Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1874-08-06
department.
(Original.(
HOME.


HOME.
Often have we heard it repeated with much
emphasis, that "there is no place like home" }"
This is one of those bold and popular declar-
ations that must be received with grain of
allowance. If the place where some people
spend their existence, be their home, surely
it is not true that there is no place like it, in
the sense that it is the most comfortable place
on earth. Evidently, and beyond all contra
diction, the homes of many people have
nothing about them, neither externally nor
internally, which can render them attractive
to being possessed of an immortal soul, and
a mind that delights in the good and beauti-
full Such, We are sorry to say, is the charac-
ter of large number of the homes of the
farmers of our country. In the general ar
rangement of their homes, neither utility nor
comfort we're taken into consideration. In
the construction of the house in which it was
designed to rear family, no reference seems
to have been had to its durability, comfort
or beauty. In winter, it is cold house, and
in summer, it is hot house. Its walls at
ford hiding place for rats, and its closets,
if it have any, a den for mice. These crea-
lures, small as they are, consume in the course
of lifetime, small fortune-more than
enough to build rat-proof house.
Clearly, life is at best, sufficiently full of
miseries without adding to the inherited stock.
Because man plows all day in the hot sun,
or bitches all day in water and ice, is no rea-
SON why he should sleep in hovel, as desti-
tute of beauty as a ground hogs den, and far
less comfortable than beavers dam.
Our country is an agricultural country,
and our people are devoted: almost exclu-
sively to tilling the soil. Whatever elevates
and enobles the farming community of our
country, elevates and enobles the whole coun-
try. Ten thousand times has it been repeated
by those who best know, that this is good
agricultural country still our people are as
migratory in disposition as wild geese One
reason of this, if not the principal reason, is
that there is generally so little of beauty and
comfort about their homes. Instead of think
ing that their home is the best place on earth,
they think there is some other place that is
better. Not that there is some other country
in which they can make more corn and cot
ton with less labor and expense; not that
there is some land more congenial to health;
but their souls long for attainable comforts
and artificial beauty which they have not
made any efforts to secure in and about their
homes. 1t is theory, undoubted by any as
correct, that all men long for happiness. For
this all toll. Happiness cannot consist in
making bread and eating it. If this be So,
the untamed animal is more successful than
man, for he eats and tolls not. Happiness
cannot exist where there is neither moral or
material deformity. No man can be happy,
though surrounded by food in abundance for
the present, and guarantee for the future,
in the den of a wild beast His soul longs
for the good and beautiful as strongly as his
appetite Graves food and drink. 1t may be
said that beauty has nothing to do with COM
fort, and hence, an ugly house, in an ugly
locality may be a'comfortable home. For a
short period of time, this may be the case !;
but only from sheer necessity. No man of
refined taste and elevated moral sensiblities,
can feel comfortable long in the midst of de-
formity. In nature, the beautiful and the
good are never separated. A house built of
unplaned timbers is not as good as if the tim
bers had been planed; besides, it loses nearly
all its attractions. Home, to be the best
place on earth, must be beautiful and COM
Portable place. To be comfortable, it must
be beautiful.
No one can tell how far it would 60 to
make our country prosperous if our people
would devote their attention more to beautify-
ing their homes. If our farmers, especially,
would devote their attention to this subject,
the moral tone of our people would be eleva-
ted, and ignorance and vice would sensibly
decrease.