Nothing so keeps up the bond of affection between them as this, particularly when both are busy people and see nothing at all of each other during the day, and are often too tired in the evening to speak at all except on the most necessary subjects; and even if they are not tired there are always the boys and girls about, once they have begun to grow up, and there is no time they can call their own—none in which they can talk as they used to do—none in which they can discuss the children’s future or talk about their own plans and hopes and wishes. Of course I am told many husbands and wives are only too thankful to be spared the chance of a tête-à-tête that must be nothing save a bore. I maintain that this is not in the least degree true; that those who have been married many years have far more in common, far more to say to each other, than the young folks just starting on life’s journey can possibly have to say, and that the yearly holiday taken together does more to make the domestic car move along gracefully and lightly than anything else I know. The wife is relieved from the unceasing ordering of the dinner and planning of everything, while the husband once more finds himself responsible for all the little details, and delights once again to have his wife to himself and to look after and wait upon as in the days of old; while the children are safe at their lessons or looking after the house in their absence; and once more there is a real holiday feeling in the air, and they can fancy themselves young and starting on life’s journey hand-in-hand over again. There is nothing so amusing to me as the discovery that grown-up daughters and sons have no idea that their father and mother can really want to be alone together, or that they can possibly prefer each other’s society to that of their friends or their own children. But, my dear young people, it is the case; and though of course your parents are always delighted to have you with them, they do occasionally wish to be alone together. The yearly holiday allows for that, as does an occasional holiday together during the year; and these holidays should never be forgotten or omitted. They should be kept up vigorously, and no blandishments from our children should be allowed to break in upon the solitude à deux—the honeymoon-holiday should be taken together or not at all.
And now, reluctantly and regretfully, I must say farewell to those with whom I have conversed so long in these pages. I feel this book has not the light-hearted gaiety with which Angelina and Edwin plan out their newly-married life, and with which they start out to furnish their little home, in ‘From Kitchen to Garret;’ but if I am more serious here it is because life grows more serious as one grows older, as one realises how much there is to do and how difficult it is to steer the bark freighted with one’s growing-up children, and with more money to be spent judiciously, a larger house to be managed, so that we may do as much good as we possibly can, so that it may give as much happiness to as many as can be managed, and in some measure so exist as to leave the world immediately within its influence just a little bit better than we found it.
We must realise, wherever we are, that we influence someone, perhaps very many people, either for good or for evil. It is no use to bury our heads in the sand, and pretend that no one need be influenced by us unless they like, and that it is not our fault if they are. It is our fault, and we cannot get rid of our responsibility in this way; while if we boldly accept our fate, and do our duty manfully, we shall have our reward, more especially if we endeavour not to know the ‘best’ people because we crave for social exaltation, and to mix with those who resent our intrusion and laugh at our pretensions, but to associate with those whose noble minds and good thoughts and bright intellects will help our own, and assist us on our mental progress through the world; and to have as friends, not those who can give us dinner for dinner, ball for ball, but those to whom we can give pleasure they would never have did we refuse to open our doors to them, and to those whose large hearts and brilliant minds influence ours for good, and lead us insensibly along a path of peace and safety.
The truest socialism should begin in the perfect home; the socialism which shares or administers but does not disperse or destroy; the socialism which opens the park gates to the poor, or the picture-galleries to those who could never see anything were it not for the action of the owner, that never receives a benefit without in some measure sharing it with a poorer brother, and that finally has a noble end in life; nay, the noblest of all, that of leaving the world a little better for one’s having lived and loved and worked and suffered in it.
By these rules should the home be formed; in these paths should the children be led, who should never be allowed for one moment to despise those they may consider below them in the social scale; who should always be taught to share their flowers, their shells, their holidays and pleasures with others; and who should one and all be brought up to do something in life, something to assist the toiling millions around us, something to do good to someone besides themselves. Of course this is hard and anxious work; work, could we have realised it was before us when we so lightly accepted our fate, and laid together the foundations of a new home, we might never have found courage to take up; but it is the work set before every married man and woman in the world. They can either accept it or reject it; but if they do leave it alone, the undone work will bring its own punishment in the unhappy wicked children, and the wrecked and miserable home that will take the place of that which might have been the home which is the rule, not the exception, in England, and that we can all have if we have powers of endless work in us, and realise from others’ experience what is before us all. Then, when the curtain falls, when the hands part which have held each other so fondly, so faithfully, all through the journey, the worst parts of which have been gilded by the unfailing love which is God’s best gift, the one who goes can go boldly into the darkness, content to leave all to that Higher Power who has helped them so gallantly all through the struggle, while the one who stays knows that the link still binds them together, and will draw them some day back to each other again. When love can do this, when love can build, maintain, and keep our homes together, as love does, and as only love can, who shall dare to sneer and laugh at it, and looking at such homes dare ask sarcastically if marriage be a failure?
Marriage never is, never can be, a failure, if the home is a true home, not an abode of vanity, an entertaining house, for gaiety and waste; and it is to help others just a little more from my own experience of the happiest of all homes—my own—that I have written this other book about the household and all that appertains to it, which I now leave to my good friends and readers, content to feel that they will read me kindly, knowing of old how kind they can be to one who has said as much to them on this all-fascinating subject as I have.
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