Omaha daily bee., 1921-08-14
Disciplinary Homes
From the New York Times.

Professor Perry of Harvard has an
claborately ironical article in The
Atlantic Monthly on Domestic Su-
perstitions" He tells us that par
cnts and other adult members Of the
family belong to the priestly caste.
1t is their business to preach the
doctrine and to be ostentatiously on
their good behavior" How many
families of readers of The Atlantic
boast of father Of family who has
been able to keep the hierat1c pose,
the majesty and the authority Of a
family father of the old stock?
Probably in the largest number Of
such families there are no children,
or not more than two. Years ago
that courtly Boston patrician, Mr..
Robert c. Winthrop, used to say in
effect: "When I was child never
dared to sit down in the presence Of
my parents. My children always sit
on me-" The Fall of Father has
been going on for more than gen.
Grafton. At best he doesn't hope to
be more than the tolerated inferior,
occasionally the equal or companion,
of his one or two children. His po-
sition, social and political and do
mestic, has also been reduced to one
Of subordination to Mother.
Why does Professor Perry gloat
over the fallen? Why does he choose
to imagine that Father leaves the
office. longing for his fireside, for "a
certain comfortable chair waiting for
him in an accustomed spot near
reading lamp" Why not near
whale-oil lamp or an "astral?"
Mother, on the contrary, Is pining
for "a dance or the theater, friends,
gayety and late to bed" 1t is like
enough that some Boston suburban
fathers are funny" but are they so
marked off from other dethroned
domestic gods as that? Are there
no restaurants in Boston? At any
rate, the region hereabouts is full
of fathers who have no taste for
reading, and whose domestic ideal
Is expressed in the comic-opera say
ing: There's no place like home,
when all the other places are shut
up" This doesn't mean that these
interpretations people neglect their
children, il they have any. It means
only that Father, in spite of his de-
cline and fall, is not without the
fetch Of his first ancestor. He tries
to ''save his face" He leaves the
hearth Of an evening only to please
his wife. She knows better OF
course, there are a thousand Varia-
tions Of domestic habit; and IL we
make large assumptions it is merely
for the sake of keeping pace with the
Cambridge ironist. "a mans idea of
Sunday" he writes, sis to surround
his house with barbed wire. lock and
barricade the doors and windows,
disconnect the telephone, put on his
slippers and an old suit, and then de-
vote the day to reading the paper
and 'puttering.'" No golf, no motor
car? Why, even in the most bucolic
parts, the household issues from the
home to enjoy the revel Of "a walk
to the cemetery" Are there no
movies in Cambridge? Slippers? How
archaic! Does anybody wear slippers
except for bathroom purposes? Do
Middlesex county papas sit about the
fortress of the home in blue-flowered
dressing gowns? Professor Perry 10
mystifier.
Is it permitted even to professor
to make this ironical sweeping as
sertion "Why should scolding be
peculiar to the homer" If it were,
who would wander from his own
~ SSiQS. SoHSl cos IiCil Ill SCOluS,
The pulpit is not poor in them. A
thousand high-brow persons and
periodicals avoid the ducking- stool
only by the mistaken mildness Of
our laws. Professor Perry Is mere
ly feeding his amusing theory. Home
life. with it's scolding and various
frictions, is q school and discipline:
Both children and adults, con-
sorting with one another in every
combination of age and sex, in
every condition Of health, at ev-
cry hour Of the day, and in
great variety of moods and tenn
peraments, exhaust the whole
repertory of human relations and
learn how to live together. The
best name for this is patience.
1t is the lack Of 1t which distin-
guishes the bachelor, the maid,
the orphan, and in some degree
the only child.
Many of the saints practiced patti
ence without matriculating in the
family university for that purpose.
But we best appreciate Professor
Perry's theory of the home by quot
ing from 1t. AS for the impatient,
undisciplined "only. child" how
many Atlantic families have more?