The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1886-04-01

faults that you Will nave no biHe 10 look
after your own. And while you are pull
ing the chickweed out Of their garden yours
win get all overgrown with horse-sorrel
and MULLEN stalks
One OF the worst damages that comes
from the herding Of so many people into
boarding houses and family hotels is in
filcted upon children. 1t is only another
way of bringing them up on the commons.
While you have your own private house
you can, for the most part, control their
companionship and their whereabouts;
but, by twelve years of age, in these pub
lie resorts, they will have picked up all the
bad things that can be furnished by the
prurient minds of dozens of people. They
win overhear blasphemies and ses quar-
rels, and get precocious in sin, and what
the bartender does not tell them, the
porter or hostler or bell-boy win. Besides
that, the children will go out into this
world without the restraining, anchoring,
steadying and all controlling memory of
home. From that some of us who have
been blessed OF such memory have escaped.
1t grips man for eighty years, If he lives
so long. It pulls him back from doors into
which he otherwise would enter. It smites
him with contrition in the very midst of
his designations.
If it be possible, 0 father and mother,
let your sons and daughters go out into
the world under the semi omnipotent
memory of a good, pure home. About
your two or three rooms in boarding.
house or family hotel you can cast no
such glorious sanctity. They will think
of these public caravansaries as an early
stopping place, malodorous with old vict-
uals, coffees perpetually steaming, and
meats in everlasting stew or broil, the
air surcharged with carbonic acid, and
corridors along which drunken boarders
come staggering at one O'Clock in the
frighted wife let's them in. Do not be
guilty of the sacrilege or blasphemy of
calling such a place home.
A home is four walls inclosing one fam
lily with identity of interest, and a
privacy from outside inspection so COM
plete that it is a world in itself, no one en-
tering except by permission; bolted and
barred and chained against all outside in
quisitiveness.
The phrase SO often used in law books
and legal circles is nightly suggestive
every mans house is his castle-as much
so as though it had drawbridge, portcullis,
redoubt, bastion, and armed turret. Even
the officer of the law may not enter to
serve writ except the door be voluntarily
opened unto him; burglary, or the in
vasion of it, crime so offensive that the
law clashes its iron jaws on any one who
attempts it.
Unless it be necessary to stay for longer
or shorter time in family hotel or board
ing house-and there are thousands of in
stances in which it is necessary, as /
showed you at the beginning-unl in
this exceptional case, let neither husband
nor wife consent to such permanent resi-
dence.
The probability is that the wife will have
to divide her husbands time with public
smoking or reading room, or with some
coquettish spider in search of unwary flies,
and if you do not entirely lose your hus-
band it viii be because he is divinely pro-
/ tected from the disasters that have
whelmed thousands of husbands with as
| good intentions as yours.
| Neither should the husband, without i'm
| perative reason, consent to such a life un-
less he is sure his wife can withstand the
temptation of social dissipation, which
sweeps across such places with the force of
the Atlantic Ocean when driven by Sep
TENDER equinox. Many wives give up
their homes for these public residences, so
that they may give their entire time to
operas, theaters, balls, receptions and
levees, and they are in perpetual whirl,
like a whip-top spinning round and round
and round, very prettily, until it loses it's
equipoise and shoots off into tangent.
| But the difference is, in one case it is top
and in the other a soul.
Besides this there is an assiduous accu-
mutation of little things around the private
home which in the aggregate make great
attraction, while the denizen of one of these
public residences is apt to say: 'sWhat is
/ the use? have no place to keep them if
should take them" Mementoes, bric-a J.
brac, curiosities, quaint chair or coy
lounge, upholsteries, pictures and a thou
sand things that accrete in a home are dis
carded or neglected because there is nc
homestead in which to arrange them. And
yet they are the case in which the pearl OF
domestic happiness is set.
You can never become as attached to the
| appointments Of boarding -house or fam
lily hotel as to those things that you can
call your own, and are associated with the
different members Of your household, OF
/ with scenes of thrilling import in your do
nestle history. Blessed is that home in
which for whole lifetime they have been
| gathering, until every figure in the carpet
and every easement of the window, has q
chirography Of its own, speaking out some
thing about father or mother, or son OF
daughter, or friend that was with us
awhile.
What sacred place it becomes when
one can say: I'm that room such a one
was born; in that bed such one died; in
that chair sat On the night heard such q
one had received great public honor; by
that stool my child knelt for her last even.
ing prayer; here sat to greet my son al
he came back from sea voyage; that was
fathers cane; that was mothers rocking.
chair. What joyful and pathetic con.
5ress of "reminiscences.
The public residence of hotel and board
ing-house abolishes the grace of hospital.
~. Your guest does not want to come tt
xaH IL NJ,