The Secret of a Happy Home (1896)

To My Children, The Blessed Three, Whose Love and Loyalty Have made mine a Happy Home And my Life Worth Living, The volume is Gratefully Dedicated.
Marion Harland.


Some one asked me the other day, if I were not weary of being so often put forward to talk of 'How to Make Home Happy,' a subject upon which nothing new could be said.
My answer was then what it is now: Were I to undertake to utter one-thousandth part that the importance of the theme demands, the contest would be between me and Time. I should need all the time there is.
Henry Ward Beecher once prefaced a lecture delivered during the Civil War by saying: The Copperhead species chancing to abound in this locality, I have been requested to select as my subject this evening something that will not be likely to lead to the mention of Slavery.
I confess myself to be somewhat perplexed by this petition, the orator went on to say, with the twinkle in his eye we all recollect— for I have yet to learn of any subject that could not easily lead me up to the discussion of a sin against God and man which I could not exaggerate were every letter a Mt. Sinai—I mean, American Slavery.
Likening the lesser to the greater, allow me to say that I cannot imagine any topic worthy the attention of God-fearing, humanity-loving men and women that would not be connected in some degree, near or remote, with Home, and How to Make Home Happy.
The general principles underlying home-making of the right kind are as well-known as the fact that what is named gravitation draws falling bodies to the earth. These principles may be set down roughly as Order, Kindness and Mutual Forbearance. Upon one or another of these pegs hangs everything which enters into the comfort and pleasure of the household, taken collectively and individually. They are the beams, the uprights and the roofing of the building.
The chats, more or less confidential and altogether unconventional, which I propose to hold with the readers of this modest volume have to do with certain sub-laws which are so often overlooked that—to return to the figure of the building—the wind finds its way through chinks; the floors creak and the general impression is that of bare homeliness. House and Home go together upon tongue and upon pen as naturally as hook-and-eye, shovel-and-tongs, knife-and-fork,—yet the coupling is rather a trick learned through habit than an act of reason. The words are not synonyms of necessity or in fact.