The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-10-01

gard again, but as soon as 1t begins to howl about your ears and send it's chill running up and down your backbone and make you hug the fire you would mighty quick wish you could again feel the glowing warmth of the California sun. V It does seem that perpetual blessedness can pail upon us. We must be deprived
 of blessings for awhile to appreciate them
 when we get them back. This fact is especially true of the comforts of our city homes.
 Longing for the Country.
 When the summer months drew near 1 last spring the city house did not look as attractive to use as it is today. We longed for that little cottage by the seashore, or we longer to give up house. 1 keeping and have a change of cooking | and go and board at the summer hotels. 1 We pictured the beautiful visions of sit l ting under the trees and hearing the bees l hum. Our mouths watered at the idea 1 of eating the fresh laid eggs and drinking l the rich milk, thiclsAr than our city cream.
 The trunks were paced; the tickets were | bought; the city house was deserted. For | what? Instead of the beautiful cottage | by the sea, some of us exchanged our 1 comfortable city homes for little hand | bo xof a house. It was so small that l we had to go out into the front yard to [ around, or else we might have done our
 selves a physical injury. Or, instead of the great wide parlors of our city home,
 we were shut up in two or three little
 rooms of a hotel, where 1t was so hot I that, like the chickens on a sultry day, we had to keep our mouths open most
 of the time to catch our breath. Then | the food. Rich milk? Fresh laid eggs?
 Delicious vegetables? Oh. no! The best of the farm products are sent to the city | r~tu anf to ,try a ura crowded and jostled. We had to read
 our books In stiff backed. uncomfortable l chairs, or sit down under the trees, where | we were always afraid of being stung by
 the yellow packets
 | Instead of our great big city closets we I had to live for the most part in trunks.
 And the beds! Oh, my! The mattresses I must have been made out of shavings.
 And everywhere you turned you kept I longing for the comforts of your city home. Now. my friends, we are back to our city homes Let us thank God for 1 the simple. wholesome meals we have.
 Let us thank him for the sitting rooms
 with their big, comfortable chairs, and 1 for the bedrooms where we have place l for everything and everything in It's place | Do not talk to me of the sublime bless l ings of a summer watering place, but of l the sublime blessings and comforts of our
 own city homes.
 The Gold Setting.
 We should also thank God for our city l homes in broad sense. What the gold | setting is to the precious stone, the halls the walls, the fireplaces. the bedroom. the sitting and dining rooms and the parlors are to the family jewels we call our wives our husbands, our fathers and mothers and children and hroth1rs and sisters
 There is an cid motto which we oftc
 hear upon the street. What is home with out a mother?' We sometimes hear II f:ppantly spoken. But I not only ask this question in a broader sense. ask, What would home be without all the children and the parents being gathered together under the same roof?' In truth, 1t would not be a home. Thus today. amid the blessings of our vacation compensations l thank God that our families are reunit- I ed I thank God that father sits at one end of the table and that mother sits al the other end of the table. and that all the children, from the biggest to the young est are lined up between. with the two places of honor next to the mother re- served for the two youngest in the lam ] fly.
 No; there Is not one missing. As you
 look about the long table at your Sun day dinner today you will find them al there Many a day has passed since the first day of last July that you would have fly about you. as you have this Sabbath morning Tn the first place. no sooner
 did the schools close last summer thar the children went everywhither. One ol
 your boys went camping, one of you