Every family should have as many animals as possible. Dogs of every breed and variety—especially big ones, and good ones, like mastiffs and Newfoundlands, and a few little ones to play with. Cats and kittens, if they like them, rabbits, goats, pigeons, lambs, peacocks, etc., and as much live-stock as can be accommodated about the place should be there. These four-footed friends, especially dogs, are indispensable in the country. What attachments one forms for them! How dreary the hour when they die! Perhaps, then, we wish that they had not been so intimate, so dear, so loving, so trustful. The walk, the ramble, the quiet seat on the piazza—all, all must be endeared by the silent friendship of the dogs.
There is sometimes a want of harmony among the pets. Carlo must be shut up while Flirt is at large, and the parrot must be kept away from the pigeons. The parrot can take care of herself as to the cats; but how about the canaries and the blackcap? Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and the only safety of slavery.
And yet these enforced duties: do they not fit the boys for the cares of government? Do they not tell the future politician what he is to do? Are they not, after all, a part of that great education which Home, and only Home, can give us?
We shall have few friends so faithful as Blossom, few who will impose upon us so gently, and who will really impose upon us to our advantage. We shall have few such friends as Carlo and Flirt, who love us, faults and all; who never ask what wrong we have committed, or how unworthy we are, but who are, without doubt, the most flattering of worshipers, loving us simply because we are ourselves. How few love us for that, and that alone!
[XXII.]
IN CONCLUSION.
In looking over our list of Home Amusements—the private theatricals, the tableaux vivants, the brain games, the fortune-telling, the making of screens, the painting of fans, etc.; the games at cards, the etching, the lawn tennis, the dancing, the garden party, the window gardens, the birds, the picnics, the plaque-painting, the archery, the parlor and the kitchen—we can only feel how much we have left out. Why have we not spoken more fully of the library, with its quiet and respectable arm-chairs, its green table, its shelves filled with those silent friends who never desert us, its paper-cutter, its wood-fire, its latest magazine, its quiet, and the heavy curtain dropped at evening? How did we happen to so slight this delightful room, wherein so many of the best amusements of home are always arranging themselves? Perhaps because the story told itself, and we did not need to tell it.
How could we have forgotten the quest for green apples and choke-cherries in the spring, or the subsequent repentance? the bird-snaring and nesting? and in summer the search for wild flowers? the attempts at making an herbarium? the berry-picking? the nutting in the fall? that cracking of butternuts by the winter fire? that arrangement of the autumn-leaves?
Simply because the record of Home Amusements is endless. It is almost all of life which is worth remembering.