The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-05-10

the focus of life far around. Each
comes to stand for two facts The first.
is Strength, and the second is Beauty-a new
revelation at the freside. There must first be
a stronghold, then galleries. museums, and
the decorations of art. The boarded capital
of the cabin epoch now blooms in luxury and
splendor and airy forms-it is the radiant Age
OF Silver. Thecastleis the birthplace of much
that is true and tender in our modern civiliza-
tion-iirst cradle of the arts, home of the
graces, true shrine of social life. Here too,
between the stormy blasts of war, were
born or nurtured many of the finer vir-
tues-loyalty to woman, obedience,
reverence, truth the chastity of honor
self-sacrifce, and-sublimest of all-martyr-
dom for an idea Within these four walls lived
cultured courtesy.
". At last the barons cut each others
throats for their ladies' sake, or die for king
and crown, or leave house and land for fatal
crusades. Then come the burghers, mortga-
gees of fair estates, apostles of the new era,
lovers of peace. They are family men, true to
domestic ties fond of home. For the shelter
of their dear ones they build a home, and live
in it. 1t matters not what its form may be
whether it be of wood, or brick, or marble
whether it have Doric peristyle, or Gothic
spire, or Egyptian column. The spirit is all,
the form nothing; for the material home is
but the husk to cover the glory that
lives within. Where home is, there only
and there always are there homes.
The home is the era of good feeling, the Age
of Love, which, beginning at the hearth, goes
out to the ends Of the universe. Neither
silver nor gold can rightly typify this fairest
of epochs naught can be its emblem save
that precious metal of the alchemists, COM
bining in itself the virtues of all the rest.
At the hearthstone all things centre: it is the
final cause of society. The arts and sciences,
culture, taste, heroic deeds, the far-reaching
thought, the soaring imagination, the sweet
affections, the fine courtesies and all
ndedness-these, and all the gene
home era. The family is the true fostering
mothering of the highest worth. The Lares
are the best helps to all high thinking high
living, and well doing. BY the freside each
true thing finds best expression.
V. Generations pass, and the cycle of civili-
zation completes itself. Home deliquesces
into the Boarding House, and the series of the
tabernacles is at an end. For the old noma-
die instinct has never wholly died out; though
long dormant it still lives, and bursts out
once more in undiminished vigor.
The epoch of vagrancy returns; new
editions of the tent, revised and cor
rected, are scattered broadcast over the land.
For what is the boarding house but a tent with
modern Improvements and an Ii Each is
the very emblem of unrest, the home of the
vagrant, the theatre of war. These two en-
campments, standing respectively in the van
and at the rear as the beginning and the end
of civilization, serve to mark the limits of
society, when extremes meet, and life returns
into itself If you will recall the outline of
the first epoch, as sketched in Section |, you
will find that many of its most characteristic
features reappear under the regime of the
boarding house in the epoch of to-day.
The primary meaning of the boarding house
is, then, locomotion and unrest. Stung by
the gad-fy within which never dies nor tires,
the modern 10 is goaded up and down, and
wanders uneasily over the face of the earth,
finding no rest for the sole of her foot. Your
representative nineteenth-century boarding
house man is only a developed Bedouin,
veneered and vanished Gypsy. He takes root
nowhere; he has no flavor of the soil; he
grows into no natural fruitage. He is only
consuming waif, self-driven from tent to tent,
and picked up by one landlady after another.
He, the fotsam and jetsam of humanity, is
tossed about on the currents, and tumbled
against the headlands of life, with the wreckers
and salvors in his wake. The great question
always arises within US in regard to the dis
position of his body, What will he do with it
Where next will he carry it?
Look, for a moment at the term, 'board-
ing-house." Turn it over, pick it to pieces,
and what do you make of it 1t is simply
the word "board, " and the word 'house,"
most awkwardly tackled together, without
moulding or blending in any degree. The
terms do not mix any more than oil and
water. Now from this LONELINESS of make
and texture, this awkwardness of juncture,
this absence of welding, one or two infe-
rences naturally follow. For, since all
language is but the reflex of life, since
words are but the images of things and
ideas, and the character of the thing or idea
always modifes the character of its word in a
certain definite way-it follows that from the
form, the moulding, and the currency of the
word, we can argue a poSteriOri as to the form,
the moulding, and the currency of its parent
idea. The word boarding house." then,
is uncomely simply because its idea is un-
comely. The plain fact is simply this
that our Anglo-Saxon likes not the idea
of the boar6ng-ho in life, and therefore
shows no favor to the word boarding house
in language. The Saxon likes his home
and believes in it, and therefore makes for it
one of the sweetest and dearest of all words.
| He dislikes and disbelieves in the boarding
house, and, with characteristic frankness, will
not stOop to veil his want of love and faith
under any graceful circumlocution.
If it is argued that the want of honor for the
| clearinghouse in our Saxon tongue comes
| simply from the infeXible nature OF the Ian
| guage, making it impossible to mould a better
term, reply that whenever a strong desire is
| felt on the part Of the community to italicize
some faVorite thing, or to glorify pet idea
no difficulty is found in magnifying the coT-
responding expression. And this is done
either by inventing, or by substituting, or by
transferring to the idea or thing in question
some delicacy of diction, or some smooth and
| respectful word or naranhrase If there is a