St. Landry democrat. (Opelousas, La.) 1878-1894, 1886-03-13

about your neighbors, for your time VIII
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 pull
ing the chickweed out of their garden yours
viii get all overgrown with horse-sorfei
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
fIcted upon children. 1t is only another
way of bringing them up on the commons
While you have your own private mouse
you can, for the most part, control thelf
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
will overhear blasphemies and see quar-
rels, and get precocious in sin, ana what
the bartender does not tell them, the
porter or hostler OF bell-boy will. Besides
that, the children will go out into this
|, world without the restra aiming, anchorln2,
steadying and all controlling memory OF
a home From that some OF US who nave
been blessed of such m emory have escaped.
1t grips a man for eighty years, il he lives
SO long. Ii pulls him back from doors into
which he otherwise would enter. 1t snltes
him with contrition in the very midst OF
his designations.
| If it be possible. 0 father and mother,
| the world under the semi omnipotent
memory of a good, pure home. About
| YOUR two or three rooms in a boarding
| house or a family hotel you can cast no
such glorious sanctity. Tney will think
! of these public carayansa-ies as an early
| stopping place, malodorous with old vlct-
;uals, coffees perpetually steamlng, 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
morning, rapping at the door till the af-
| frighted wife let's them in. Do not be
| guilty ef.the sacrilege or blasphemy OF
calling sucn place home.
Unless it be nece ssary 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-unless 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 bus
| band it will be because he is diyinely pro-
tected from the disasters that have
| whelmed thousands of husbands with as
| good intentions as yours.
| Neither should the hu band, without i'm
perative reason, consent to such a life I'M
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 a 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 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: "What is
the use? have no place to keep them if I
should take them" Mementoes, bric-a-
brac, curiosities, quaint chair OF cozy
lounge, upholsteries, pictures and thou
| sand things that accrete in G home are dis
/ carded 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 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, or
| 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 a
chirography OF it's own. speaking out so.ne-
thing about father or mother, or son or
daughter, or friend that was with us
awhile.
What sacred place it becomes when
one can say: sin that room such one
was born; in that bed such one died; in
that chair I 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 as
he came back from a sea voyage; that was
| fathers cane; that was mothers rocking
chair. What joyful and pathetic con.
gress of "reminiscences!
| ,,,,bl;o rac;d ancn ~ ho*ol opd boo rd
ing-house abolishes the grace Of hospitali-
ty. Your guest does not want to come te
such table. No one wants to run such q