Delaware gazette. [volume] (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886, 1865-04-28
OUR HOUSE.

There is a place called Cur House"
which everybody knows of The sailor
talks of it in his dreams at sea. The
wounded soldier, turning ON his uneasy
hospital bed, brightens at the word it is
like the dropping of cold water in the
desert, like the touch of cold fingers on a
burning brow. Our House" he says
feebly, and the light comes back into his
dim eyes, for all homely charities, all good
thoughts, all purities, all that man loves
ON earth or hopes for in heaven, rise with
the word.
Our house may be in style of archi-
lecture, low or high. 1t may be the old
brown farm house, with its tall well-sWeep,
or the one story, gabel-rOofed cottage, or
the large, square white house with green
blinds, under the wind swung elms of
century, or it may be the log cabin of the
wilderness, with its one room, still there is
a spell in the memory of it beyond all
conjuratiOns. Its stone and brick and
mortar are like no other its very clap
boards are dear to US, powerful to bring
back the memories of early days, and all
that is sacred in home love.
There is no one fact OF our human ex-
istence that has a stronger influence upon
us than the house we dwell in, especially
that in which our earlier and more i'm
pressible years are spent. The building
and arrangement Of a house influence the
health, the comfort, the morals, the re
ligion. There have been houses built SO
devoid of all consideration for the Occu-
pants, so rambling and hap-hazard to tie
disposal of rooms, so useless and cheer
less, and wholly without snugness or pri-
vacy as to make it seem impossible to live
a joyous, generous, rational, religious,
family life in them.
There are in our cities things called
houses, built and rented by people who
walk erect and have the general air and
manner of civilized and christainized men,
which are so inhuman in their building
that they can only be called snares and
traps for souls, places where children can
not escape growing up filthy and impure
places where to form home Is impossible,
and to live 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 tenn
perance societies were Il hopeless under
taking in London, unless these dwellings,
underwent transformation. They were
so squalid, so dark, so comfortless, so con-
stantly pressing upon the senses Of foul
ness, pain and Inconvenience, that it was
only by being drugged with gin and opium
that their miserable inha bitants could find
1ASe1AV, " II VII NeJ " Jay AAN
had himself tried the experiment of re-
forming a drunkard by taking him from
one of these loathsome dens and enabled
him to rent tenement in block of
model lodging houses which had been
built under his supervision. The young
man had been designer of figures for
prints he was of a delicate frame, and IA
nervous, susceptible temperament. Shut
in one miserable room with wife and little
children, without the possibility of pure
air, with only filthy, fetid water to drink,
with the noise of other miserable families
resounding through the thin partitions,
what possibility was there for doing any
thing except by the help of stimulants,
which for but a brief hour lifted him
above these miseries? Changed at once
to neat house 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 sunshine and air coming in
through windows well arranged for ven
tilation, he became in few weeks a new
man In the charms Of the little spot, 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 burning and stupe-
! flying stimulants, House and Home Pa
pers IN AHaRtjc Monthly. a