DIVISION FIFTH 



HOME. 



BY C. D. M. CAMPBELL. 



This is one of the most common words which we all under- 

 stand, perhaps, after our several fashions, but which none is able 

 precisely to define. It would seem to mean one thing to one man, 

 and something quite different to another, very much according to 

 the capacity, culture and disposition of each. Our ideas of home 

 are somewhat like our ideas of God. The Great Spirit of the savage 

 does certainly not much resemble the God of the enlightened Chris- 

 tian. Many of the attributes of these beings are just the opposites 

 of each other. But, behind the crude or imperfect notions of each 

 there might, perhaps, be discovered a Divine Reality, if one were 

 only wise and great enough to find it. So, though men differ 

 widely in their conceptions of what constitutes a home, there may 

 possibly be some common elements, apparent to the eye of a close 

 and exclusive analysis, in which all would agree, and which must 

 therefore constitute the real and only essentials of that substantial 

 thing which all men quickly recognize, but upon all the conditions 

 of which so few are entirely agreed. 



ITS INDEFINABLE CHARM. 



It would further seem that, among these essential elements of 

 home, and perhaps first among them, is a nameless if not wholly 

 indescribable charm. This is like the fragrance of an odoriferous 

 shrub or flower, which proclaims its neighborhood through miles of 

 distance, and is strongest in the silence and darkness of the night. 

 Something like this is the charm of home. The heart scents it 

 from afar, when the eye cannot behold it, and gloats on the ideal 

 picture of its beauties amidst the silence of solitude and the black- 

 ness of actual desolation. Hence, none have written more elo- 

 quently upon the charms of home than the homeless. The author 

 of " Home, sweet home," was a wanderer and an exile, and sang but 

 the passionate picture of his own sad and lonely heart. Jtlest, 

 peace, love, friendship, joy these, and much more which we can- 

 not name or characterize, are the constituents of that wonderful 

 charm which dwells in the word Home. These are the breath of 



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