San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1897-12-12
Home Sweet Home

The old song that says there is no
place like home, no matter how humble
it is, has found an answering echo in
every breast. There is inspiration in
the word; there is comfort in the idea
of rest that it suggests; there is sense
of security in that which it represents
there is n Sacredness in all that it in
cludes within it's pale. What is home
and what is called home may be as far
apart as the antipOdes. Home is
more than the four walls within which
we live and move and from which We
go to our work and to which we return
for our meals and lodgings. Home is
more than the place where father and
mother and sisters and brothers and
wife and children live. We may find
all of these and more and the more of
them there are the less of home may
there be when we seek it.
Home is n word hard of definition.
Home is an idea hard of realization.
Home is a heaven that is often hard to
find. Home is also ut times a hell,
that it is impossible to shun. Home is
like self, a personality, a personal pos
session, a something with a soul within
its soul case. Home is the centre of
all that of which life is the circumfer-
ence. 1t is the one spot we leave re-
iuctantly, to which We return with
alacrity. 1t is the one place where the
sun shines always and no cloud comes.
Not that there are no clouds in our
home lives, but that in proportion to
the cloud does the hOmenesS decrease
Not that we shun home and deny its
ministries when the clouds drop down
in SOmbreness, but that the clOudiness
is not the true atmosphere of home
and by so much as it is clOudiness is
not home.
Home is the Que place that we are ut
home in. That is, the one place ma
tive to us. The one place in which
We feel most in our element. The
one place in which we are least tram
meled. To some men this is anywhere
wife and babies are not, and this man
has no home. Yet perhaps this is not
true, for in his business or in his club
or in the poker room he may find those
real essentials that make the home.
But as it was said of those of old IF
the light that is in you be darkness. be
hold, how great is that darkness" so
it may he said, if that home which
should be home to you. is not home
how great is your hOmeleSsness. The
want of earth is n home. The want of
the state is home. The want of the
people is a home. The want of the in
dividual is a home. But an individual
cannot make home.
As it takes two to make a bargain
so it takes at least two to make q
home. The idea of loneliness, of lone,
ness is not compatible with that of
home. Home means yourself and
some other one. That other one may
be a dog, or horse, or Il cat, or some
other human, but the being who lives
alone, having nothing within that
which is called home and belonging to
it. upon which to expend care and af-
lection and sympathy, that being has
no home in the true sense. Home is as
incapable of true definition as pleasure,
or peace, or pain, or misery, or discOm-
fort or satisfaction. We can feel all
these, but to say in just what they
consist is not so easy. SO we can feel
at home, feel that we have a home ut
home, that is where we abide. but we
cannot give it clear definition even
TO ourselves.
None the less we know that it is
home, and we know that it is not a
home, by the same instructive move
ment of our hearts as we come and go.
Home IS a necessity of those who
would be properly trained to live. 1t
is the want of a home that makes chill
dren vicious in the great majority of
cases. 1t is the boys who only have
nbOdeS, not homes, that become Vag-
rant and criminal. 1t is the girls who
only have places to eat and dress and
sleep in that grow up abandoned and
lose their girlhOOd before their dream
of youth is past. Home is the word
so often used, so often abused that il
wants to be rescued from the misshap.
en- ideas that it has given birth to-
Home to the dependent. that is to the
child. is the place where it is most