Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.
That is, it is the family which makes the home, and this is even truer of the mother and her daughters than of the father and his sons. Sometimes even one sunshiny spirit in a house transforms it, and where all the family are in harmony there cannot fail to be a home in the best sense.
But there are virtues and virtues. "I admire Miss Strong, indeed I love her," I heard a lady say not long ago, "but I can't imagine her making a beautiful home under any circumstances." Yet Miss Strong is gentle, sweet-tempered, thoroughly unselfish and high-minded, quiet and unobtrusive, neat and well-bred. Then what is wanting in Miss Strong?
"I think it will be best for Jenny to teach," wrote another lady in regard to a young girl in whom she was deeply interested, and whose gifts and graces she had been cataloguing at great length. "At least, what else is there for a woman to do who is thoroughly feminine but not at all domestic?"
We think of unselfishness as the first need of a woman who is to be the presiding genius of a home; but both Miss Strong and Jenny are conspicuously unselfish.
It seems that though a fine character, and particularly a loving one, must be the foundation of the home, yet certain special qualities are necessary. Among the thousands who have read "Robert Elsmere" does any one feel that Catherine, with all her earnestness and deep love of others, made her girlhood's home a pleasant place? She was ready to give up a home of her own, thinking her mother and sisters needed her, and yet her sister Rose, at least, was secretly longing to be free from the constant influence of such severe moral standards. In short, Catherine did not make her home comfortable.
Comfort, I think, enters into every idea of a home. We wish to be unrestrained there. That, however, is a different thing from being lawless. There must be moral restraints, even for the sake of the comfort itself. Otherwise, the freedom of one interferes with the freedom of another, and finally the reaction tells in the discomfort of all.
Physical comfort is necessary in a home. Some of the best women do not understand this. They are disgusted with the sarcasm that "The road to a man's heart is through his dinner." That would be disgusting if it were the whole truth. But we must all eat every day of our lives, and appetizing food prettily served adds much to the comfort of the day. Indeed, without it only a boor or a saint can be really comfortable.
Women who are good cooks are sometimes ill-tempered and refuse to exercise their art. But discomfort in the matter of dinner usually comes from a different kind of housekeeper. There are some women who think it is a weakness to care about food. Their rule is, "Eat what is set before you, asking no questions," a sufficiently good rule for those who are dining, but a miserable one for the housekeeper to force upon others. There are still other women who have a definite opinion as to diet. They have studied food from a hygienic point of view, and they watch the effect of every mouthful. Such a study ought to be useful, but in point of fact it is a frequent source of discomfort. Nothing ever digests well when our mind is concentrated on our digestion. One difficulty may be this. The women who have turned their attention to this subject have often done so because they were invalids. They find certain food injurious to them and decide it is injurious to everybody. So a whole healthy household is restricted to the invalid's bill of fare. The housekeeper is so certain she is doing her duty, that she easily steels her heart against the murmurs of her family, and the discomfort continues. A thoroughly healthy woman, however, will provide all the better for her family if she understands the effect of different articles of diet.
To be comfortable, a house should be warm enough. Of course, I do not mean that we need to breathe the superheated atmosphere which foreigners criticise in most American houses. It is the mother of the family who must correct this. She can easily do so, because she has it entirely in her power to form the habits of her children in this particular, and it is rarely the case that a man likes an overheated room until he has been trained by his more sensitive wife to bear it.