The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-03-07

by machinery, which take less tune and do the
work in wholesale. So, while the private home
may brood into life an occasioualfa,sity and take
q long time to do 1t, many of the clearinghouse
ard family hotels afford q swifter and more mul
titudinous style of moral incubation, and one old
gossip will get off the nest after one hours brood
ing, cluckine q flock of thirty lies after her, each
one picking up its little worm Of juicy regale-
ment. It is no advantage to hear too much about
your neighbors, for your time will be so much
occupied In taking care of their faults that you
will have no time to look after your own. And
while you are pulling the chickweed ont OF their
garden yours will get all overgrown with horse
sorrel and mullen stalks.
One of the worst damages that comes from
the hsrding of so many people into boarding
houses and family hotels is inflicted upon chill
dren. It is only another way of bringing them
up on the M While you have your own
private house you can, for the most part, con
troll their companionship and their whereabouts,
sorts they will have picked up all the bad things
that can be furnished by the prurient minds OF
dozens of people. They will overhear biasphe-
mics and see q~uarrels, and get precocious In SIN,
and what the bartender does not tell them the
porter or hostler, or bell boy will. Besides that.
the children will go out into this world without
the restraining, anchoring, steadying and all con.
trolling memory of a home. From that none OF
US who have been blessed OF such memory have
escaped 1t grips a man for eighty years, il he
doors which he otherwise would enter.
Il smites him with contrition in
the very midst of hs designations.
AS the fish already surrounded by the long wide
net swim out to sea, thinking they can 60 as far
as they please, and with gay toss of silvery scale
they defy the sportsman on the beach, and after
awhile the fishermen begin to draw in the net,
hand over hand, and hand over hand, and 1t Is a
long while before the captured fins begin to feel
the net. and then they dart this way and that
hnnirp 70 not re1t hat Aud fhnvnco1uao annp0ach.
ing the shore and are brought up to the very feet
of the captors; so the memory of an early home
sometimes seems to relax and let men out further
and further from God. and further and further
from shore-fve years. ten years. twenty years,
thirty years; but some day they find an irresist-
ible mesh drawing them back, and they are COM
PEELED to retreat from their prodigality and wan
dering, and though they make desperate effort to
escape the impression, and try to drive deeper
down in sin. after awhile are brought clear back
and held upon the Rock Of Ages.
If it be possible, 0 father and mother, let your
sons and daughters go out into the world under
the semi-omnipitent memory OF a good. pure
home. About your two or three rooms in q
clearinghouse or q family hotel. you can cast
no such glorious sanctity. They will think OF
these public caravansaries as an early stopping
place, malodorous with old victuals, cofees per-
petually steaming and meats In everlasting stew
or broil, the air surcharged with carbonic acid.
and corridors along which drunken boarders
COIl0 NJ l. OOtOOh IL VIC ~
rappine at the door till the atfrighted wife lets
them in. Do not be guilty of the sacrilege or
blasphemy of calling such q place home. A
home is four walls inclosing one family with
identity of interest, and a privacy from outside
inspection 80 complete that it is a world in
itself, no one entering except by permission;
bolted, and barred. and chained against all out
side inquisitiveness. The phrase SO often used
in law books and legal circles is nightly sug-
gestive-everv mani house is his castle. AS
much so as though it had drawbridge. portcul-
lis, redoubt. bastion. and armed turret. Even
the officer of the law may not enter to serve a
writ except the door De voluntarily opened unto
him; burglary, or the invasion of II, a crime so
offensive that the law clashes its iron jaws on
any one who attempts it. Unless 1t be necessary
to stayf for longer or shorter time In family hotel
or boarding -house-and there are thousands of
instances in which ii it is necessary, as showed
you at the beg-inning-unless, In this exceptional
case, let neither wife nor husband consent to such
permanent residence.
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 husband it will be because he is
divinely protected from the disasters that have
whelmed thousands of husbands with as good in.
~tentions as yours. Neither should the husband.
without imperative reason, consent to such q life
unless 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 a September equinox.
Many wives give up their homes for these public
residences 30 that they may give their entire
time to operas. theaters, balls, receptions and
levees, and they are in a perpetual whirl like a
whip-top spinning round. and round. and round
very prettily until it loses its e~quipoise and shoots
off into a tangent. But the difference is, in one
case it is a top and in the other a soul.
Besides this there is an assiduous accumula
ton of little things around the private home
which in the aggregate make a great attraction,
while the denizen of one of Ahese public resi-
dences is apt to say: What Is the usef L have no
place to keep them if 1 should take them" Me-
mentoes, brlc-a -brac, curiOsities, quaint chair or
cozy lounge, upholsteries. pictures, and a thou
sand things that accrete in a home are discarded
or neglected because there is no 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 a clearinghouse or family
hotel as to those things that you can call
your own and are associated with the differ
emit members of your household, or with
scenes of thrilling import in your domestic his
tory. Blessed is that home in which for a whole
lifetime they have been gathering, until every
figure in the carpet, and every panel in the door.
and every easement of the window has q chirog-
raphy Of its own. speaking out something about
father, or mother, or son, or daughter, or friend
that was with us a while. What a sacred place
it becomes when one can say: I'm that room
such q one was born; in that bed such a one
died; in that chair l sat on the night I heard
such a one had received a great public honor; by
that stool my child knelt for her last evening
prayer; here | sat to greet my son as he came
back from see voyage; that was fathers cane;
that was mothers rockingham" What a joyful
and pathetic congress of "reminiscences!
The public residence of hotel and boarding
house abolishes the grace of hospitality. Your
guest does not want to come to such a table. No
one wants to run such o gauntlet Of acute and
merciless hypercriticism. Unless you have q
home of your own. you will not be able to exer-
else the best rewarded of all the graces. For ex-
ercise Of this grace. what blessing came to the
Shunamite in the restoration of her son to life,
because she entertained Elisha, and to the wild
ow of Z~arophath in the perpetual oil well of the
miraculous cruise because she fed . hungry
prophet, and to Rahab in the preservation of her
life at the demolition of Jericho because she en-
tertained the spies, and to Laban in the forma-
ton of an interesting family relation because of
bis eptartainment of Jacob. and TO Lot in his