to feed, clothe and 
 educate a family of children ; so that some form of re- 
 munerative labor often becomes necessary even for the 
 mother. And this adds to the sadness of the scene, for if 
 there is a scene on earth that is sad, it is that of grief 
 struggling in the toils of want. 
 
 But we would not be understood to mean that the 
 widow's home is always and necessarily the scene of want, 
 
874 OUR HOME, 
 
 for it is not always, by any means, that there is a family of 
 young children dependent on the mother's efforts for the 
 supply of all their varied needs. It is, perhaps, as often 
 that the children are able to support themselves and their 
 mother. Nor is the widow's home ever the abode of un- 
 mitigated sorrow. We cannot, it is true, from the very 
 nature of the case, eliminate sorrow from the widow's 
 home, yet God has so constituted the human heart that 
 even amid the darkest scenes of sorrow and affliction there 
 come to it hours of mirth and joy. And, perhaps, the 
 widow's home, where the necessary conditions of love and 
 confidence exist, is not less potent in its formative influ- 
 ences upon character, than those homes where sorrow has 
 never come. There is something beautiful as well as pa- 
 ne in the family scene where loving children recognize 
 mother as the head. The sons and daughters who come 
 from families of this kind are usually noble and generous. 
 They have learned to be unselfish not only from the heroic 
 discipline of their own lot, but from the tireless example 
 of a mother's denial and m It -sacrifice, qualities which be- 
 long emphatically to the widowed mother. 
 
 The angelic qualities of a mother's love never fully re- 
 veal themselves till the wand of sorrow touches her heart 
 and writes a story on her brow. 
 
 " Arise and all thy tasks fulfill, 
 
 And as thy day thy strength shall be; 
 Were there no power beyond the ill, 
 The ill could not have come to thee. 
 
THE WIDO W'S HOME. 
 
 375 
 
 " Though cloud and storm encompass thee 
 Be not afflicted nor afraid ; 
 Thou knowest the shadow could not be 
 Were there no sun beyond the shade. 
 
 " For thy beloved, dead and gone, 
 
 Let sweet, not bitter, tears be shed; 
 Nor ' open thy dark saying on 
 The harp,' as though thy faith were dead." 
 
HOMELESS ORPHANS. 
 
 TREATISE upon the home life would be in- 
 complete without, at least, some mention of 
 the homeless. We cannot exhaustively con- 
 sider any fact without also considering its 
 negative. 
 
 The word orphan is one of the saddest in 
 human language. It is a word at sound of 
 which the gayest hearts are sad. It brings 
 to our minds a lone wanderer who finds no 
 object on earth to evoke a smile. When the 
 child that has a happy home and loving parents imagines 
 himself deprived of them, he experiences an oppressive 
 feeling that may be likened to that of suffocation. It is 
 probable, however, that the actual suffering of the home- 
 less is far less than one would naturally suppose, for that 
 principle in us which tends to makes us satisfied with the 
 inevitable doubtless asserts itself here. 
 
 When we look upon the cripple who is obliged to sub- 
 stitute a wooden crutch for a leg, our hearts are moved to 
 pity, and we feel that in some way we owe him something. 
 We cannot feel at ease when we look upon him, while we 
 
HOMELESS ORPHANS. 377 
 
 ourselves enjoy the free use of our limbs. But the cripple 
 himself has no such feelings. He feels that the wooden 
 crutch is his other leg, and he in turn pities his unfor- 
 tunate neighbor who has lost both limbs. And so it is 
 with life. He who dwells in a palace pities him who 
 dwells in a cottage, and he in turn pities him who dwells 
 in a hovel. In the working of this principle may be dis- 
 cerned that law of compensation which underlies all hu- 
 man affairs. 
 
 But this fact does not justify selfishness nor allow us to 
 neglect the rights of the unfortunate. For in spite of all 
 compensatory tendencies the world is full of suffering. The 
 air is rent at noonday and at midnight with the wails of 
 sorrow and the shrieks of agony. What if every wave of 
 sound around the earth could reach our ears ! Think how 
 the stifled sob of sudden sorrow would blend with the mu- 
 sic where beauty moves to the pulses of the viol, and where 
 in the great orchestral movement of human life could be 
 found a place for the weird, discordant note of orphaned 
 anguish. How the thunderous discords of that mighty or- 
 chestra are reduced to harmony by the dullness of our ears ! 
 
 Pity is an element of human nature that, in many re- 
 spects must be considered as distinct from the disposition 
 to help. It is true that they both originate in the primi- 
 tive faculty of benevolence, but this faculty seems to have 
 these two closely related functions. The feverish and ex- 
 travagant desire for wealth that the indolent pauper expe- 
 
378 OUR HOME. 
 
 riences originates in the same faculty as the thrift and hon- 
 est effort of the industrious man, and yet these two products 
 are not equally meritorious. Pity in its ultimate analysis 
 is doubtless selfish. It is the pain that we experience on 
 witnessing pain in others. Of course its chief tendency is 
 in the direction of help, just as any pain leads ns to remove 
 the cause. Hut in the case of pity, the tendency does not 
 always produce this result. Indeed, it often produces an 
 opposite result, as when a lady through excess of pity flies 
 from the scene of suffering. After the close of a certain 
 battle, Florence Nightingale was called upon to witness 
 the most terrible suffering in the hospitals, and to yield 
 her tender ministrations to the shrieking and the dying* 
 She had under her charge several j T oung ladies as assist- 
 ants. As they approached the couch of one mortally 
 wounded, torn and mangled and writhing in the awful 
 throes of the death agony, these young ladies covered 
 their faces and fled from the place. The noble woman 
 with a majesty almost divine, with no agitation, no weak- 
 ening tears of pity, turned and rebuked them, and com- 
 manded them to return. Who of those ladies, think you, 
 possessed most of that god-like love that dares to do and 
 die for others? This act on the part of the young ladies, 
 however, was not a selfish one in the popular sense of the 
 word. They desired to aid the sufferers, they were there 
 for that purpose. They were noble and generous, but 
 y eould not match the great soul of Florence Nightin- 
 
HOMELESS ORPHANS. 379 
 
 gale, and in their comparative weakness they gave way to 
 pity. Neither was Florence Nightingale destitute of the 
 power to pity ; she was capable of deeper pity and more 
 copious tears of sympathy than her assistants, but she 
 crushed down her selfish pity, in order to give free scope 
 to the grander sentiment of help. She knew that pity's 
 tears could not heal those awful, gaping wounds, and that 
 the hour demanded a higher ministration than tender words 
 of sympathy. 
 
 But not alone in such an hour does the grandeur of hu- 
 man love display itself. The principle of benevolence is 
 represented by two classes, the pi tiers and the helpers. 
 The pitiers are represented by the sentimentalists, who 
 speak in touching generalities about the sufferings of hu- 
 manity ; the helpers, by the asylums and homes, the public 
 and private charities of the land. One class is represented 
 by words and tears, the other by the wordless energy that 
 feeds, clothes and protects. One orphans' asylum is worth 
 more than all the tears of pity ever shed. The grandest 
 ministration is that which gives with a heart too noble to 
 express its own pain. The divinest love is that which 
 builds its own monument, of brick and mortar, with dry 
 eyes and lion heart. 
 
 But how shall the homeless orphan profit by what we 
 have said on the subject of home and its advantages? 
 Surely, if he have no home, there can be no relations 
 between himself and that institution except negative 
 
880 OUR HOME. 
 
 relations. The first thing to do, then, is to seek some 
 place where he can eat and sleep, and this place he should 
 call home, even though it have no other characteristic of 
 home than that it affords him a secluded place in which to 
 eat his crust, and a protection from the dew and rain at 
 night. He should never change his quarters unless he 
 can change them for the better. This rule should be ob- 
 served as far as circumstances will permit. Perhaps the 
 poor reader into whose hands this book may chance to fall 
 may not understand the force of this advice. But when 
 he subjects it to the light even of that rude philosophy of 
 life which he has developed upon the street, we trust it 
 will appear plain to him. He should call the place where 
 lie eats and sleeps home, in order that his heart may not 
 lose that sacred word from its vocabulary. He should per- 
 sist in eating his meals and spending his nights in this one 
 place, in order that he may not lose that divinely born 
 home instinct in which the institution of home has origi- 
 nated. If you are a bootblack upon the street, with no 
 parents and no home that you can call your own, you must 
 surely have some place in which you sleep at night. This 
 you can call home, and it will soon come to be in some sense 
 a home to you. And if, by blacking boots, you can earn a 
 living, you can without doubt earn a little besides, and with 
 the saved nickels and dimes, that nobody supposes you 
 possess, you can buy good clothes, and thus appear to bet- 
 ter advantage on the street and in that society in which 
 
HOMELESS ORPHANS. 381 
 
 you move. In this world of unjust discriminations, fine 
 vestments are often mistaken for hearts, while real hearts 
 wrapt up in rags are often carelessly thrown away. So if 
 you have a good heart it is well to wrap it in as fine a 
 piece of cloth as you can afford. 
 
 There are few orphan boys or girls who cannot obtain 
 good situations, either in the city or in the country, where 
 they may be clothed and fed, and be allowed to attend 
 school, and to pay for such guardianship with moderate 
 labor, in the same condition as the children of the house- 
 hold. 
 
