SUMMER MEETING AT OREGON. 41 



Local Fruit Exhibit. — J. N. Menifee, L. R. Taft, Jacob Mapel ; 

 Mesdames MontL^omery, O'Fallon and Bonnie Brodbeck. 



Miss Anna Luckhardt, a late graduate of our normal school, was 

 then introduced and read the following pleasing essay on 



HOME. 



BY MISS ANNA LUCKHARDT. OREGON, MO. 



The word home is full of tender meaning. It abides in every lan- 

 guage and is lisped by every tongue. It has a mystic power that sinks 

 deep into memory. It is the central spot of earth, around which crys- 

 talizes the sweet or sorrowful experiences of life. The tendrils of 

 youthful hearts, so firmly wrap themselves about the memories of home, 

 that the lapse of years or the deadening strain of distance cannot separ 

 rate them. Love is the golden cord that binds the hearts of humanity 

 together and links the human and divine. We can easily trace the source 

 of love to our homes. It is there that affections meet and fuse them- 

 selves into a sacred unity. The noblest impulses of our nature here re- 

 ceive their strongest exercise, and blending into parental sympathy 

 create the hallowed and lasting ties of earth. Joy dwells in the word 

 itself. Poetry encases it as a precious jewel. Sages have coined it into 

 undying song. No other music has such power to thrill the soul as the 

 song of "Home, Sweet Home." This wail of a melancholy soul was 

 written in the life blood of one who, wandering in the streets of a foreign 

 city, gazed with unspeakable yearning across the wild waste of water to 

 the sunny south land of his childhood days." 



In all well constituted minds, home is always associated with mt)ral 

 and social excellences. The higher men rise in the scale of being the more 

 delicate and appreciative they are; the more refined and cultured they be- 

 come, the more sacred and endearing arc the domestic tics. The 

 Arab or wild man of the forest may care but little for the domestic rela- 

 tions, the instinct for home is but rudely developed. But the Chris- 

 tian man of delicate heart and cultured mind loves home in proportion 

 to the delicacy of his iesthetic sense and his moral worth, I le knows it 



