The Lares and Penates
Beside this there is an assiduous accumulation of little things around the private home which in the aggregate make a great attraction, while the denizen of one of these public residences is apt to say: “What is the use? I have no place to keep them if I should take them.” Mementoes, bric-a-brac, curiosities, quaint chair or cosy lounge, upholsteries, pictures, and a thousand things that accrete in a home are discarded or neglected because there is no homestead in which to arrange them. And yet they are the case in which the pearl of domestic happiness is set. You can never become as attached to the appointments of a boarding-house or family hotel as to those things that you can call your own, and are associated with the different members of your household, or with scenes of thrilling import in your domestic history. Blessed is that home in which for a whole lifetime they have been gathering until every figure in the carpet, and every panel of the door, and every casement of the window has a chirography of its own, speaking out something about father or mother, or son or daughter, or friend that was with us a while. What a sacred place it becomes when one can say: “In that room such a one was born; in that bed such a one died; in that chair I sat on the night I heard such a one had received a great public honor; by that stool my child knelt for her last evening prayer; here I sat to greet my son as he came back from a sea voyage; that was father’s cane; that was mother’s rocking chair.” What a joyful and pathetic congress of reminiscences!