East Saginaw courier. (East Saginaw, Mich.) 1859-18??, 1865-01-25
OUR HOUSE.


wounded soldier, turning in his un-
easy hospital-bed, brightens at the
werd-it is like the dropping of cold
water in the desert, like tho touch OF
cool fingers on a burning brow. "Our
house." he says feebly, and the light
comes back into his dim eyes-for all
homely charities, all fond thoughts,
all purities, all that man loves on
earth or hopes for in heaven, rise with
the word.
sour house" may be in any style
Of architecture, low or high. 1t may
be the brown old farmhouse, with its
tall well-sweep, or the one-story gam
brel-roofed cottage, or the large,
square white house, with green blinds,
under the wind-swung elms of a Gen.
tury, or it may be the log-cabin OF
the wilderness, with it's one ROOM
still there is spell in the memory OF
it beyond all conjurations. Its stone
and brick and mortar are like no
other; its very clapboards are dear To
us, powerful to bring back the memo-
ries of early days, and all that is sa-
cred in home love.
There is no one fact of our human
existence that has a stronger influence
upon us than the house we dwell in
especially that in which our earlier
and more impressible years are spent.
The building and arrangement of a
house influence the health, the COM
fort, the morals, the religion. There
have been houses built SO devoid of
all consideration for the occupants, so
rambling and hap-hazard in the dis
posal of rooms, sunless and cheer
less and wholly without snugness or
privacy, as to make it seem impossible
to live joyous, generous, rational,
religious family life in them.
Thoro are, wo shame tn say, in our
cities things called houses, built and
rented by people who walk erect and
have the general air and manner OF
civilized Christianized men, which are
so inhuman in their building that
they can only be called snares and
traps for souls-places where chill
dren cannot help growing up impure
places, where to form home is inn
possible, and to live a decent Christian
life would require miraculous strength.
A celebrated British philanthropist,
who had devoted much study to the
dwellings, Of the poor, gave it as his
opinion that temperance societies were
a hopeless Undertaking in London,
unless these dwellings underwent q
transformation. They were so squalid,
so dark, so comfortless, SO constantly
pressing upon tho senses foulness,
pain, and inconvenience, that it was
only by being drugged with gin and
opium that their miserable inhabitants
SVuiI niiu i4Ss..s a.. h-.-r, - iie- .. -.
day to day. He had himself tried the
experiment of reforming a drunkard
by taking him from one of these loath-
some dens and enabling him to rent
a tenement in block of model lodg-
ing-houses which had been built un-
der his supervision. The young man
had been a designer Of figures for
prints: he was Of delicate frame, and
Il nervous, susceptible temperament.
Shut in one miserable room with
his wife and little children, without
the possibility of pure air, with only
filthy, fetid water to drink, with the
noise Of other miserable families re-
sounding through the thin partitions,
what possibility was there of doing
onything except by the help of stimu-
lants, which for a brief hour lifted
him above these miseries? Changed
at once to neat flat, where, for the
same rent as his former den, he had
three good rooms, with water for
drinking, house service and bathing
freely supplied, and the blessed sun
shine and air coming in through win
dows well arranged for ventilation, he
became in few weeks a new man. -
In the charms of the little spot which
he could call home, its quiet, its order,
his former talent came back to him,
and he found strength, in pure air and
water, and those purer thoughts OF
which they are emblems, to abandon
the burning and Supplying stimulants.