 It is no disgrace to be sent to an " orphans' home." Of 
 course such a home cannot be a perfect home, for it lacks 
 the elements of " the fireside " and parental love. But it 
 has enough of the essential elements to entitle it to the 
 name of home. If the semi-public life which is inevitable 
 is displeasing to the unfortunate one, let him remember 
 that in all institutions of the kind the merits and demerits 
 of the inmates are considered, and those who have proved 
 themselves most worthy are the first who are permitted to 
 avail themselves of the situations in private families that 
 are constantly presenting themselves. Officers are em- 
 ployed expressly to search out such situations. And an 
 orphans' home may be regarded as a kind of temporary ac- 
 commodation where orphans are provided for until their 
 applications for situations are successful. We believe that 
 the active, benevolent element of society, if properly re- 
 
382 OUR HOME. 
 
 minded of its duty, is capable of absorbing the entire ele- 
 ment of the world's orphaned ones. 
 
 " Only a newsboy, under the light 
 
 Of the lamp-post, plying his trade in vain: 
 Men are too busy to stop to-night, 
 
 Hurrying home through the sleet and rain. 
 Never since dark a paper sold ; 
 
 "Where shall he sleep, or how be fed ? 
 He thinks, as he shivers there in the cold, 
 
 While happy children are safe abed. 
 
 " Is it strange if he turns about 
 
 With angry words, then comes to blows, 
 When his little neighbor, just sold out, 
 
 Tossing his pennies, past him goes ? 
 1 Stop! ' — some one looks at him, sweet and mild, 
 
 And the voice that speaks is a tender one: 
 • You should not strike such a little child, 
 
 And you should not use such words, my son! ' 
 
 11 Is it his anger or his fear* 
 
 That have hushed his voice and stopped his arm? 
 'Don't tremble,' these are the words he hears; 
 
 * Do you think that I would do you harm ? ' 
 ' It isn't that,' and the band drops down; 
 
 ' 1 wouldn't care for kicks and blows; 
 But nobody ever called me son, 
 
 Because I'm nobody's child, I s'pose.' 
 
 " O men! as ye careless pass along, 
 
 Remember the love that has cared for you; 
 And blush for the awful shame and wrong 
 
 Of a world where such a thing could be true! 
 Think what the child at your knee had been 
 
 If thus on life's lonely billows tossed; 
 And who shall bear the weight of the sin, 
 
 If one of these ' little ones ' be lost! " 
 
HOMES OF THE POOR. 
 
 .A. 
 
 
 ISTORY records no great reforms, no rare 
 efforts of philanthropy and love, whose actors 
 have not felt the restraint of at least moderate 
 want. Out from the ten thousand unpainted 
 cottages that dot the land have stalked forth 
 the great thoughts and the mighty deeds. 
 
 Luxury is the concave lens which disperses 
 the rays of human energy, while poverty is 
 the convex lens which causes them to converge, often 
 bringing them to a powerful focus, and like the mirrors of 
 Archimedes burning the fleets of the enemy. 
 
 Let no young man despair because he is poor. As well 
 might the engine despair because the iron bands confine 
 the restless energy of the steam. The engineer computes 
 the resistance to physical force in what he terms foot- 
 pounds. So poverty is a term that simply designates the 
 resistance to the divine energies of a human soul. There 
 are two indispensable conditions to the development of 
 power in the engine ; first the application of heat, and 
 second the outward resistance to confine the force gener- 
 ated. So in the soul these same two conditions must exist ; 
 
884 our home. 
 
 \\w heat of a penrisi ent volition, of a dauntless purpose, 
 1 1 1 1 1 plied, and alao the outward resistance of cir- 
 
 cumstances to confine and concentrate the power thus 
 ed. 
 
 The gigantic power of the engine is obtained by confin- 
 ing those restless particles of steam which are struggling 
 for release, and which, if they do not soon obtain it, will 
 burst their iron bands asunder. 
 
 How impotent is the most terrific heat if the steam which 
 it generates have no resistance to overcome. Just so with 
 the most gigantic volition and the grandest purpose, if they 
 are not hedged about by some awful resistance. If they 
 have no fetters, either seen or unseen, in some way pro- 
 portionate to their own strength, they will be dissipated as 
 harmlessly as the vapor which rises at its leisure from the 
 open boiler. 
 
 By poverty we do not mean the condition of those who 
 moan with hunger and shiver with cold, but more particu- 
 larly the condition of that great class whose desires and 
 needs are separated from their gratification by the breadth 
 of a wearying effort. In this sense we attach to the word 
 the significance of a natural law, obviously designed and 
 ordained by the Creator to meet the necessary conditions 
 of human development. 
 
 If we would trace the proudest achievement of human 
 genius to its origin, we must follow it back through wind- 
 ing pathways, from the brilliant hall, from the deafening 
 
HOMES OF THE POOR. 385 
 
 thunder of human applause, to the silent, dim-lighted cot- 
 tage of poverty. If the gratification of every want lay 
 within the leisure grasp of that want, the very atmosphere 
 of human society would become pestilential with stagna- 
 tion. Go to the sunny tropics where nature with curious 
 caprice empties her lap of spoils in the presence of men, 
 and behold the weakness, the languor, and the inanity. 
 Humanity there has just activity enough to be vicious. 
 Where must we go to hear the hum of spindles, to feel 
 beneath our feet the jar of rushing trains, and to see the 
 smoky signals of human industry waving over a thousand 
 hills? We must go where winter, the genius of poverty, 
 throws up his icy bulwark between the wants of man and 
 their gratification. 
 
 Force and resistance constitute the eternal polarity of 
 existence. The one cannot exist without the other, any 
 more than there can be boreal magnetism without austral ; 
 any more than there can be action without reaction. 
 
 In order for force, either physical or mental, to be cumu- 
 lative the resistance must exceed the force so as to elicit 
 the increase. Hence the mission of poverty. 
 
 Not only is poverty necessary to develop human nature 
 and make its forces accumulative, but it is necessary to 
 prevent the extravagant and irregular expenditure of those 
 forces. It may be that human nature absolutely perfect 
 would be self-regulating, even when all its desires could be 
 gratified without laborious effort ; yet under present condi- 
 
 25 
 
886 OUR HOME. 
 
 tions it certainly requires resistance in certain directions. 
 The son of affluence soon runs the rounds of all possible 
 pleasures, and then life becomes insipid. We enjoy life's 
 blessings just in proportion to their variety and the effort 
 that they cost. All pleasures are enhanced by preliminary 
 effort. This fact explains the adage that " stolen fruit is 
 always sweetest." It is because of the exciting effort 
 which accompanies the unlawful procuring of it. That 
 fruit, however, which is bought with honest labor should 
 be sweetest, while the most insipid is that which lies 
 within the reach of the appetite without the aid of labor. 
 When will men learn that ease and rest and luxury are 
 misnomers? It is the subtile and divine alchemy of 
 sweat which transforms sorrow and languor into joy and 
 peace. 
 
 Homes of the poor ! Sacred shrines of earth where 
 the altar fires of genius have been lighted. May the 
 world forever be blessed with moderate want. The hu- 
 man mind is never whole till it has suffered, and it is bet- 
 ter that the angel of poverty should mete out the required 
 suffci ing in the form of a perpetual restraint, than that it 
 should burst like the thunder storm from the azure sky of 
 luxury, darkening with its baleful clouds the sun of life. 
 The home of the poor is the only home in which disinter- 
 ested love can dwell, for the pride that inevitably accom- 
 panies wealth is in its very nature selfish, and thus usurps 
 a place in the mind that might be occupied by a nobler 
 
HOMES OF THE POOR. 387 
 
 sentiment. Nearly all the common interest there is in the 
 rich family is simply the pride that they take in each 
 other's display, and this feeling usually engrosses most of 
 the time and energy of the rich. That pride which de- 
 lights in the family wardrobe and equipage is simply the 
 pride of the several individuals aggregated, and as such 
 pride is the excuse of selfishness it is, of course, incompat- 
 ible with true affection ; and if affection among the mem- 
 bers of the family cannot exist with this pride of wealth, 
 surely affection for mankind cannot. This fact is what 
 closes the doors of human sympathy against the rich man, 
 and compels him to live alone in his glory. Hence it is 
 that philanthropic movements and institutions almost al- 
 ways originate among the poorer classes. 
 
 The home of the poor man does not necessarily mean 
 a home of suffering, save in that humiliation and re- 
 straint to which it is necessary for all souls to be subjected 
 in order to develop. The poor man's home need not be 
 devoid of a certain degree of luxury. Beautiful pictures 
 and works of art can no longer be monopolized by the 
 rich, for the busy brain of invention has brought them 
 within the reach of all. The price of ten cents worth of 
 tobacco smoke saved each day for fifteen or twenty days 
 will purchase a fine book. The very poorest of men find 
 no difficulty in purchasing this amount of tobacco smoke 
 each day. Only think how many days there are in a life- 
 time. Three hundred and thirteen working days in a 
 
388 OUB HOME. 
 
 year at ten cents a day would give $31.30. Twenty years 
 would give $626.00, which would purchase at least live 
 hundred volumes, a library of which most men should be 
 proud. For five handled volumes of the best books com- 
 prise nearly all there is of pre-eminent worth in literature. 
 What an inspiring thought for a poor boy ! the gist of all 
 literature purchased with the little self denial that it costs 
 to refrain from making bacon of one's self. 
 
 Young man ! promise us that as soon as you have read 
 this chapter, you will begin to lay up ten cents a day, and 
 if you will smoke cigars, then be a little more economical 
 in other things, and lay up at least five cents. You have 
 your life before you, and it would soon be so natural for 
 you to lay by the small amount daily, that you would 
 drop it from habit into your private treasury almost un- 
 consciously. Try it, and reap the harvest. 
 
 " He sat all alone in bis dark little room, 
 His fingers aweary with work at the loom, 
 His eyes seeing not the fine threads, for the tears, 
 As he carefully counted the months and the years 
 He had been a poor weaver. 
 
