74- THK HOME, FA1IM AND lil'SJNESS CYCLOPAEDIA. 



which is the next best thing to the wood fire, and which should be used in 

 every living-room. 



AY hat a fine old-fashioned distinction that is, by the way, the living- 

 room ! As if the rooms kept for company were dead rooms, rooms full of 

 ghostly furniture, kept for show, and of cold and fearful aspect. In a true 

 home every room should be a living-room. We should live all over our 

 houses, have nothing too fine to use. Of course the nursery should hold 

 the young destroyers, until they know what not to break, if that know- 

 ledge ever comes. But, to a trooping set of happy boys and girls, the house 

 should be open and free. 



Each person will find his sanctum, of course, and every one should, if 

 possible, have a room to himself. There should be some place for those 

 who must work to retire to, where solitude would be possible. But the 

 dining-room, the library, and the parlour should be cheerful and orderly, 

 and always lighted up by some constant and familiar presence. Some- 

 body should be there to welcome the wanderers, to greet the stranger, and 

 to gather the children together as a hen gathers her chickens under her 

 wings. This person is generally the mother, who is the core of home. 



It is this hour of reunion, this happy hour by the wood fire, which pays 

 her for all her work, all her trials. If she can see her group passing into 

 a respectable manhood and womanhood, if she can see happy, honest, 

 hopeful, industrious sons, and blooming, modest daughters, she compounds 

 with the past for all its pains, its desperate despair, its hard usage of her- 

 self. She does not mind her altered face and figure, the gray hair, the 

 age which has come too soon. Her work is done, she has made a happy 

 home, and its fruit is before her intact. 



Even if she has failed in her loftiest ambitions, even if she has not made 

 heroes of her sons, or eminent women of her daughters, let her be grateful 

 that she has done no worse. Let her be grateful for the strength which 

 has not failed her at the death-bed of her lost ones, that has not given out 

 in the darkest hour, that has sustained the falling, animated the discour- 

 aged, and kept that sacred flame alight on the hearthstone which will in 

 future years be the altar fire in all who remember her. The true home is 

 that where there have been sorrow, self-sacrifice, struggle, renunciation, 

 courage, heroism ; and happy are they who have through all discourage- 

 ments preserved it. 



The valuable influence of sisters in a family of brothers, can not be too 

 strongly emphasized in the subject of the amenities of home. Not only do 

 they or should they give a feminine refinement to the house, but the very 

 duty which they have the right to require of their brothers, those acts of 



