Year: 1873

Among tnc mlSfrlcb Wllcn Tor various
reasons we agree to treat rather with
ridicule than with sympathy, few are
more acute than those connected with a
change of house. II would be a curious
inquiry why any evils which in them
selves are real and serious should be re-
garded rs placing their victim beyond
the circle of common humanity. Sea-
sickness involves as much unhappiness
for the time as the loss, say, of n first
cousin if more transitory, it is more
acute for the moment, for few people
lose their appetite for day on the
death of relation, and still less do they
contemplate suicide IA desirable under
the circumstances. Yet one Of these is
almost an invariable, and the other n
very common, result of sea-sickness.


We ympathize, it would seem, only
with those forms of suffering which are
susceptible of poetic treatment and in
other cases we feel-to alter the ordina-
ry saying-that there is comic side to
the misfortunes of our best friends.
This excuse, whatever its value, is not
quite sufficient to account for the cal
lous indifference with which we gensr-
ally regard the victim of change of
houses. For surely there is something
poetical about the feelings of a human
being torn from the builing which
has become almost a part of himself.


He is not, we assume, about to cross the
ocean, or to break off any habit of ia
miliarity. He is merely moving to
distance of few hundred yards, be-


cause some intrusive railway has de-
molished his former dwelling-place or
because an increase of his family, or a
desire for better accommodation or the
imperious wish of the ladies of his
household, has compelled him to shift
his anchorage. However slight the
change may be, he is breaking innumer


able threads of association, of whose
For many of them, it is probable that he
is hopelessly unable to account. He
cannot tell how many social meetings
have hallowed particular rooms for him,
and left behind an odor perceptible to
the Imagination, if not to the senses.
He can only dimly guess that certain
marked stages in his domestic life have
been connected in the background Of
his consciousness with particular rooms
or pieces of furniture. Hawthorne ar
CUES in the "Hcuse of the Seven Ga
bles" that all this attachment to old
places is an old-world superstition and
that in the coming days We shall be
wiser, and change a house with the
same facility rs we now change coat.
Our remote descendants will revert to
the nomad state, though their tents will
be made of brick and mortar instead of
canvass. They will scorn to be bound
by sentiment to any particular plot of
ground. 1t is hard to prophesy what
may be the mental condition of our re-
mote posterity. A day may come when
patriotism and family feeling may be
regarded as idle superstitions and in
,shat era, an attachment to any special
lump of matter will be weakness of
which every luminary of the twenty
somethingth year will be heartily
ashamed. But meanwhile every person
in whom the imagination is not quite
an obsolete faculty clings more or less
to an ancient domicile. He feels per-
ceptible wrench upon quitting it; and
is painfully sensible that he is passing
one more milestone on his road to the
Saturday ReuteU.