 " Not a traveler went on the dusty highway, 
 But he thought, ■ He has nothing to do but be gay; ' 
 No matter how burdened or bent he might be, 
 The weaver believed him more happy than he, 
 And sighed at his weaving. 
 
 " He saw not the roses so sweet and so red 
 That looked through his window; he thought to be dead 
 An-] MUffted away from his dark little room. 
 Wrapt up in the linen he had in his loom, 
 Were better than weaving. 
 
HOMES OF THE POOR. 389 
 
 " Just then a white angel came out of the skies, 
 And shut up his senses, and sealed up his eyes, 
 And bore him away from the work at his loom 
 In a vision, and left him alone by the tomb 
 Of his dear little daughter. 
 
 44 ' My darling! ' he cries, ' what a blessing was mine! 
 How I sinned, having you, against goodness divine! 
 Awake! O my lost one, my sweet one, awake! 
 And I never, as long as I live, for your sake, 
 Will sigh at my weaving! ' 
 
 44 The sunset was gilding his low little room 
 When the weaver awoke from his dream at the loom, 
 And close at his knee saw a dear little head 
 Alight with long curls, — she was living, not dead, — 
 His pride and his treasure. 
 
 44 He winds the fine thread on his shuttle anew, 
 — At thought of his blessing 'twas easy to do, — 
 And sings as he weaves, for the joy in his breast, 
 Peace cometh of striving, and labor is rest: 
 Grown wise was the weaver." 
 
HOMES OF THE RICH. 
 
 jT is the duty of the poor man to live within 
 his income, but it is no less the duty of the 
 rich man to make his expenditures propor- 
 tionate to his income. People sometimes 
 9 hold up their hands in holy horror when they 
 read or hear that some millionaire has spent 
 an enormous sum on his buildings, his ward- 
 robe, or his garden ; but they do not stop to 
 think that he is thereby discharging a duty 
 which he owes to society. He is redistribut- 
 ing the money that he has gathered. The 
 great mass of the people must earn their daily 
 bread by performing labor for others, but 
 only the wealthy can hire people to labor for them. Hence 
 those who possess wealth and will not spend it in being 
 served, are the thieves and robbers of society. No wealthy 
 man has any business to live in a cottage. There are poor 
 people enough to live in cottages. It is his business to 
 live in a palace, and to hire those to build it who live in 
 cottages. 
 
 We have, perhaps, used the word served unadvisedly. 
 We do not mean that the wealthy man discharges his obli- 
 
HOMES OF THE RICH. 391 
 
 gation to society when he expends large sums to increase 
 his personal comforts. He should make his wealth serve 
 himself by first making it serve society in the promotion of 
 legitimate business enterprise. Nor do we mean that he 
 should expend upon his dwelling and for his own personal 
 gratification more than can normally and lawfully minister 
 to his comfort, convenience and aesthetic faculties. 
 
 And yet there is concealed in the very sentiment of 
 extravagance to which wealth prompts, a kind of compensa- 
 tory principle ; one of nature's curative efforts, by which 
 the economic interests of society are made self-acting. 
 The world's wealth cannot be hoarded by individuals save 
 for a brief period. All attempts to do so are thwarted by 
 nature herself through instrumentalities so cunning and 
 subtile as to deserve our applause. She has three pro- 
 cesses by which she robs the rich man of his unjust acquisi- 
 tions and gives back the spoils to the poor. The first 
 process she employs when she deals with the miserly rich 
 man, the man who has sacrificed all other sources of enjoy- 
 ment to this one instinct of hoarding. She has so consti- 
 tuted him that this sacrifice, this concentration of all the 
 energies of his being upon the one organ of acquisitive- 
 ness, necessarily results in the withdrawal of potency 
 from the intellectual. The miser's intellect, accordingly, is 
 never broad and comprehensive. He has, it is true, a certain 
 degree or kind of intellectuality, but it is for the most 
 part of the same nature as that of the fox. He makes a 
 
392 OUM u<> mi-;. 
 
 use of his intellectual powers that is below their normal 
 function, and hence tends to weaken them. This is tin- 
 process by which organs and functions become " abortive," 
 as the evolutionists would term it. When the wings of the 
 bird are used chiefly for a purpose below their natural 
 function they are becoming "abortive." We see there- 
 suit of this process in barn fowl that use their wings only 
 to aid their running. Hence hens and turkeys are unable 
 to fly any considerable distance without great exhaustion. 
 
 Just so the intellectual wings of the miser are becoming 
 abortive, for he uses them not to fly with but simply to aid 
 his running. In very many cases we have only to wait 
 one generation to see this abortive process completed. 
 The children of the miser rarely have the executive force 
 to keep the lock upon the father's chest. Thus nature, 
 by a process subtler than the necromancy of the Egyptian 
 wizard, gives back to the world that which lias been taken 
 from it. 
 
 Nature makes use of her second method when dealing 
 with the energetic, active, shrewd, and executive rich man, 
 the accumulator rather than the hoarder. The two are in 
 many respects opposite in their characteristics. The mer- 
 chant, the manufacturer, and the railroad king show no 
 tendency toward the abortive intellect. Indeed, their 
 function is usually such as to develop great strength and 
 activity of intellect. But the miser proper is one whose 
 motto is, "a penny saved is a penny earned." His sole 
 
HOMES OF THE RICH. 393 
 
 delight is in the consciousness of his possessions, and in 
 counting and sorting his valuable papers. His money is 
 all in bonds and mortgages, hence he lives in idleness and 
 gloats over the self-accumulation of his wealth. 
 
 Now this second method which nature employs in her 
 ceaseless effort at equalization is simply this: she has 
 made human nature such (and consequently society, which 
 is but an outgrowth of human nature,) that the individual 
 want cannot be met except by a contribution to the gen- 
 eral good. Wealth is simply potential gratification. But 
 it cannot minister to the desires of him who holds it save 
 as it yields a secondary ministration to the general inter- 
 est, whose relation with it is the sole source of its poten- 
 tiality. The natural wants and desires of man lie within 
 comparatively narrow limits. Bacon wisely says, " The per- 
 sonal fruition in any man cannot reach to feel great riches." 
 A very moderate income will meet all the personal wants 
 and desires of man. He cannot want or desire anything 
 outside the bounds of his nature. He desires food, but the 
 quantity has a very obvious limit, and there must also be 
 a comparatively moderate limit to its costliness. He de- 
 sires raiment, but, even if his caprice demands golden gar- 
 ments, the inevitable limit is easily reached. All the 
 potentiality, then, which his wealth possesses, beyond a 
 small per cent., must redound to the general good in spite 
 of him. The rich man is the smallest stockholder in his 
 own wealth. 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 Two men were once conversing about John Jacob 
 Astor's property. One was asked if he would be willing 
 to take care of all those millions merely for his board* and 
 clothing. "No," he ii id ignantly replied, "do you take me 
 for a fool?" "Well," said the other, "that is all Mr. 
 Astor himself gets for taking care of it; he's found, and 
 that's all. The houses, the warehouses, the ships, the 
 farms, which he counts by the hundred, and is often 
 obliged to take care of, are for the accommodation of 
 others." "But then he has the income, the rents of all 
 this large property, five or six hundred thousand dollars per 
 annum." "Yes, but he can do nothing with his income but 
 build more houses and warehouses and ships, or loan money 
 on mortgages for the convenience of others. He's found, 
 and you can make nothing else out of it." The world 
 ought not to complain so long as it gets ninety-nine per 
 cent, of the rich man's income. If the rich man uses his 
 
 alth in building tenement houses to rent, he not only 
 furnishes remunerative labor to the workmen who build 
 
 •in, but by his competition he lowers rent and thus con- 
 fers a general blessing. The same is true if he invests it 
 in railroads, for the more railroads the more competition, 
 and hence the lower the rate of transportation. There is 
 but one thing he can do with his money that will not 
 yield the general good a much larger contribution than 
 himself. He can lock it up in his own vault. But in that 
 case it not only yields himself nothing, but nature will 
 
HOMES OF THE RICH. 395 
 
 make use of her first method and will take the money her- 
 self and leave his children or grandchildren penniless. 
 
 Nature's third method is a modification of her first. 
 She uses it in her dealings with the children of the active 
 rich man. It is simply that law of which we have already 
 spoken in our chapter on " Homes of the Poor/' by which 
 restraint upon desire develops executive power. In the 
 children of the rich we see, perhaps, little if any tendency 
 to the abortive intellect, but the abortive tendency is 
 chiefly or wholly confined to the executive powers. There 
 is much difference between earning a dollar, and asking 
 papa for it. The boy who toils all day for a dollar and 
 brings it home at night, hungry and tired, not only knows 
 the value of that dollar, but by such a practice he is 
 developing in his soul a power of action that will enable it 
 to laugh at every obstacle that earth can offer. Take the 
 wealth from the children of the rich and they become 
 objects of charity. This is especially true concerning the 
 daughters of the rich. Poor, little pretty things ! what 
 can they do ? What are their lives worth to their kind ? 
 One good, noble factory girl, who has earned her daily 
 bread amid the roar of machinery, who knows what it is to 
 "breathe the factory smoke of torment from the fuel of 
 human lives, 1 ' and on whose heart is stamped, with the die 
 of agony, the value of a penny, is capable of yielding a 
 higher ministration to the world than a thousand of the 
 pulpy daughters of luxury and ease. God bless the noble 
 
390 OUR HOME. 
 
 tory girls! And may the time shortly come when Social 
 Science shall solve the great problems of hunger, and cold, 
 and want, and shall release them from their menial thrall, 
 and place in their hands the golden key to the secret of a 
 nobler li 
 
 We would not be quoted by the poor in justification of 
 their poverty. Poverty is unnatural and undesirable to 
 all, and there is little excuse for most people to remain in 
 tetters, making due allowance, however, for exceptional 
 cases. Poverty, like temptation and sin, yields its minis- 
 try only in the process of being overcome. The tribute 
 » poverty in the preceding chapter would be 
 almost as applicable had our theme been temptation, yet 
 we would hardly advocate exposing ourselves needlessly to 
 ptation for the sake of its possible ministry. 
 
