to and either despise or put off for want of time all higher culture behold a prosperous a comfortable home but filled with most uncomfortable spirits the dinner is most and and provided but not the cheerfulness the love the peace of mind the activity of thought the readiness of observation and reply which alone can lend a relish alas there is no dinner without good spirits no feast without some flow of soul no pleasure in each others society without love no wonder that the meal is hurried off despatched in sullen silence if not in a storm of petty complaints and the evenings too are dull at home or home is often deserted for the poor of empty fashionable amusement business is with the prospect of prosperous leisure and the occupation of leisure is the consumption thereof in any and most senseless way for what is time but so much life and those who know not how to live must kill time the habitual anxiety of this man s mind carries gloom into his home he lets the goodly garden run to weeds and all those flowers of paradise the natural affections as in a frost the rainbow colored beams of thought the quick play of intellect and fancy are wanting there such is too apt to be the home of the man of the world were it not that there is sometimes a faithful angel there whose heavenly patience whose devoted love whose pure forgetfulness of self in the thought of her children s welfare whose piety and trust in god with all the clearness of mind and energy of will with which such sentiments inspire the whose whole influence sweetly every part and every arrangement a spell and a charm in the domestic which compel him in spite of himself to shake off the dust of world of every day no u from his shoes when he enters � there would be little comfort there there would be little hope for those who are learning their earliest and most permanent habits and impressions there the passion for gain i repeat it is the poison of domestic happiness and that too when it often starts with the desire of getting the means of making a happy home with the feeling of obligation imposed by conscience and by love to support and one s family and place them in a favored and respectable relation with the world all that trade and enterprise can manufacture or produce all that wealth can buy can never make good the want of inward moral and intellectual resources iii from the best home which worldly enterprise can make turn now to another less favored with fortune s abundance but supplied with rich resources of a higher and more satisfactory kind see what education can do see the treasures of the mind brought out see how the poor in this world s goods are sometimes rich in one another the house and furniture are plain but marked by taste and happy invention and arrangement revealing many a token of the pleasant walk the deep enjoyment of nature while calm enthusiasm lifts the soul out of the and holes of daily care and puts it in possession of itself of its own freedom and immortal life the space is small but by the magic of great thoughts of noble sentiments read and conversed about and mused upon in the midst of busy duties expanded to a boundless fairy land there may not be great store of luxuries but there are books wells of pleasure inexhaustible there may not be and with which the great endeavor to forget themselves but there are habits of mental activity which never lets society grow dull or the most familiar friends grow weary of one another they draw upon the treasures of the mind and find what worlds of wonders lie within them they may not own the splendid the proud architecture the costly works of art which another s wealth can purchase but they may have a cultivated taste a sensibility to the charms of earth and sky which they have only to step to the door or the window to see or they are in the possession of some beautiful art vol i no iv lay no u april like music or drawing which gives them the key to all the glorious invisible but no less real halls and galleries of beauty and they can be delighted and inspired at home as if the of were leaping around them or the of the sparkling beneath them they are without the advantages of and of business which lies in the same direction with learning but they are determined that scholars and professional characters shall not the treasures of the mind the materials of the thoughts are open to them nature and the soul and god are never beyond their reach but are always inviting them to meditation and communion if they are duly willing and have the energy to put down the disturbing voices of appetite and passion and to slip the reins of habit the bible is with them and to them it is not a book occupying so many of space on a shelf and so many minutes of the day in the formal reading but it is another world into which they enter transported on the wings of thoughts and heavenly passions quickened by its words it is a in their midst which sheds a sweet holy light around it and making all the place and all their forms the daily meal will be but to an exquisite zest by happy affections happy thoughts and endless variety of intellectual entertainment not that there need be any or effort to talk wise it only needs active minds which know how to feel free from care free from suspicions and low fears abundance of good feeling alive and tastes refined � and let them take care of themselves 