Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1873-08-22
Farm and FSresade.
Ig.FPPH' HOMES.

How shall we make home happy? 1t is
a greater subject than most persons sup
pose. 1t is a science, if not a cluster of a
dozen sciences and arts. And if, in the
young ladies seminaries, with their profess
sorships of music and painting and drawing
and Italian, they had a professor of home
life, there might be hundreds of future
husbands to bless his name.
We might do more than we do TO make
the walls of the house itself attractive.
You, money saving father, will not spend
dollar for picture TO hang in your home;
you keep your rooms as bare as bleached
skeleton; and then, when your boy is
trolled off by the devil 10 some gilded sin
you charge it 10 total depravity. 1t is your
depravity as much as his. No youth seeks
iniquity for iniquity's sake. He wants the
amusement, the excitement, the social glee
he finds with it. He is not the only one of
Gods creatures who is thrown into false
position, and seen in a false light. Even
swine is naturally as neat an animal as you
can find. Put him in pen with brook
running through it, and he will keep him
self far more presentable than most men.
But he must have moisture. His nature
demands it. And for the sake of that, he
buries himself in the mire. So young
man goes into pollution, not because he
loved it at first, but because he wants rec
reation, and is willing to defle himself
rather than not have that.
What is the remedy? 1t is to give him,
at home, the entertainment without the in
Equity. Flowers, books, pictures, pictorial
papers, games, amusements, all ought to
lend the rooms charm. Take some of the
money you spend on your parlor for stran-
gers, and spend it on your sitting room for
your own children.
There is no need of great fortune TO
make an attractive home. He is a poor
artist who can do nothing without huge
spread of canvass and blaze of fashy
colors. He is poor novelist who relies on
ghosts and murder to keep up the interest
of his plot. And he is poor SOUL with a
wretched genius for the art of living, who
can make home pleasant only with par
ade of wealth and show, When people are
taken unawares, they can be forced to see
how exquisite are things they most despise.
A friend of mine gave lady bouquet. In
the center of it was one flower that she was
sure she had never seen before, and which
she thought perfect beauty. Where could
with that species? When she had gone
sufficiently into raptures over it, he in
formed her that 1t was potato blossom.
A nd there is high authority for saying that
if you examine the grass of the field that
to- day is and tomorrow is cast into the ov-
en-, you will find that Solomon, in all his
glory, was not arayed like that.
Why not make your parental training TO
be one long initiation, year after year, into
the sweetness and grace of the commonest
things? Why not teach your children to
see and to hear what they would, but for
you, never discover? You can spread the
range and depth of their observation. You
can show them how to bring out the latent
charm from under duh exterior. It is
by opening to them the skill and tast that
are at work in all nature, under the surface,
by arranging and adjusting colors, by
pointing out contrasts and analogies, by
unfolding the laws of the seasons, and of
their own being, physical, mental and
moral, that you can educate them into
more and finer happiness than they will
find in dress and fashion in a lifetime. In
corner, amongst old rubbish, is root that
is dry and dying, soiled and gnared and
ill-shaped and half-withered No one has
thought 1t worth planting. But the gar
dener sees it, and his eyes glisten as he
takes it up and looks it over. In ten min
utes he has it in the earth, well watered
and cared for. And in due time, comes out
the germ, the stem, the leaves, and then the
flower in all its rounded, royal beauty, the
queen of the whole garden. And there is
many homely thing from which comes
beauty that the soul can see, though the
outward eyes do not discover 1t. And a
home in which there are souls with such
insight, is a home OF refinement and of
happiness, whether men call 1t a palace or
a cottage.
And we need, at our tire-sides, more of
the plain, old-fashioned virtue of good ma
ture. There are families who spend so
much politeness in company, that they
have none TO spare for one another. 1t is
brought out only on special occasions, with
the finest crockery and linen. At the store,
in his business, the father must be civil.
His interest forces him to 1t. So he has a
complete suit of store-manners, and very