37° POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



To make a happy fireside clime, 



For weans and wife; 

 That's the true pathos and sublime 



Of human life. 



For the want of the ' happy fireside clime ' the poor are doubtless 

 themselves often to blame. . Of the idleness, thriftlessness and drunk- 

 enness that keep them poor and homeless, I need say nothing; these 

 are the theme of daily homilies, but there is a habit they have formed 

 which I think in some degree contributes to their penury and is worth 

 noting, and that is the habit of wandering purposely from place to 

 place — a phase of the mania errabunda- — as it has been called, which 

 possessed the ' Ancient Mariner ' and keeps the tramp and the globe- 

 trotter moving on. Without any valid reason, large numbers of them 

 are constantly changing their abodes, and an enormous sum is spent 

 annually on removals that might be more profitably employed in ma- 

 king the home habitable. Eemovals are, of course, largely instigated 

 and justified by the search for work or for better surroundings, by grow- 

 ing family requirements and improving circumstances, but beyond all 

 that, they go on, on the large scale, simply to gratify the love of change 

 or in a foolish spirit of rivalry. These poor people keep shifting about 

 in sheer restlessness; having dirtied or damaged one dwelling they 

 2)ass on to another. A friend of mine in Scotland built some model 

 cottages for his laborers, and on visiting them was surprised to find that 

 the bedrooms upstairs were unoccupied and had been converted into 

 stores for apples, onions and potatoes, while the families were herded 

 together below. On inquiring the reason of this, he was told that these 

 laborers didn't care to have more furniture than they could conveniently 

 move in one cart. This sort of thing is very inimical to home making, 

 for the home is a slow growth, that does not, like Jack's bean stalk, 

 shoot up in one night, but must have time to take root and won't bear 

 frequent transplanting. And it is inimical also to success in life. Mr. 

 Patterson, the master mechanic of the Grand Trunk Kailway, says: 

 " I find among the class of workmen that comes from the Old Country, 

 there is a great tendency to run from one situation to another; in fact 

 a number of them seem to have an aversion to permanent employment. 

 This wandering spirit is very detrimental to a man's progress." 



But apart from the improvidence and stupidity of the poor them- 

 selves, or anything like it, the home is still beyond the reach of many 

 of them and in some districts it is a vanishing quantity. It is for the 

 sanitary and the social reformer to work together to resuscitate the 

 home, to augment the taste for it and make it more and more palatable 

 in town and country. 



On some future occasion you will, perhaps, allow me to say some- 

 thing about the town-homes of the poor and to offer a few suggestions 



