THE SPURIOUS HOME. 



THE SPURIOUS HOME. 



227 



But a worse practice than that of frequent removals seems to 

 be steadily gaining ground in the towns and cities; and that is, the 

 custom of family -boarding. This, it is urged, is both convenient 

 and cheap. The wife has more leisure for society, and the husband 

 more time and money for business and pleasure. Neither is wor- 

 ried or hindered by the annoyances of housekeeping. All this may 

 be true; though we doubt about the economy, from what seems to 

 us the sufficiently significant fact, that poor families cannot afford 

 to board. They make a home for themselves because they must. 

 It would seem, then, that families board not because they cannot 

 afford to keep house, but because they cannot afford to do so in a 

 certain style which they deem essential to their social standing. If 

 they could go to a grand and splendidly appointed house, they would 

 all go to morrow, and we should hear no more of the conveniences 

 of boarding. Then, it is to this false and tyrannical god of Social 

 Appearances that they sacrifice their comfort, their privacy and 

 their home; for in boarding they can have none of these. They 

 cannot choose their own table, their own hours, their own company, 

 or their own entrances and exits. They must go in and out, up and 

 down, at the beck and call of others. Their children must be de- 

 prived of their natural liberty, of all wholesome discipline, and exposed 

 to the baneful influence and injurious caprices of strangers. Above 

 all, they must be homeless; for a boarding-house is not, and cannot 

 be made a home for any one not even for its keepers. And to 

 compensate for all this they have two priceless privileges: The lux- 

 ury of being considered respectable, and the liberty of grumbling; 

 and it must be confessed that they exercise the last so constantly 

 that, one would think, it must be inexpressibly dear to them. If its 

 exercise, however, can compensate them for the ruin df two homes 

 their own and that of the family with whom they board we 

 must say, that they richly deserve that curse of homelessness which 

 they suffer and inflict. However, should they be forced by kind 

 adversity to abandon the boarding-house, though for the poorest 

 tenement in all their knowledge, they will learn at last, with grate- 

 ful and happy hearts, how much truth lives in the immortal line, 



" Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." 



MORAL. ASPECTS OF HOME. 



No consideration of what is involved in the subject of home 

 would be complete without some allusion to its moral aspects, and 

 the mutual relations of those who constitute the household. Home 

 is something more than the mere dwelling place, set apart for the 

 physical comfort and convenience of its inmates, and without the 

 presence of its higher attributes, and the realization of its moral 

 duties and responsibilities, it is incomplete, if it be not the mere 