 All normal action is disciplinary, for every possible 
 gratification implies an aggressive movement. The eternal 
 warfare between want and satisfaction is a natural war- 
 , and one which cannot cease till the army of creation 
 shall give the signal of surrender. And he who refuses 
 to engage in this warfare is a traitorous deserter, and 
 deserves the deserter's fate. He who is contented with 
 poverty, and seeks not to subdue it, must be reckoned with 
 this class ; he has mutinied against the generalship of his 
 Maker. 
 
 Wealth, then, if it be the representative and co-relative 
 of service done to mankind, so far from being an evil or a 
 
HOMES OF THE RICH 397 
 
 necessary accompaniment of moral demerit, is a badge of 
 honor. It is the war record which shows how far one has 
 triumphed over the divinely appointed opposition to his 
 progress ; and in this sense may even justly be compared 
 with the moral virtues, which are the spirit's war record, 
 and show how far it has triumphed, in the spiritual war- 
 fare, over the forces of temptation and evil. Wealth is an 
 evil only when it is allowed to release its owner from hon- 
 orable and worthy labor. No possible condition of life can 
 release one who is physically and mentally able, from the 
 moral obligation to toil. 
 
 But suppose one inherits a million. Shall he toil for his 
 daily bread ? No ! not for his daily bread, but in behalf of 
 mankind. We have but a secondary claim upon our own 
 powers. Wealth augments our natural endowments. Two 
 men with equal talents, the one poor and the other rich, 
 possess very unequal power for doing good. So that the 
 man who inherits a million should begin life as though he 
 were penniless. We do not mean, of course, that he 
 should chop wood or learn the blacksmith's trade. But 
 that he should regard the million simply as a re-enforce- 
 ment of his faculties. He is by so much, a more talented 
 man, or rather his natural talents are supplemented by 
 that which virtually makes them more powerful. 
 
 The rich in the majority of cases violate the laws of the 
 home life, from the fact that they allow their wealth to 
 release them from toil, the only thing that can render the 
 
398 OUR HOME. 
 
 " earth-life worth living." Indolence will render every 
 possible joy insipid. 
 
 We have said, in the early part of this chapter, that 
 those who possess wealth and will not spend it in being 
 served are the thieves and robbers of society. But that 
 service should be limply for the purpose of releasing them 
 from a lower duty in order that they may perform a higher 
 duty which their wealth enables them to fulfill. Hence, if 
 the wife and daughter will not engage in some form of ser- 
 
 8 to their kind, they have no moral right to hire a ser- 
 vant to serve their food for them. Indeed, they have no 
 moral right to the food itself. Labor is a natural ordi- 
 nance, and riches cannot release one from the obligation to 
 a universal law. It is as binding upon the millionaire as 
 upon the pauper, and he who seeks to evade this law is a 
 criminal according to the statutes of the universe. 
 
 Let every rich man's daughter engage in some regular 
 and useful vocation ; and thus bless herself by the labor, 
 and mankind with the product. Not that we would im- 
 pose upon her, simply because she is wealthy, the somber 
 duties of a nun. But we would have her labor daily in 
 order that she may fulfill the mission of her life, in order 
 that she may develop in herself and entail upon the com- 
 ing generation that which labor alone can develop. The 
 wife who does not, at least, exercise a general supervision 
 over her own household affairs is a drone in society. 
 
 re is, however, no objection to the employment of 
 
HOMES OF THE RICH 399 
 
 domestic servants, provided it be necessary; but that law 
 of the home life which demands seclusion, privacy, and per- 
 sonal management of one's own affairs, releases the rich 
 from any obligation to furnish employment in this way, 
 and, all things considered, renders it far better, both for 
 themselves and for mankind, that under ordinary circum- 
 stances they should not do so. In very many rich families 
 the position of servant is but little better than that of a 
 slave, so that the employment which such rich families 
 furnish to the poor is of slight account. And in those 
 families where the servant is treated approximately as an 
 equal, she usually, either through the ignorance or indo- 
 lence of the wife, has the whole management of affairs, 
 which makes the home a kind of boarding-house or hotel, 
 so that the home-life becomes semi-public. Yet if the wife 
 will treat her servant as her equal, and at the same tim,e 
 exercise a general supervision over her own household, 
 both these evils may be obviated. And if the employment 
 of a servant will thus afford the wife leisure to engage in 
 some higher service to her kind, it is surely her duty to 
 employ one. But she should consider herself as truly a 
 servant as the one she employs, only in a higher capacity, 
 for when wealth makes one anything but a servant of 
 humanity, it makes him a robber and a thief. 
 
 The only absolutely selfish motive that the highest 
 morality permits in the accumulation of wealth, is the 
 normal desire for independence in all the relations of life ; 
 
400 OUR HO Mi:. 
 
 and if beyond this, nature has endowed one with a special 
 capacity for acquiring wealth, the product of that capacity, 
 like the product of even other form of genius, is mankind's 
 and not his. 
 
 The home of the rich man should represent as much 
 wealth as, thus expended, will have a tendency to increase 
 the comfort and convenience of his family. Beyond this, 
 however, he has no moral right to lavish wealth upon his 
 home for the mere gratification of his vanity. He should 
 invest it in some honorable and useful industry, where it 
 will yield humanity a higher rate of interest than that of 
 mere taxation. 
 
 Burns has given us the licenses of wealth in the follow- 
 ing lines : 
 
 " But gather gear by every wile 
 That i by honor; 
 
 Not for to hide it in a hedge, 
 Nor for a train attendant, 
 But for the glorious privilege 
 Of being independent." 
 
THE OLD-FASHIONED HOME. 
 
 gASHION holds a legitimate place in human 
 affairs. It is based in a constitutional pecu- 
 liarity of human nature, which is a sufficient 
 guarantee that it has a right to be. It is 
 only the abuse of fashion that makes it re- 
 pugnant to the better instincts of man. 
 When the proper definition of fashion is pre- 
 sented to the mind it meets with an instinct- 
 ive approval. 
 
 We would define true fashion as the uni- 
 formity that results from the conservation of 
 truth and beauty. That which is true and 
 beautiful is naturally conserved, while that 
 which is false and ugly contains the seeds of 
 its own dissolution. This necessary unifor- 
 mity resulting from a constant law is natu- 
 ral fashion. 
 
 The fashion of the world, for the most part, 
 is artificial and false. It is simply a tem- 
 porary uniformity resulting from caprice. There are two 
 
 elements that enter into the composition of the fashion 
 u 
 
402 OUR HOME. 
 
 sentiment, and the virtue or vice of the fashion is deter- 
 mined by the proportion of these elements. First, a love 
 of the beautiful and true, and second, a love of novelty. 
 Any given fashion is capricious, short-lived, and generally 
 absurd, just in proportion as the latter element predomi- 
 nates over the former. 
 
 There is no more appropriate sphere for the display of 
 legitimate fashion than the home world, which, perhaps, in 
 }>nt accounts for the fact that in all ages architecture has 
 stood foremost among the arts. And, perhaps, it is in this 
 field that fashion has maintained itself purest from the 
 adulterations of caprice. Few houses or buildings in the 
 construction of which there is any pretense to archi- 
 tectural skill, exhibit a serious violation of natural and 
 wholesome taste. Unlike the varying patterns of ladies' 
 bonnets and gentlemen's coats, which vibrate from extreme 
 to extreme, the architectural ideal seems to recognize cer- 
 tain fundamental and unchanging laws of taste and har- 
 mony. 
 
 It is true that there have been marked changes in archi- 
 tecture. It has grown with the race from the rude struc- 
 ture of the savage to the imposing palace of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 But in every period there has been an evident tendency 
 to abide perpetually by principles, as fast as men have 
 been able to develop them. 
 
 Each decade witnesses modifications in the details of 
 
THE OLD-FASHIONED HOME. 403 
 
 architectural adornment, but this does not touch the fact of 
 permanence in the architectural ideal. 
 
 It is, in part, such permanence that makes the old-fash- 
 ioned houses seem beautiful to us, for these houses, with 
 their well-sweeps, huge chimneys, and naked gables violate 
 no essential law of beauty. 
 
 To be beautiful and tasteful a thing must violate no law 
 of its relations. So essential is this that some have defined 
 beauty as "superior fitness." According to this definition 
 a thing may be beautiful to-day and otherwise to-morrow. 
 When it loses its fitness it loses its beauty. But no argu- 
 ment of fitness or unfitness can take away the beauty from 
 the old-fashioned fire-place with its cheerful flames, which 
 like a band of gold-capped spirits, half in earnest, half in 
 jest, chase each other up the broad chimney. No person 
 of sensitive mind can sit without emotion beside those 
 century-old hearthstones and watch upon a stormy night 
 " the great fires up the chimney roar." 
 
