FOREWORD 



we begin the work of home-making. We are 

 simply working by slow and easy steps toward 

 an ideal which we may never realize, but the 

 ideal is constantly before us to urge us on, and 

 the home-instinct actuates us in all our efforts 

 to make the place in which we live so beautiful 

 that it will have for those we love, and those who 

 may come after us, a charm that no other place 

 on earth will ever have until the time comes when 

 they take up the work of home-making for them- 

 selves. 



The man or woman who begins the improve- 

 ment and the beautifying of the home as a sort 

 of recreation, as so many do, will soon feel the 

 thrill of the delightful occupation, and be in- 

 spired to greater undertakings than he dreamed 

 of at the beginning. One of the charms of home- 

 making is that it grows upon you, and before 

 you are aware of it that which was begun without 

 a definite purpose in view becomes so delightfully 

 absorbing that you find yourself thinking about 

 it in the intervals of other work, and are im- 

 patient to get out among " the green things 

 growing," and dig, and plant, and prune, and 

 train. You feel, I fancy, something of the enthu- 

 siasm that Adam must have felt when he looked 

 over Eden, and saw what great things were wait- 



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