Year: 1873

KEEPING.


The truest homes are often in houses
not especially well kept. where the COM
fort and happiness of the inmates, rath.
er than the preservation of the furni-
ture. is first consulted The objects of
home is to be the center. the point of
tenderest interest, the pivot ON which
family life turns The first requisite
is to make it so attractive that none of
its inmates shall care to linger long out
side its limits. All legitimate means
should be employed to this end. and no
effort spared that can contribute to the
purpose. Many houses called homes,
kept with waxy neatness by painstak-
ing, anxious women, are so oppressive
in their nicely as to exclude all home
feeling from their spotless precincts.
The very name of home is synonymous
with personal freedom and relaxation
from care. But neither of these can be
felt where such a mania for external
cleanliness pervades the household as to
render everything else subsequent there
to. Many housewives, if they see a
speck on floor or wall, or even scrap
of thread or bit of paper on the floor,
rush at it, as if 1t were the seed of pes
thence which must be removed on the
instant Their temper depends upon
their maintenance of perfect purity and
order If there be any failure on their
part, or any combination of circumstan-
ces against them, they fall into a pa
thetlc despair, and can hardly be lifted
out. They do not see that cheerfulness
is more needful to home than all the
spotlessness that ever shone. Their dis
position to wage war upon maculateness
of any sort increases until they become
slaves of the broom and dust. pan. Neat
ness is one thing, and state of perpet.
ual house cleaning quite another.


Out of this grows by degrees the feel
ing that certain things and apartments
are too good for daily use. Hence,
chairs and sofas are covered, and rooms
shut up, save for special occasions. when
they are permitted to reveal their viola.
ted sacredness in manner that mars
every pretense of hospitality. Nothing
should be bought which is considered too
fine for the fullest domestic appropria
tion. Far better is the plainest furni
tnre on which the children can climb
than satin and damask which must b,
viewed with revarence Where anything
is reserved or secluded, to disguise tn,
fact is extremely difficult. A chilly al


wraps it round, and the repulsion o
strangeness is experienced by the mos
insensiblc.


There are few persons who have no
visited houses where they have been in
troduced to what is known as the com
pany parlor. They must remember hoH


uncomfortable they were while sittin


in it; how they found it almost impos
sible to be at ease. and mainly for tn
reason that their host and hostess wer


not themselves at ease. The childre


were watched with lynx eyes, lest the


should displace or soil something; S


the entertainment of friends became yer
much like social discipline. The


must recall, too, how sweet the fresh al
seemed out-of- doors, and how inward
they vowed. in leaving that temple {
form and idgetiness. that somethin
more than politeness would be require
to incite them to return.


Home is not name. nor form, NJ
a routine. 1t is a spirit, presence,
principle. Material and method will no


and cannot make it. 1t must get i
light and sweetness from those who il
habit it, from flowers and sunshine, fro
the sympathetic natures which, in the
exercise of sympathy, can lay aside tt


tyranny of the broom and the awful d


ty of endless scrubbing.-Scribner.