 We seem to see reflected from the ever changing golden 
 sheen of the blaze the images of merry boys and girls at 
 play, or with their slates and pencils solving by the flicker- 
 ing light the problems assigned them by the old school- 
 master who long ago dismissed the school for the last time. 
 Oh ! the visions that we see in the fire, visions of the for- 
 gotten long ago, of joys and sorrows strangely blent ; vis- 
 ions of romping boyhood and laughing girlhood, visions of 
 love's first dream, of eyes that caught the broken story 
 
404 OUR HOME. 
 
 from trembling lips that could not speak it ; visions of the 
 bridal queen crowned with coronet of maiden blushes; vis- 
 ions of life's stern battle; visions of sorrows first shadow, 
 of red-eyed grief and midnight watchingfl ; visions of all 
 life's checkered pathway, as it winds through Bowery fields 
 or over pain's hot desert sands, through the fragrant spice 
 groves of joy or over sorrow's mountain crags. 
 
 We would not proclaim ourselves u fogies M ; far from it. 
 We are enthusiasts in every eoneeivahie species of human 
 reform, and yet we are compelled to consider the old- 
 fashioned home as the typical representative of the natural 
 institution of home. We speak now, not so much with 
 reference to the mere outward difference of architectural 
 designs, etc., which superficially distinguishes the old from 
 the new-fashioned home, but more particularly with refer- 
 ence to those inner and vital differences that distinguish 
 the two modes of home life. 
 
 It is painful to know that the modern home life differs 
 from the old-fashioned chiefly in its departure from the 
 standard of nature. 
 
 There is hardly a feature of the modern home that does 
 not proclaim itself to the most casual observer a defiant 
 breach of natural law. Lei us imagine ourselves members 
 of the board of health, and in that capacity let us inspecta 
 typical modern home. A servant responds to the ringing of 
 
 the hell and informs us that wk Mrs. is not in," meaning 
 
 dimply thai she has not yet — at ten o'clock — risen. This 
 
THE OLD-FASHIONED HOME. 405 
 
 is simply a patent process of elongation, to which the trnth 
 is subjected to meet the demands of fashionable society. 
 Of course it is not at all injurious to truth. When we 
 make known our official business we are admitted, and the 
 servant shows us to the kitchen, where we learn nothing in 
 particular except the most approved process of shortening 
 human life, and of destroying the teeth, morals, etc., of the 
 next generation. We next enter the sitting-room. We 
 are almost nauseated by the sickening odor of coal gas 
 that is fast escaping through the open door of the coal 
 stove while the back damper is closed. The servant as- 
 sures us, however, that it is nothing unusual, and declares 
 she "can't smell a thing." We go to the window and try 
 to raise it unobserved, but to no purpose. There are two 
 windows, and the outside one doesn't "shove up." The 
 house, of course, has all the modern improvement, includ- 
 ing that beautiful invention of double windows, which has 
 perhaps lengthened the u consumption column " in the 
 statistics of human mortality more than any other inven- 
 tion of man. "There is a register in the chimney, but 
 
 Mrs. says the room doesn't heat up so well when it is 
 
 open, so we keep it closed all the time." 
 
 Do the children frequently have colds with sick head- 
 ache ? " O, and to be shure they do most all the time, 
 
 but Mrs. thinks it is because the house isn't war-rm 
 
 enough, and shure it looks rasonable. She's put a coal 
 stove in their slapin' room." As we find it impossible to 
 
406 OUR HOME. 
 
 iwer Hridget's argument, we will proceed to inspect the 
 
 lor. As we enter we shudder with a sensation of 
 dampness. Bridget draws aside the curtain, and raising 
 the window a few inches turns the slats of one blind on 
 
 the north ride. "Mrs. says we mustn't let the light 
 
 Bhine in the parlor, because it fades the car-rpet. There 
 ain't been no drop o' light in the room afore since six 
 months ago." 
 
 Let us leave the parlor in its darkened beauty and go to 
 the children's deeping room, where the coal stove has been 
 set up to keep the little creatures from %k catching cold/' 
 We find a room nine feet by twelve with one window. Of 
 course the door must be kept dosed during the night that 
 the coal stove may be effectual in preventing the children 
 from taking cold. Economy dictates that it isn't necessary 
 that the coal stove should do it all, so a double window is 
 put on and cotton is tucked in around the joints ; anything 
 to keep the " cold air out." 
 
 One of the most ingenious and economical inventions of 
 modern times is the process of warming our dwellings with 
 our own breath. Air that has been breathed once or twice 
 is apt to be a little unwholesome ; but then it saves coal, 
 and so we can afford to have sick headaches, and to rise in 
 the morning with heavy, dull spirits, with furred tongues 
 and yellow skins. 
 
 We have not overdrawn our picture of the modern 
 home. Nor have we selected one of the fashionable homes 
 
THE OLD-FASHIONED HOME. 407 
 
 of the rich ; for these, indeed, in many respects, approach 
 the old-fashioned home. They generally have more spa- 
 cious sleeping rooms, and the greater size of such houses 
 secures better ventilation throughout. It is the average 
 home of the great middle class that we have described, 
 though, perhaps, we have made a freer use of hyperbole 
 than is consistent with ordinary descriptive writing. We 
 do not hesitate to express our conviction that the un- 
 hygienic principles involved in the construction and man- 
 agement of the modern home are the prime causes of 
 consumption and dyspepsia, those two fell scourges to the 
 human family, from which probably a far greater number 
 perish than from the stereotyped curses of " war, pestilence, 
 and famine." 
 
 If society has a moral right to compel men to train them- 
 selves in the use of sword and musket, in order that they 
 may be able to meet and repel the onslaughts of war and 
 conquest, and thus save their children from bondage and 
 disgrace, why has it not also a right to compel them to so 
 train and govern their bodies hygienically as to repel the 
 fiercer onslaught of foul disease, and thus save their chil- 
 dren from the darker bondage of inherited weakness and 
 premature death? There may be a shade of the ludicrous 
 in our claim, but we believe that society has the same 
 moral right to prohibit, in the construction of all new 
 dwellings, the nine l>y twelve " bed room " that it has to 
 prohibit the grog-shop ; the same right to enforce ventila- 
 
408 OUR HOME. 
 
 tion and all the general laws of hygiene in our private 
 dwellings, that it has to make laws for the prevention of 
 suicide and infant ici 
 
 Such an exercise of civil authority would violate no 
 natural right of man. Man belongs not to himself, but to 
 the world. The wheel is not its own but the engine's. 
 We possess but one natural right vouchsafed to us by our 
 Maker, the right to make the most of ourselves, and all 
 sub-divisions of tins one great right are inseparably con- 
 nected with corresponding duties* Indeed, one can have 
 no natural right to perform a single act which it is not his 
 duty U) 1. This may not at first receive the ready 
 
 credence of the general reader, especially of the American 
 who has been accustomed to give such extravagant defini- 
 tions to the word liberty. But upon careful thought we 
 tins! that all will assent to its truth. Probably no human 
 being is able at any time to tell just what kind or extent 
 of action is allowed by his natural right, or demanded by 
 this natural dut\ . We surely have a natural right to eat 
 just that (juantity of food that will meet the requirements 
 of our physical nature, no more, no less, and no one would 
 contend that the verdict of duty, if the exact bounds could 
 be ascertained, would not be precisely the same. 
 
 This illustration is no more obvious than that which it 
 is intended to illustrate, viz., the application of this princi- 
 ple to every function and relation of life. When one 
 ceases to act in accordance with this principle, and in so 
 
THE OLD-FASHIONED HOME. 409 
 
 doing falls below the aggregate intelligence of society, he 
 becomes a proper subject for civil guardianship and gov- 
 ernmental regulation. Few question the right of society 
 to prevent a man from taking into his stomach poison liquid 
 in the form of alcohol, but why should they question its 
 right to prevent him from taking into his lungs poison gas 
 in the form of air that has been robbed of its oxygen and 
 charged with carbonic acid by the vital demands of half a 
 dozen persons in a tight, unventilated room, its atmosphere, 
 perhaps, still further vitiated by the liberal contributions of 
 a kerosene lamp or two ? Are fluids and gases so different 
 in their nature that society has a moral right to prohibit 
 the use of the poison fluid of the grog-shop, while it has no 
 right to prohibit the free use of the deadly gas of the small, 
 unventilated sleeping-room ? 
 
 Our condemnation of the unhygienic features of the 
 modern home ma} r seem somewhat strange, but while we 
 acknowledge the views to be radical and the language 
 strong, we are sure they do no injustice to our convictions. 
 
 While we believe emphatically in all the civilizing 
 forces ; while we would bid God-speed to every useful in- 
 vention ; and while our faith in man's progression and ulti- 
 mate achievements amounts almost to fanaticism, — we 
 must still contend that the modern home in most of its fea- 
 tures is a retrogression and not an advancement. 
 
 Yet this is not necessary. Nor is it due to tte refine- 
 ment of the modern home. It is not attributable to the 
 
410 S EOME, 
 
 piano and the cooking range, to the fine pictures, the 
 orations, the drapery and the beauty, bat to the un- 
 hygienic influences, the carbonic acid and the enervating 
 luxury. The people of America need entertain no fears 
 from the frequent ebullitions of political passion. They 
 are the necessary accompaniments of self-government. 
 But on the garnished walls often thousand private houses 
 there appears, to him who can read it, a handwriting that 
 hints at possible doom. In the dim, uncertain shadows of 
 the hour a fingei points to the deserted banquet halls of 
 Nineveh and Babylon and Persia, and in our languid 
 luxury there is a sickening suggestion of the feast-couch, 
 Rome's death-bed. The same spell of public and private 
 effeminacy seems to be settling over us thai lias prefaced 
 doom ol perished empire whose pathetic wrecks 
 
 now strew the shores of time. Physical weakness, espe- 
 cially of women, in every .age has been the almost invari- 
 able prognostic of national downfall, and who will deny 
 that there are indications in this direction that may justly 
 excite alarm? We have no sympathy with those mourn- 
 ful, dyspeptic alarmists who are forever sounding the sig- 
 nal of ''trouble ahead," for the mere pleasure of listening 
 to the music of their own blast. And yet we believe 
 re are forces at work in American society that should 
 >e thoughtful men and women seriously to reflect. 
 Wt have not criticised the modern home thus severely 
 because it is a modern home. We condemn only those 
 
THE OLD-FASHIONED HOME. 411 
 
 evil features that constitute no necessary part of the 
 home. 
 
