The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1886-03-17
from that none Of us who have been blessed

pulls him back from doors into which he other
wise would enter. It smites him with contr1-
ton in the very midst of his dissipations. 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
and after while the fishermen begin 70 draw
in the net, hand over hand and hand over
hand. and it is a long while before the cap
tnred fins begin to feel the net, and then they
dart this way and that hoping to get
out, but find themselves, approaching
the shore and are brought up
to the very feet OF the captors so the memory
of an early home sometimes seems 70 feiaS e.s
and let men out further and further from
God and further and further from shore, i've
years, ten years, twenty years, thirty years,
but some day they find an irresistible mesh
drawing them back, and they are compelled
to retreat from their prodigality and wan
dering, and though they make desperate ef-
fort to escape the impression and try to dive
deeper down in sin after while are brought
clear back and held upon the Rock OF Ages
If it be possible, oh, father and mother, let
your sons and daughts 60 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. Your
children will think of these public caravan
GUS with old victuals, 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 o'clock in the morning
rapping at the door till the affrighted wife let's
them in Do not be guilty Of the sacrilege or
blasphemy Of calling such place home. A
home is four walls enclosing one family with
identity of interest and a privacy from out
- ota hot 10 r-Id
in itself, no one entering except by permis-
sion, bolted and barred and chained against
all outside inquisitiveness. The phrase so
often used in law books and legal circles Is
NIGHTLY suggestive mans house is his
castle. AS much so as though it had draw.
bridge, 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 invasion of it, crime 80 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 boarding -house-and there are thou
sands of instances in which it is necessary as
showed you at the beginning-unless in this
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 CO.
quettish spider in search Of unwary flies, and
if you do not entirely lose your husband it
will be because be is divinely protected from
the disasters that have whelmed thousands Of
husbands with as good intentions as yours.
Neither should the husband without impera-
tive reason consent to such 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 September equinox.
Many wives give up their homes
for these public residences so that they may
balls receptions and levees and they are in a
whip top spinning round and round and
round very prettily until it loses its equipoise
and shoots off into tangent. But the differ
ence is, in one case it is a top and in the other
soul.
Beside this there is an assiduous accumula-
ton Of little things around the private home
which in the aggregate make great attrac-
tion, while the denizen of one of these public
I have no place to keep them if I should take
them," mementoes, bric-a-brac, curiosities,
quaint chair or cosy lounge, upholsteries, pic
lures and thousand things that accrete in
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
the appointments of a boarding house or
family hotel as to those things that you call
your own, and are associated with the diff
ferent members Of your household, or with
scenes Of thrilling import in your domestic
history. Blessed is that home in which for
whole life time, they have been gathered un-
til every figure in the carpet, and every panel
of the door and every easement of the win
dow has chirography Of its own, spelling
fot
or daughter, or friend that was with us
awhile: what sacred place it becomes when
one can say: SIN that room such q one was
born; in that bed such one died; in that
chair sat on the night that heard such
one had received 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 sea voyage; that was brothers
cane: that was mothers rocking chair. What
q joyful and pathetic congress Of reminis-
cences!
Tho public residence of hotel and boarding
house abolishes the grace Of hospitality.
Your guest does not want to come to such q
table. No one wants to run such q gauntlet
of acute and merciless hypercriticism. Unless
you have home of your own you will not be
able to exercise the best rewarded of all the
graces. For exercise of this grace what
blessing came to the Shumanite in the
restoration of her son to life because she en-
tertained Elisha and to the widow of Zare-
phath in the perpetual oil well Of the miracu-
1ous cruise because she fed hungry prophet,
and to Rahab in the preservation Of her life
at the demolition of Jericho because she enter
tanned the spies, and to Daban in the forma-
ton of an interesting family relation because
Of his entertainment of Jacob. and to
city because Of his entertainment
of the angels, and to Mary and Martha and
Zacehers in spiritual blessing because they
entertained Christ, and to Publius in the
island Of Melita in the healing of his father
because of the entertainment Of Paul,
drenched from the shipwreck, and Of innu-
merable houses throughout Christendom
upon which have come blessings from genera
tion to generation because their doors swung
dating and divine grace of hospitality. I do
not know what your experience has been, but
I have had men and women visiting at my
house who left benediction on every room
in the blessing they asked at the table, in the
prayer they offered at the family altar, in
the good advice they gave the children, in
the gospeliZation that looked out from every
lineanent of their countenances and thsir de-
parture was almost like bereavement.
The queen Of Norway, Sweden and Den
mark had royal cup Of ten curves or lips,
each one having on it the name Of the dis
tineuished person who had drank from it.
And that cup which we offer to others in
Christian hospitality, though it be Of plainest
earthenware, is royal cup and God can read
on all it's sides the names Of those who have
taken from it refreshment But all this is
impossible unless you have homo Of your
own. 1t is the delusion as to what is neces-
sary for home that hinders so many from
establishing one. Thirty rooms are not nec-
essary, nor twenty, nor fifteen, nor ten, nor
five nor three In the right WAY plant a