The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1899-07-14


i've business. They must find out about
him. They must find out about him
right away. If he leaves his door un-
locked by accident he will find that his
rooms have been inspected, his trunk
explored, his letters folded differently
from the way they we're folded when he
put them away. Who is he?is the ques-
ton asked with intenser interest until
the subject has become a monomania.
The simple fact is that he is nobody in
particular, but minds his own business.
The best landlords and landladies
cannot sometimes hinder their places
from becoming a pandemonium of
whisperers, and regulations are torn to
tattcrs, and evil suspicious are aroused,
and scandals started, and the parlia-
ment of the family is blown to atoms by
some Guy Fawkes who was not caught
in time, as was his English predecessor
of gunpowdery reputation. The rea-
son is that while in private homes fam
lilies have so much to keep them busy,
in these promiscuous and multitude
nous residences there are so many who
have nothing to do, and that always
makes mischief. They gather in each
others rooms and spend hours in con-
sultation about others. If they had to
walk half mile before they got to the
willing ear of some listener to detrac-
ton they would be out of breath before
reaching there and not feel in full glow
of luminosity or SANDER, or might, be-
cause of the distance, not go at all. But
rooms 20, 81, %, %, "a and rs are on the
same corridor, and when one carrion
crow goes Cav! Caw!" all the other
crows hear it and flock together over
the same carcass. "Oh, | have heard
something rich! Sit down and let me
tell you all about it." And the first guf-
faw increases the gathering, and it has
to be told all over again, and as they
separate each carries spark from the
altar of Cab to some other circle until,
from the coal HEAVIER in the cellar to the
maid in the top room of the garnet, all
are aware of the defamation, and that
evening all who leave the house will
bear it to other houses until autumnal
fires sweeping across Illinois prairies
are less raging and swift than that
flame of consuming reputation blazing
across the village or city.
Those of us who were brought up in
the country know that the old-fash-
toned Matching of eggs in the haymow
required four or five weeks of brooding,
but there are new modes of Matching
by machinery, which takes less time
and do the work by wholesale. So,
while the private home may brood into
life an occasional falsity, and take a
long time to do it, many of the boarding
houses and. family hotels afford
swifter and more multitudinous style
of moral incubation, and one old gossip
will get off the nest after one hours
brooding, clucking a flock of 30 lies
after her, each one picking up Its little
worm of juicy regalement. 1t is no adj
vantage 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 70 time to
look after your own. And while you
are pulling the chickweed out of their
garden, yours will get all overgrown
with horse sorrel and mullen stalks.
One of the worst damages that come
from the herding of 80 many people
into boarding houses and family hotels
is inflicted 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 ~ years
of age in these public 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 quarrels and get
precocious in sin, and what the bar
tender 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 controll- |
ing memory of a home. From that none
of us who have been blessed of such |
memory have escaped. 1t grips man
for so years, if he lives so long. 1t pulls |
him back from doors into which he |
otherwise would enter. 1t smites him |
with contrition in the very midst of |
surrounded by the long wide net swim
out to sea, thinking they can go as far
As they please, and with gay toss of
silvery scale they defy the sportsman
on the beach, and after awhile the fish
ermen begin to draw in the net hand
over hand and hand over hand, and it
S long while before the captured fins
begin to feel the net, and then they
1art this way and that, hoping TO get
out, but find themselves approaching
the shore and are brought up to the
'ery feet of the captors, so the mem
Dry of an early home sometimes seems
to relax and let men out farther and
farther from God and farther and far
Their from shore-five years, ten years,
20 years, 30 years-but some day they
find an irresistible mesh drawing them
back, and they are compelled to re-
treat from their prodigality and wan
dering, and, though they make des-
perate effort to escape the impression
and try to dive deeper down in sin, after
awhile are brought clear back and held
ha -