 The more modern the home the better. The world's 
 latest thought is its best, and we can truly say from our 
 heart, God bless the noble inventors of our land who are 
 lifting the burden of drudgery from the shoulders of 
 women. We are glad that the old-fashioned loom has 
 been used for kindling wood. We are glad that spinning 
 no longer constitutes the chief occupation of our girls ; and 
 yet if this release from the bondage of labor results only in 
 idleness, as it does in too many homes, better a thousand 
 times that the hum of the spinning-wheel should again be 
 heard ! 
 
 If the modern home with its many true improvements 
 would conserve the naturalness of the old-fashioned home, 
 we should have one that would be typical of all that hope 
 points to in the great hereafter, but until it does this we 
 must regard the old-fashioned home of our fathers as the 
 best and truest type of that which we hope awaits us. 
 
 " Isolated, bleak, and dreary, stands the old house on the hill. 
 
 Rooms that rang with mirth and music now are empty, silent, still. 
 
 Desolation reigns supremely, and the old house bare and lone 
 
 Stands with many a broken window, through which cheerful lights once shone; 
 
 Wrapped in dust and hung with cobwebs, how each empty, low-ceiled room 
 
 Seemingly resents in echoes every loudly spoken tone. 
 
 Houses old and bare and lonely, thickly o'er this land of ours, 
 
 Stand, like long-forgotten headstones, 'midst their tangled growth of flowers. 
 *»*♦*♦********* 
 " Never then forsake the roof-tree, from its shelter do not roam; 
 
 Like a sacred shrine of incense, keep the altar fires of home. 
 
 For of all the piteous ruins, not one comes so near my heart 
 
 As some old deserted homestead where once life and love had part." 
 
OUR LAST FAREWELL OF HOME. 
 
 |]N the programme of every human life is writ- 
 ten " final scene " — monitory of the hurried 
 farewell, the choking sob, and the parting 
 forever. No matter how bright has been the 
 rainbow of youth's promise, no matter how 
 fair and serene life's course has been, the 
 end of that life shall be Bobfl and tears. But 
 one is never called from his earthly home 
 until he is willing to leave it. He is per- 
 suaded, instead of compelled to seek an- 
 other home. We refer, of course, to the 
 process of a natural death, resulting simply 
 from old age. No provision has been made 
 to lighten the agonies of suicide, or an untimely death. 
 The principle, however, which we shall mention, seems 
 even in these cases to act to a certain extent, but it is only 
 during the actual process of death. It does not lessen that 
 instinctive tenacity to life that makes the very thought of 
 death a source of sorrow. 
 
 It has been said that one may live as long as he 
 chooses, and as a rule this is true, for as a rule one may, 
 
OUR LAST FAREWELL OF HOME. 413 
 
 by temperance and moderation, die a natural death ; that 
 is, by the gradual decay of all the powers. When this is 
 the case the instinct of life is one of the first to die. 
 Hence when one cannot live any longer, he will not choose 
 to live. This is the means by which God persuades us to 
 leave our earthly home. He convinces us and makes us 
 feel that it would be better for us to leave the home that 
 no longer has any charm for us. He takes away the in- 
 stinctive love of life and transfers the home life. 
 
 We have said that the love of life is one of the first in- 
 stincts to die. It would, doubtless, be the first were it not 
 for the fact that nature preserves it as long as it can be of 
 any use to us. It is this same instinct that gives the 
 power to resist death, and to live amid influences that 
 tend to destroy life. Without this we could not live an 
 hour. Now it would not be wise in nature to allow this 
 instinct to die so long as we are capable of living any 
 longer. But no sooner has this stage been passed than all 
 dread of death at once ceases, and the person softly sinks 
 into the arms of death as the child sinks into slumber. 
 
 The death of this instinct is not instantaneous, for it is 
 subject to the same law of decay as the other powers. 
 But its death always precedes that of the general system. 
 
 The testimony of the old will confirm this doctrine, that 
 the love of life and the fear of death gradually vanish as 
 they approach life's goal. The poet has said, " There is a 
 beauty in woman's decay." But this beauty of decay is 
 
II I OUR llUMi:. 
 
 not confined to woman. There is a beauty in the decay 
 of humanity. The law of beauty is the law of complete- 
 ness. It is embodied in the principle of the oirde. All 
 forms of beauty may be reduced to this principle. II, : 
 old age must be the very symbol and embodiment of beauty, 
 for is it not the typical example of completeness? It repre- 
 sents the completion of a life's experience. It is the tri- 
 umphant period in which the arcs of the great circle are 
 daring with ■ divine beauty that appeals not to the eye, 
 hut to the BOUL It must be felt by the spirit that can j 
 ceive a beauty in the universal plan. 
 
 We are so constituted that in any given period of our 
 lives we are best sat isfiet I with the conditions and cireum- 
 stances that naturally surround us at that period. The 
 youth wishes that he might always be a youth, the young 
 man wishes that he might always be twenty-five. The 
 mature man thinks he would like to stop just where he is, 
 and forever remain at the height and glory of his powers, 
 but the old man thinks the best time to stop is when 
 the labor of life is done and he can sit down and enjoy 
 
 '. It is the old man alone whose wish is granted. lie 
 
 is permitted to rest, and as he has nothing to do but rest 
 
 and feast his soul on divine beauty, he is not particular 
 
 whether he takes that rest and drinks in that beauty while 
 
 at the sunset of this life or the sunrise of the next. 
 
 Contentment is the natural condition of the human 
 mind. ! m abnormal condition, and the ten- 
 
OUR LAST FAREWELL OF HOME. 415 
 
 dency to be satisfied with present conditions and circum- 
 stances descends into the minuter relations of life. In 
 summer we feel that we could not possibly endure the 
 winter, but when the winter comes there comes with it 
 new pleasures and delights which we would not exchange 
 for those of the summer. Even on a beautiful morning 
 we are apt to wish it would always remain morning, and 
 when enjoying ourselves at some evening entertainment 
 we think the evening the most delightful part of the day. 
 
 This principle in our nature manifests itself still more 
 forcibly in old age. When we reach that period we are in 
 that condition spiritually as well as physically in which 
 the only pleasures that we can enjoy, or that we desire to 
 be able to enjoy, are just those which are given us. 
 
 In the process of death we see that the lowest powers 
 die first. If the face of the dying be watched there will 
 be seen to play over it, in regular succession, the expres- 
 sion of the various faculties in the order of their rank. 
 The last to die are the moral and religious. 
 
 These leave their divine impress upon the countenance, 
 hence the calm, holy and serene look so often seen upon 
 the faces of the dead. 
 
 The terror of death recedes just as fast as we approach 
 it, and when we reach the last stage of decay the dark 
 river is found to be illumined by the mirrored stars of 
 faith. 
 
 There are joys in age which youth cannot know. They 
 
lit OUR HOME. 
 
 come not as miserable compensations for infirmity, but 
 they are the ones which approach nearest to perfection. 
 They come as a free gift; those of youth and manhood 
 
 must be won by toil. The youth finds no joy in rest nor 
 in i on, for hi unwritten and he lias noth- 
 
 ing to meditate upon. A feverish ambition hums in the 
 brain of the young man, for he feels that he has every- 
 thing to accomplish in I few short years, and whatever 
 joy he receives he must receive it discounted at the bank 
 of toil. 
 
 Youth and manhood have their joys, pure and deep and 
 holy. Joy is the only natural and normal condition of 
 
 : v human soul tliroi y hour of its being from the 
 
 cradle to eternity, and yet we niu>t draw this wide distinc- 
 tion between the joys of youth and those of age. The 
 former have in them the element of exhaustion, and are 
 allied to those of intoxication, while the latter seem in their 
 very nature strength-giving. Age derives no mean joy 
 from tracing through their complex evolutions the great 
 events of human history. It is to age alone that these gr« 
 
 nts are visible from their inception to their completion. 
 Where age beholds beauty, order and divinity, youth be- 
 holds but fragments, chaos and chance. The old man 
 derives a conviction from his long experience and observa- 
 tion that "there's a divinity that shapes our ends.'' He 
 sees, as youth came he beauty and significance of a 
 
 completed. To him death is hut the crowning act in 
 
OUR LAST FAREWELL OF HOME. 417 
 
 life's great drama, the opening of a golden gate at the end 
 of life's narrow lane. 
 
 Life and death are counterparts of each other. There 
 are those, however, who believe that physical death came to 
 man as a punishment for sin, and that had it not been for 
 sin, all mankind would have lived eternally upon the earth. 
 But the law that dooms man to physical death is the same 
 which dooms the animalcule. If the coral reefs were in 
 process of formation when the first sin was committed it 
 was because the corals were dying then. Did not death 
 obtain among the finny tribes of the ocean, perhaps a 
 single year would be sufficient to crowd the deep to over- 
 flowing ; but if the animals were dying, then must not all 
 which is subject to the organic law have died also ? Man 
 is as subject to the organic law as any other member of 
 the animal kingdom. He eats and drinks and breathes 
 and sleeps as they do. Some of these animals are not 
 only made on the same general plan as man, but they 
 possess every physical organ corresponding in position and 
 action, and both animals and man owe their lives to the 
 vital action in these organs. 
 
