Delaware gazette. [volume] (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886, 1871-01-20
ROME COURTEsIEs.

Now, you young fellow at the table
reading the evening paper, and nodding
in suTly way to your mother and SIS
ter, take a test. If your clothes breath
ed a delicious fragranCe-say of hello
trope or roses-but would do SO only
when you were at home, or only when
you went abroad, which would you
choose? Would you smell sweet at
home, or when you went away from
home? Would you have a perpetual
climate of rare odors in your own house.
or elsewhere OF course you would
have it at home for your own comfort
and enjoyment, you curmudgeon, if for
nothing else. But what is domestic
courtesy but the breath of heliouopes
and roses at home 1t IS as much for
your pleasure that you should be pleas
ant as it is for that of others. The hap
piest household in the world is that in
which courtesy is new every morning
and fresh every evening, like the celes-
tial benediCtons.
How many of US, brethren and sisters,
make home the rag-bag of ill-humors
and caprices, and wretched moods of
every kind, while we carefully hide
them from the stranger! When the
guest arrives we slide a chair over the
rent IN the carpet, and slip a tidy over
the worn edge of a sofa-cushion, and
lay prettily bound book over the ink
stain upon the parlor table-cloth and so
at his coming the flying hair is smothed,
and the sullen look is gilded with a
smile, and the sour tone is suddenly
wonderfully sweet. Shriveled old Au-
tumn blooms in a moment into rosy
Spring. And how IS a youth to know
that this house, where every thing seems
to smile, is not always as warm and
sunny as he finds it Yet this young
woman, so neatly dressed, so quietly
hammered, so fascinating to the young
man, may be the most inefficient of
human beings. Still he can never
know it until it IS too late. He can
not put it to the proof. He takes the
divinity upon trust. All that he knows
is that she is a woman, and that he
loves. And whether he thinks that
household intelligence, and thrift and
endless courtesy come by nature, like
Dogberry's reading and writing, or
whether he assumes that, having a
mother, his peerless princess has been
carefully taught all the duties of a
queen, or whether, as is most probable,
ne knows only that he loves, the duty
of the parent is still the same.
But to the ordeal of the household
who can come too well prepared? And
what parent, what human being who
has learned by experience, but would
equip every child with the most perfect
equipment? No, Dorinda Jane, to
whom the youth, crusty at home, will
presently come sweetly smiling, it is
not the flowing hair, and the graceful
dress, and the bloom upon the cheek,
and the soft lustre of the eye, that will
make home happy. No, nor is it his
horses and plate, and the luxury and
ease he promises. If he is harsh and
short and grabbed, what if he has fifty
thousand year? If you are careless
and ignorant and helpless, the victim
instead of ruler Of your house, what if
your eyes are black and your cheeks
dim carnation And you. dear Sir and
Madam, who permit that boor to sit
surly at the table, and to growl in mon
Osyllables at home, you who suffer that
fair-Iaced girl to grow up utterly unequal
to the duties to which she will be called,
YOU are responsible Ragber's Jzaga-
zine.