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TABLE AND HOUSEHOLD SUGGESTIONS OF INTER- 
EST TO EVERY HOUSEKEEPER AND HOUSEWIFE 
September, 1912 
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THE HOME-BUILDERS 
By Elizabeth Atwood 
zeman EN build the houses but women build the 
homes. This may seem a big responsibility 
to place upon woman, but I believe it to be a 
fact, and whatever the atmosphere of the 
home may be, is according to the love, the 
skill, the interest and the understanding of 
the woman elected by the man to preside there. 
The architect builds the house, but it takes far more than 
the four walls he has constructed to make a home. How 
many times we have been in houses, beautiful as art and 
skill could produce, which the wildest flight of fancy could 
not call a home. I have been in a home where the only 
place which held a personal feeling was the nursery. Skilled 
artists had prepared the house, beautiful as a dream, but it 
was, after all, a work of artists, lacking that crowning work 
of the woman to convert it into a home. 
A “home-builder” with great emphasis on the word home, 
has the most comprehensive work in all the world given 
her to do. It is for her to create the atmosphere of home; 
to see that the machinery is not too much in evidence and 
yet it must all run as smoothly as possible; she must be 
housekeeper in its truest sense; she must be a guide for her 
children; she must make her home ‘‘a rest and refuge from 
the strenuous and stormy life outside.’’ The more success- 
ful she is in each of these branches assigned to her, the 
greater the success of the whole, and we have a real home, 
one which will spread its influence after the builder has 
passed on. 
This responsibility should be recognized by the mother, 
and her girls brought to realize that they, too, some dav 
will be building homes. There is no greater vocation, and 
its successful accomplishment depends upon the faithful 
performance of the endless little duties, in themselves only 
the every-day kind, but which make up the whole of life. 
In this work of the ‘‘home-builder’ she must begin to 
teach herself just what will make her strong and well- 
equipped for her task—it is not all play, far from it. I. 
think her first lesson should be patience. I believe this to 
be one of the greatest virtues, and surely no virtue so re- 
quires to be at hand, as does this one of patience. I do not 
mean the cringing, helpless yielding of one’s individuality, 
but the strong and healthful recognition of one’s failures 
and disappointments. Have “patience,” one of the ideals 
of the family, remembering all the time that you are the 
keynote for the whole family. 
If mother is impatient in the morning, Teddy and John 
will respond, and that pebble thrown into the pond of daily 
life will send its ripples of impatience through the day. 
The father is not so strong for the daily grind if he leaves 
home under a cloud, the children cannot go to school so 
well fortified for their trials, so great to them, if they are 
giad to get away from an atmosphere of impatience. As 
for the ‘‘home-builder”’ herself, she is left to meet her day 
without the powerful strength of self-satisfaction. 
The ideal ‘‘home-builder,’’ one we would like to use for 
our guide and example, would make meal-times always 
happy and agreeable, hours of refreshment to the soul 
as well as to the body. The father and mother who make 
this their rule, to have agreeable and instructive conversa- 
tion (not argument) at meal-times, have gone a long way on 
the road toward a perfect home. 
Under such an agreement mother’s task is the harder. 
No matter what the day’s trials have been, no matter if the 
maid is gone, or the steak not the right cut, mother must 
bravely keep all out of sight, and cheerfully set the example 
of patience. The beginning and the end of married life 
should be some such developing aim in the heads of the 
household, which transmitted through them to their children 
lifts them up out of the common petty trials of life, and 
gives these children something worth striving for, attain- 
able and precious. 
Cheerfulness is another ideal in the home, which our 
ideal “home-builder” will cultivate, first in herself, then in 
her children, until the home becomes one of almost per- 
petual sunshine in spite of the trials which surely come to 
all. An irritable parent, who has a sharp word for every 
departure from her way, is sure to have cross children. 
Just a little thought or care at the beginning will avert the 
threatening storm; but when a child is once caught in the 
full tide of ill-nature he cannot understand nor be reasoned 
with. 
Of course if the grown-ups are cheerful and able to con- 
trol themselves the battle is half won. If mother can convert 
the wave of anger over a lost collar button into a joke, 
and then make father see the humor of the situation, she 
surely becomes an ideal example to follow. It is mother 
who controls the day. If she meets the children with 
manner glum when they give her their morning kiss, there 
will be a shadow follow all for the rest of that day. 
‘“And all the windows of my heart I open to the day.” 
This was Whittier’s song. If the mother’s heart-windows 
are open, all feel the joy and love coming to them and re- 
spond to their call. The wise and thoughtful ‘“home- 
builder” will always make a supreme effort to start the 
day well. A sense of humor straightens out many a kink, 
and should be cultivated along with the art of taking a 
cheerful view of things. 
The ideal “Shome-builder” will not be a slave to her home 
in any sense of the word Linguists tel] us that there is no 
such word as worry in the language of the savage. We 
all know the women who worry continually, and they can- 
not, with the worry-habit, become agreeable companions. 
After all, the successful ‘“home-builder” must be a good 