 Now can any one believe that the great process of vital 
 action in man, of digestion and respiration, was governed 
 by some other principle before he did wrong for the first 
 time, and was afterwards changed? Of all the outgrown 
 doctrines of dogmatic theology, this must be regarded as 
 the most childish and unscientific. We must not be mis- 
 
 27 
 
418 OUR HOME, 
 
 led by creeds which are at variance with natural Law. 
 We must not regard death as a penal expedient. It can 
 afford us no hope or consolation to regard it as such. 
 Human death is as much an ordinance of nature as the fad- 
 ing of the rainbow or the withering of the rose. The 
 doom of eternal change is written with a pen divine upon 
 all that lives. We can regard death only as a voyage that 
 separates us from those we love. We gaze upon a face 
 while over it there falls a stillness deeper than slumber, 
 and the last smile that reaches us from that receding spirit 
 is like the waving of a kerchief far out at sea. The ship 
 sinks beneath the horizon into the unknown beyond, and 
 with sad steps we move away from the dark wharf, not 
 knowing whence our friend has gone. 
 
 The doctrine which teaches that physical death is a pun- 
 ishment for sin, we believe, has done much to weaken the 
 faith of mankind in the doctrine of immortality, by giving 
 to it the air of superstition. A genuine outgrowth of 
 man's nature cannot be at variance with the highest philoso- 
 phy. Man is the highest specimen in the great cabinet of 
 natural history, the chrysalis that holds a prophecy of 
 higher environments. 
 
 We must look beyond the fact of death for hope. We 
 must look to the analysis of that which suffers the change, 
 and see if its nature and relations be such that death can 
 doom it to oblivion. 
 
 In our next chapter we shall try to show that man's 
 
OUR LAST FAREWELL OF HOME. 419 
 
 nature itself holds the credentials of his immortality, that 
 just as the nature of the lungs would prove the existence 
 of air, so man's spiritual organization proves the existence 
 of God and the fact of immortality. 
 
 But in this chapter we are considering only the mid- 
 night tragedy of death, in which the scenery is dark and 
 the actors are cruel. We have reason to believe, however, 
 that the curtain falls before the play is ended, for the last 
 scene is too stupendous for the stage appliances of earth. 
 The lights are too dull to represent the glory of that sub- 
 lime tableau. Hence the cunning plot, that makes the 
 curtain fall with a rush that extinguishes the lights and 
 leaves the death-bed watchers frantic and bathed in tears 
 — a wailing audience in a darkened theater. 
 
 " Lo! 'tis a gala night 
 
 Within the lonesome latter years! 
 An angel throng, bewinged, bedight 
 
 In veils, and drowned in tears, 
 Sit in a theater of hopes and fears, 
 
 While the orchestra breathes fitfully 
 The music of the spheres. 
 
 " Mimes, in the form of God on high, 
 
 Mutter and mumble low, 
 And hither and thither fly; 
 
 Mere puppets they, who come and go 
 At bidding of vast formless things 
 
 That shift the scenery to and fro, 
 Flapping from out their condor wings 
 
 Invisible woe! 
 
 " That motley drama! ah, be sure 
 It shall not be forgot ! 
 With its Phantom chased for evermore, 
 By a crowd that seize it not, 
 
420 OUR HOME. 
 
 Through a circle that ever returneth in 
 
 To the self •same spot; 
 And much of Madness, and more of Sin, 
 
 And Horror, the soul of the plot! 
 
 " But see, amid the mimic rout 
 
 A crawling shape intrude! 
 A blood-red thing that writhes from out 
 
 The scenic solitude! 
 It writhes!— it writhes!— with mortal pangs 
 
 The mimes become its food, 
 And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs 
 
 In human gore imbued. 
 
 "Out— out are the lights,— out all! 
 
 And over each q : « »rm, 
 
 The curtain, I fun. -nil pall, 
 
 Comes down with the rush of a storm — 
 And the angels all pallid and wan, 
 
 Uprising, unveiling, athrm 
 That the play is the tragedy ' Man,' 
 
 And its hero, the Conqueror Worm." 
 
HEAVEN OUR HOME. 
 
 JE have thought it expedient to consider this 
 chapter wholly in the light of reason. And 
 should the devout Christian feel that the 
 coldness of its logic is inconsistent with the 
 subject, we assure him that it is not because 
 we are not in the fullest sympathy with the 
 Christian ideal, but because we have pur- 
 posely aimed to treat the subject from the 
 standpoint of science. 
 
 This is why we have avoided all reference to Scriptural 
 authority, even where such reference would seem peculiarly 
 appropriate. 
 
 It is the skeptic who most requires to be convinced of 
 the cardinal truths of religion. But with him Scriptural 
 evidence has little weight, while he is usually proud of his 
 scientific attainments. So we believe the thoughtful Chris- 
 tian will rejoice in the method we have chosen. 
 
 It is not our purpose in this chapter to attempt any 
 description of that place or condition toward which the 
 instinct of faith in all ages has pointed mankind. Our 
 efforts will be simply to satisfy enquiring minds that the 
 
OUR WOMB. 
 
 objective of that universal instinct through whioh human- 
 ity looks Godward and heavenward, is real and not a delu- 
 i. The great need of our age is a firm belief in the 
 lity of man's religious nature. The most pernicious 
 effects of modern skepticism are seen in its attempts to 
 undermine this belief. Let mankind once be firmly con- 
 vinced on scientific grounds that man is a religious being, 
 that there is a real rignifioanoe in his religious intuitions, 
 that these intuitions soring from faculties that corre- 
 spond to objective r . and that his earthly home fore- 
 shadows an eternal home, and the question of creed will 
 take care of itself. 
 
 However painful may be the fact, it cannot be denied 
 that the startling interrogations of the present age mean 
 something more than can be answered by the old time 
 exhortation. The problem of human destiny is one that 
 deepens with the evolutions of history. The hour has come 
 when the great question must be discussed in prose in- 
 stead of poetry. The awakened spirit of doubt to-day 
 confronts religion with the awful questions : " Is there a 
 God ? " " Is there a heaven ? " " Is it true that the earth- 
 home is but a type, a working model of 4 a home to be?'" 
 
 The answer to these questions must be accompanied by 
 reasons that appeal to human logic, for in the flashing 
 revelations of modern science, the eye of faith has seemed 
 to grow dim. 
 
 And yet it is but the clamor of the immortal instinct 
 
HE A VEN OUR HOME. 423 
 
 itself that gives rise to these questions, for the belief in 
 God and immortality is as universal as that in obligation 
 and human rights. Every human heart is the theater of 
 this immortal instinct. We care not how the heart may be 
 blinded with the self-deception of atheism, — and atheism is 
 always and necessarily self-deception, — when the mask is 
 torn off we find immortality written there. 
 
 We do not mean that the human heart has not also been 
 the theater of doubt and fear. God seems to have or- 
 dained that in every department of life we should find 
 the hand of truth and grasp it in the dark. Into the un- 
 answering ear of the ages man has poured his wailing cry. 
 Through the dark gorges he has climbed to the star-lit 
 height whence a struggling beam has fallen upon the mid- 
 night of human history. 
 
 He has listened in the darkness 
 
 To the music of the spheres, 
 He has solved night's awful secret 
 
 Through the alchemy of fears. 
 
 From the dawn of time he has been trying to say father ; 
 and shall we say that his lisping annuls the infinite argu- 
 ment of instinct? Who would question the reality of the 
 parental instinct when once he had heard the unsuccess- 
 ful attempt of the little child to speak the honored title ? 
 
 As the child instinctively questions his father concern- 
 ing the great untried future of his life, so humanity with 
 the same instinct pours its anxious yearnings into the ear 
 of the universal father. 
 
4M OUR HOME. 
 
 Shall man live beyond the grave ? was the involuntary 
 question of startled humanity in the shadow of the first 
 death. That question was asked, not of the empty air, not 
 of the silent wood, not in the forgetfulness of self-commun- 
 ing curiosity, but beneath the eternal stars, upon the wait- 
 ing knee of faith, it was whispered into an unseen ear. 
 " 4 If a man die, shall he live again ? ' is a question older 
 than Job, newer than the latest grave." Formulated the- 
 ology has entertained it as the fundamental problem, but 
 cannot settle it. Science hat grappled with it in vain. 
 Above the proudest flights of reason, above the sweep of 
 tube and lens, beyond the language of the spectroscope, 
 where human eye has never rested, lies the mysterious 
 realm through the silent gate of death. 
 
 The instinct of immortality was not born of any creed. 
 The church cannot claim it as her offspring. It is the nec- 
 essary outgrowth of the human organization. It was old 
 when love for the first time bent over the couch of death 
 and left its roses and kisses there. In spite of conflicting 
 creeds and dogmas, the universal soul of man rebels 
 against oblivion with an instinct that implicates nature. 
 Either love and devotion and honor and heroism and 
 genius are immortal, or nature, at whose hands we receive 
 the unanswerable instinct, is false. The argument of in- 
 stinct is in its very nature conclusive. It is of the same 
 nature as that of sense. 
 
 This is an age peculiarly sensitive to the charge of su- 
 
HE A VEN OUR H OME. 425 
 
 perstition. Skepticism is rife among the masses, but 
 this fact is itself fraught with a weighty meaning. " His- 
 tory repeats itself " is an adage, but its vast significance is 
 understood and felt by few souls. The life of nature is 
 but the ceaseless movement round a spiral, a circle with an 
 ever increasing diameter. Through doubts and questions 
 the world crept into the light of faith. One grand revolu- 
 tion of the divinely ordained process has been completed 
 and doubts and questions now begin again, but this time 
 farther from the center, on a grander scale. • 
 
 These doubts and questionings will lead humanity to 
 prouder heights and more glorious beatitudes when they 
 shall have completed another revolution. The world's 
 highest faith to-day began in the doubts and questions of 
 brutal ignorance. What, then, shall be the issue of those 
 which were born of the telescope and the laboratory ? 
 The proud champions of unbelief are doing a grand work. 
 Every triumph of Ingersoll will in the great revolutions of 
 God's design be found to be a sermon for the truth. He 
 is fast defeating his own ends by hastening the world over 
 its second desert of doubt. 
 
