The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1872-03-08
At Home.


hut they are all mechanical when COM
pared with the mission of home. Home
Is an organism. 1t takes root and grows
like tree, and there are warm emana-
tions from it that makes the surround
ing spaces glad. Plant a dozen good
houses in the wilderness and it becomes
a centre of civilization. Everything
can be made from the elements these
homes supply. God has set the solitary
in families, and no continuance made by
the wit of man has ever equaled the
amellorating effect of this simple ar
rangement. A Quaker preacher from
England once Travelled over this country,
speaking TO his brethren in various
places, and his one word was, "make
your wants few" Some such apostle is
needed now to bid our people create bet
ter homes or build larger jails. Every
good home helps depopulate the prisons
and make police unnecessary.
1t is a mistake to suppose that women
are the only hOme-makers. Women
alone can create something which will
fill the place of home far better than
anything man can cOntrive under SINH
lar circumstances. They nestle into
lonely places and produce comfort, or
der, and even beauty, where men would
sit down helpless and content in the
midst of chaos. The maiden woman's
cottage is often a marvel of neatness,
taste, and refinement; little prim, to
be sure, needing the confusion wrought
by rolieking children to give it the touch
of nature; but it is a picture of paradise
/ in comparison with a bachelors hall,
which, at the best, is a cross between an
office, a variety shop, and sepulchre.
Neatness is more deeply ingrained in
woman's nature than in mans. Eve
| invented the broom and the mop and
brought them out of Eden with her. A
man alone would allow the litter TO ac-
cumulate until it became too thick for
him to endure, and then migrate to a
cleaner place. But woman permits no
such invasion of her realm, even though
her only defense is a bunch of twigs.
But neatness and order which enter a
household with the whisk of woman's
skirt, as bees come with clover, make
merely the shell of home, and often but
a cold and dreary shell at that. The
soul of home is alone supplied by man
and woman working together, with
tastes and sympathies and ideas all har-
monized and attained by love and rea-
son. One reason why homes are so of
ten unsatisfactory is because the man
I ~
woman can succeed in home-making,
the finest of the fine arts, when she
works at odds with man who uses his
home for the exhibition of traits he can
not safely show in other places. There
are men so coarse in grain, so rough and
discOurteous in constitution, whatever
their appearance may be, that they are
decent only when under restraint, and
forget their manners and the better part
of their manhood the moment they shut
the world outside their own frOnt-doOr
They look on home as the one place in
the world where they can throw off the
mask they are bound TO wear elsewhere,
aud vent the spleen and ill-temper and
pettiness they would be ashamed to
have the public see. They quit the drill
and dress parade of life, and retire into
their barrack to infiict on its inmates
all the pent-up irritation and ill-humor
and vulgarity of their half-civiliZed and
half-trained souls; and there they un-
bend and act out the lower and meaner
elements of their nature, furnishing a
confirmation of the truth of Darwin's
theory by behaving strangely like dog
or wolf or pOrcupine.
Many a man who appears decently in
public is revenged upon society by act
ing the brute or bully toward his de-
fenseless wife and children. This i'm
munity from restraint has tempted
many a man into low habits and harsh,
tyrannical ways toward his family, who
under other circumstances would have
been quite respectable and kind. Men
who have not the native refinement and
nobility of soul to treat loving wife
and defenseless children with more
kindness and consideration than they
show to mere passing acquaintance OF
the street, are unfit to have a wife and
children, and the place they sleep in
should be called a sty. The true man
always goes up to his home, and while
| in it lives in the highest and finest and
! loveliest traits of his manhood. BE a
beast and home will be pen; be an an
gel and it will be a paradise.
What our American homes want TO
day is more of the interest, the thought
the affection of men. Instead of max
ing them the eXhibition-room for peev
ishness, bad temper, stupidity, and petty
tyranny, or even leaving them to tn,
sole care of women and then finding
fault because they are unsatisfactory
how much better and happier for al
parties would it be if every man would
, give the best of his head and heart I,
make his home delightful and holy.
The true home is always on the high
est plane of life, and the man finds il
not by uncaging the beasts that croucl
in his blood, but by unfolding the wing
of the angel in his heart and brain. :
mans house is his castle; let him keel
it in a knightly fashion, with true chiv
alric honor, keeping every vow sacred
and holding a shield like the panoply o
justice over the weak and small. 1t is
castle if he will keep it so; let him no
make it a cage.
I Home is a music-box made up of tn,
love and aspiration and noble qualitie.
of all its inmates. 1t is full of har
mony and the consOnance of swee
sounds. There is a perpetual concer
going on within its walls. The treble
of the woman's voice must be supported
by the bass of the mans. She cannot
make home complete by herself any
more than she can carry all parts in
singing at one time. Without his helI
her attempt at making home what il
ought to be will produce a solo; to.
gether they will produce perfect sym.
phony.
WHITTIER WE TEND.-Eternity ha.
no grey hairs. The flowers fade tbs