The Alaska citizen., 1916-01-31
The Influence of Home

The loilo"nS interesting paper was read at a recent meeting of the Woman's Civic club of Fair banks by Mrs Walter Gould;
 If I had been asked to write paper on the Fiji Islanders, my tasE would have been a compara- lively easy one. I could have read l taw articles on the subject. col lected some appropriate data. and then written most interesting pa per Knowing that the subject would be outside of your experience, and that you would take my word for the information I gave you. without question. l would have felt free to draw on my imagination a bit here and there, and the result would have been an entertaining paper, with little effort.
 Now the subject assigned to me this evening would seem, at a casual glance. much easier one. Every one of us has a home, and every one of us knows what the influence cf a home is, or ought to be. But for that very reason, l find it a most difficult subject to handle. The encyclopedias do not give me any information about the influence of home; the library has no books of facts that contain data along that line, and the whole subject is so familiar to you all that l cannot hope to tell you anything new about it
 But just thinking about the intlu- ence of home has been pleasant thing. The few hours l have spent in contemplation of this theme have made me appreciate my own home more; and so I will ask you to bear with me while I present to your lttentioN few thoughts reeardin2 commonplace, everyday things which becaus they are always be- fore us, go unnoticed. We lack perspective when we view things too close to us. Perhaps that is the reason why we can always see things which could be bettered in other peoples homes, and see no room for improvement in our own.
 The unit of society is the family and every family means a home. As one editor puts it: The home is of woman's creation and is her job. y It logically follows that the influ ence of any home is very largely the influence of the one woman who makes that home
 We have outgrown the old fash toned notion that a woman's life and interests should be bounded by the four walls of her home; but let us hope We may never get be yond the equally old fashioned idea that no matter what interests a woman may have, she is, first and last, the home maker
 This does not mean that she need be household drudge: drudgery also has gone out of style, and even for the woman who does all her own work The woman of today knows that it is the way she does the work which makes it drudgery or not. The old verse says:
 A servant, with this clause, MoEac 5rudoary divine.
 Who sweeps room as for God
 laws
 Makes that and the action fine and some of these days modern up-to-date poet will be inspired to sing of the vacuum cleaners and electric sweepers.
 Work is never narrowing. wo- man is only narrowed by the work of making a home when she knows nothing else Our windows frame for us what we put in them The woman who can look out ever tHe hill to the busy world and feel that she is a part of it because she keeps herself informed about it, is not living a morrow life.
 Do you ever enter pretty, cheer full home that you are not inspired by it? Don't you feel like going home and changing something, or preparing an extra nice treat for dessert?
 A good example inspires as nothing else can. And pretty, cheerful honc i3 within the reach of all There is always something we cah do to make our dwellings more beau tiful We say we would do this or