 Science will struggle on with glass and lens till it learns 
 that love gives no lines in the spectroscope, that honor is 
 without physical properties, and conscience is unaffected 
 by the galvanic current. 
 
 Skeptical scientists object to the doctrine of immortal- 
 ity, because they cannot demonstrate it with their science. 
 
4M OUR HOME. 
 
 We cannot scientifically demonstrate that we love our 
 friends, but we know we love them. We cannot prove 
 that beauty exists, yet do we not know that it exists? It 
 may be that the scientist is unable to prove the existence 
 of God, but every spirit knows that God is. No mathe- 
 matical formula can prove the immortality of the soul, but 
 the unformulated science of intuition assures it. 
 
 The conservatism of the universal mind retains the 
 achievements of science, and will, by and by, use them in 
 the demonstration of those very truths which now they 
 are used to disprove. 
 
 Whether against the will of science, or in accordance 
 with it, her grandest revelation is that the Christian re- 
 ligion is based in the organic constitution of man. 
 
 Every element of the soul, every faculty of the mind, has 
 its mate in the form of a cosmical law. We possess the 
 faculty of reason, and accordingly there exists the law of 
 causation. We possess an instinctive love of music, a dis- 
 tinct and separate faculty of the mind, and there exists 
 the law of harmony. Our mathematical instinct finds its 
 counterpart in the eternal relations of time and space, 
 number and quantity. There are just as many faculties 
 of the mind, hence functions of the brain, as there are 
 laws in the universe. No more, no less. There is no uni- 
 
 raal principle that has not its representative organ in the 
 human brain. Hence the mental faculties and the natural 
 laws are mutual keys. We believe that the evolutionists 
 
HE A VEN UR HOME. 42 7 
 
 have unnecessarily weakened their own cause by a false 
 definition of faculty. They would make the primitive fac- 
 ulties of the mind only so many habits. But the question 
 arises, whence the first impulse that was the necessary 
 antecedent to the first act of the faculty ? Acts cannot 
 become habitual nor hereditary until they have been per- 
 formed at least once. But it requires a faculty to perform 
 them for the first time. Hence the essential characteristic 
 of the faculty, — the power to give impulses and the skill 
 to perform, — must have existed prior to the influences of 
 habit and heredity. The fact of manifestation through 
 the instrumentality of a cerebral organ is the one and 
 only unmistakable evidence of a primitive faculty. 
 
 Light is doubtless the natural agency by which the 
 power of vision has been developed. Yet light could no 
 more originate that germ of a distinct mental faculty that 
 lies behind all phenomena of vision, and by which we 
 translate that phenomena, than it could create the acorn 
 whose involved potency it simply evolves. The eye existed 
 potentially or the light could not have developed it. Man 
 is as he is because of his environments, but we cannot say 
 that man is because of his environments. We are at least 
 driven to the assumption that matter held a human po- 
 tency independent of all environment. That potency was 
 the germs of human faculties, God-created and God-im- 
 planted. The magic finger of the sunbeam touched them 
 and they awoke, and hammering upon the anvils of mat- 
 
488 OUR HOME. 
 
 ter began to forge, from the materials of their environ- 
 ments, the only weapons they can use, — organs. Thus 
 we see why an organ is the only infallible criterion and 
 credential of a faculty. And we see the force of the fore- 
 going reasoning when we remember that the human brain 
 holds an organ whose function is Divine worship. Envi- 
 ronments could not have created that organ. They could 
 only have developed it. Its " living germ " lay back of 
 all environments, as a divine prophecy, and proof of the 
 reality of that to which it corresponded. 
 
 Since faculties are as their organs, and since organs are 
 formed by the living principle, out of the material of their 
 environments, it is not wonderful that man should be as 
 his environments. Different environments would doubtless 
 have caused a different mode of action in the faculty of 
 Divine worship. Indeed, we have a proof of this. In the 
 heathen mind this faculty gives an instinctive desire to 
 find an objective in idols of wood and stone. Yet after all 
 the essence of its action is Divine worship. And there is 
 a limit beyond which environments cannot produce modi- 
 fications. They may, however, thwart the effort of the 
 faculty to forge a material organ, hence the significance of 
 extinct species. 
 
 The atheist tells us there is no God, but science puts its 
 finger on the God-organ, an organ whose function it is to 
 produce that moral sensation known as reverence for God. 
 It produces this effect invariably in savage and in civilized 
 
HEAVEN OUR HOME. 429 
 
 man. Has nature thus erred ? Has she given us a God- 
 organ, and no God to meet its demand? A stomach 
 forever doomed to hunger in the presence of imaginary 
 food ; lungs strangling for air in the depths of a universal 
 vacuum ; an ear forever straining to catch the voice of har- 
 mony while nature shrinks beneath the wing of everlasting 
 silence ; an eye forever gazing into the blackness of uni- 
 versal night, while no wave of ether touches with its trem- 
 bling fingers the bosom of the stars. 
 
 What should we say of such inconsistency in nature ? 
 And yet to give us a love of God, when there is no God to 
 love, would be as base a falsehood. Every one believes in 
 the eternal consistency of nature. The atheist has but 
 transferred his worship from God to nature, and no argu- 
 ment can convince him that she would for once be incon- 
 sistent, but he must tell us why she gave us a God-organ 
 and no God. 
 
 Every precept and every exhortation of the Christian 
 religion is the recognition of some particular function of 
 our being, and every prohibition is the recognition of its 
 liability to perverted or diseased action. 
 
 The ethics of the Christian religion is based on the prin- 
 ciple of right and wrong, and science lays its finger on the 
 organ of conscientiousness. Prayer is as much an organic 
 function of the soul as digestion is of the physical system, 
 and for the same reason there is a prayer organ. 
 
 Will the atheist tell us that nature has given us a prayer- 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 organ and has given us nothing to pray to ? One has said 
 that kk if there were no God, it would be necessary to in- 
 vent one," for the prayer-organ demands a God as much as 
 the lungs demand air. 
 
 Christ said, " Love thy neighbor as thyself," which was 
 only the organic language of benevolence. He taught 
 the doctrine of spirituality, and science points to the organ 
 of spirituality. And so it is that every teaching of Chris- 
 tianity responds to an organic necessity of our being. The 
 decalogue is written on every human brain. Immortality 
 is an organic instinct. As the migratory bird Hies toward 
 the south guided by the faultless pilot instinct, so the soul 
 flies heavenward by an instinct as faultless. 
 
 Christianity is a reality or our instincts are false. God 
 lives or nature lies. We leave our earthly home but .to 
 find a better and a brighter one, or over all that is there 
 hang the spectral lenses of deception, and falsehood's ele- 
 ments were blinded in the womb of being. 
 
 Whether heaven be a material place or a spiritual condi- 
 tion is a problem that falls outside the pale of our intui- 
 tions. For aught we can know, it may be the grand center 
 of centers around which revolve in eternal gyrations the 
 unmeasured systems. Or it may be that it exists inde- 
 pendently of space, that its place is wholly spiritual, and 
 that just under the thin veil of materiality around us, 
 above us and beneath us lies the ineffable realm of the 
 nal. 
 
HE A VEN UR HOME. 43 1 
 
 Whatever may be the essence of heaven, we may rest 
 assured that it will afford the opportunities and conditions 
 of eternal soul growth. The buds that on earth have 
 fallen before their time shall blossom there in fadeless 
 beauty. Genius shall exhibit its divine allegiance, and 
 love shall be crowned the eternal queen. 
 
 There comes a time to the reverent soul when the veil 
 is lifted, and in the awful hush of that moment we call 
 death, when the fetters are falling from the spirit's limbs, 
 amid strains of music soft as the rustle of wings, it is per- 
 mitted to look upon the unveiled splendor. And often, 
 very often, it beckons to us and whispers with its latest 
 breath, " I hear them now" always laying peculiar stress 
 upon the word " now," which indicates that through the 
 presence of this divine instinct it had been listening. On 
 how many a dying couch have the sacred words, "The 
 pure in heart shall see God," found their last and best veri- 
 fication ! 
 
 But science cannot reproduce the vision of the dying. 
 Their own faint whispers cannot portray it. We must go 
 down to the dark water. The details of the passage are 
 known only to those who embark in the unseen ship. We 
 cannot tell how, nor when, nor where, nor amid what sights 
 and sounds we shall enter the unseen realm. We only 
 know that while beyond the chill flood silence reigneth and 
 
 No sound of gently dipping oar 
 Hints to us of the other shore, 
 
OUR HOME. 
 
 there is still the voice of a <livine fact within that whis- 
 pers, 4i I 1." The spirit lays its listening tar against 
 the great heart of being, and learns an awful secret that it 
 not tell. A secret, at the sound of which it leaps 
 triumphant from the arms of pain, flame-wreathed and 
 singing, thorn-crowned and rejoicing. 
 
 " It must be so: Plato, thou reasonest well, 
 Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond dl 
 This longing after I mm o rta l 
 Or whence this secret dread and inward horror 
 Of falling into naaghJ F Why shrinks the soul 
 Back on itself, I tion? 
 
 Tisthedr. t >tirs within at; 
 
 heaven itself that points out an hereafter 
 And intimates eternity to man."