You praise this land as fair,
Its streams, its bow'rs;
The common weeds are there
As rarest flow'rs—
The fields Elysian. Ah, why should we roam?
One spot alone enchants—we call it home!
(Text.)—The Woman's Home Companion.
(1417)
See Heaven Our Home. HOME ATMOSPHERE The atmosphere of a home expresses a clearly defined reality. The atmosphere is the spirit of the house, emanating from the deep well of the subconscious mind of the homekeeper. God has created no more gracious figure in His great world than that of the wife and mother, who gives to the very place of her abode her own quiet, buoyant, soothing spirit. What she is in the unsounded deeps of her being will appear in time in the house where she dwells and in the faces of the little children that look up to her. On the other hand, the home of the card-club woman and the home of the gad-about! Who does not know them and shudder at the thought? Their atmosphere is that of restlessness and spiritual poverty. Wo betide her children and her husband; for she can not give them, after their day of temptations and vexation, that by which they are renewed, the spirit of peace and quiet confidence in good.—Robert MacDonald.
(1418)
HOME, CHOICE OF A An English swallow once selected a strange resting-place. At Corton, Lowestoft, England, a naturalist discovered a swallow's nest with young birds in it on the revolving part of the machinery of a common windmill. The particular spot chosen was the "wallomer," the outer edge of one of the wheels. The revolutions averaged thirty a minute, and the naturalist estimated that in that time the nest traveled about one hundred and eighty feet. The young birds would certainly be experienced travelers before they left such a nest. The mother bird, when sitting, usually traveled tail foremost, and when she entered or left the mill she had to make use of the hole through which the laying shaft projected. To do this it was necessary for her to dodge the sails, which were, of course, hung close to the wall of the mill. When the creaking and shaking of the machinery of a windmill is taken into account, one can hardly fail to be struck with the peculiar taste of the bird that chose such an apparently uncongenial spot in which to rear her young.—Harper's Weekly.
(1419)
Home Discipline—See Family Religion.
HOME, FOUNDATION OF THE REPUBLIC
Judge Ben B. Lindsey who has secured many things for the children during the last ten years, such as playgrounds, detention schools, public baths, probation system, summer outings, fresh-air camps, etc., says in the Survey:
What began to loom upon me almost to
oppress me, was the injustice in our social
and economic system that made most of
these palliatives necessary. I began to see
more than I ever saw in my life how the
foundation of the republic is the home, and
the hope of the republic is in the child that
comes from the home, and that there can be
no real protection, no real justice for the
child, until justice is done the home. More
than through books I saw through the tears
and misfortunes of these children, the defects
and injustice in our social, political and
economic conditions, and I have to thank the
child for my education. After ten years I
owe more to the children than they owe to
me. They have helped me be a better man,
and, I am sure, a more useful and serviceable
one. I had learned to love to work
with them and for them in the boys' clubs,
the recreation centers, through the court and
probation work and in other ways, and when
I began to see, as I thought I saw, some of
the causes of poverty, misfortune, misery,
and crime, I began to question myself. Could
I help do real justice to the child unless I
could help smash some of these causes that
were smashing the homes, crippling the
parents and robbing the child of his birth-*right?
(1420)
HOME LIGHTS
The light of the home is indeed glorious.
We think of the lighting of the lamps at
eventime and find, in the coming of that
artificial day which sets the light in the window,
a sign of defiance to the night, as if it
were a great triumph of human intelligence.
It is, indeed, a triumph. The thought of
sending on the heels of the day another day
which keeps off the darkness of night shows
how well man has mastered the forces
