In the homes where true courtesy prevails it seems to meet you on the threshold. You feel the kindly welcome on entering. No angry voices are heard up stairs, no sullen children are sent from the room, no peremptory orders are given to cover the delinquencies of housekeeping or servants. A delightful atmosphere pervades the house, unmistakable, yet indescribable. Such a house, filled by the spirit of love, is a home indeed, to all who enter within its consecrated walls.
Members of the home circle lose nothing by mutual politeness; on the contrary, by maintaining not only its forms, but by inward cultivation of its spirit, they become contributors to that domestic feeling which is in itself a foretaste of heaven. The good-night and the good-morning salutation, though they may seem but trifles, have a sweet and softening influence on all its members. The little kiss and artless good-night of the smaller ones, as they retire to rest, have in them a heavenly melody.
Children are the pride and ornament of the family circle. They create sport and amusement and dissipate all sense of loneliness from the household. When intelligent and well trained they afford a spectacle which even indifferent persons contemplate with satisfaction and delight. Still these pleasurable emotions are not unalloyed with solicitude. It is an agreeable but changeable picture of human happiness. Time in advancing carries them forward, and erelong they will feel like exclaiming, with the older and more sad and serious ones around them, that their youth exists only in remembrance.
There is probably not an unpolluted man or woman living who does not feel that the sweetest consolations and best rewards of life are found in the loves and delights of home. There are very few who do not feel themselves indebted to the influence that clustered around their cradles for whatever good there may be in their character and condition. The influence preceding from the home circle is either a blessing or a curse, either for good or for evil. It can not be neutral. In either case it is mighty, commencing with our birth, going with us through life, clinging to us in death, and reaching into the eternal world. It is that unitive power which arises out of the manifold relations and associations of domestic life. The specific influence of husband and wife, of parent and child, of brother and sister, of teacher and pupil, united and harmoniously blended, constitute the home influence. From this we may infer the character of home influence. It is great, silent, irresistible, and permanent. Like the calm, deep stream, it moves on in silent but overwhelming power. It strikes root deep into the human heart, and spreads its branches wide over our whole being. Like the lily that braves the tempest, and the "Alpine flower that leans its cheek on the bosom of eternal snow," it is exerted amid the wildest scenes of life, and breathes a softening spell in our bosom, even when a heartless world is freezing up the fountains of our sympathy and love. It is governing, restraining, attracting, and traditional. It holds the empire of the heart and rules the life. It restrains the wayward passions of the child and checks the man in his mad career of ruin.
But all pictures of earthly happiness are transient in duration. Where can you find an unbroken home circle? The time must soon come, if it has not already, when you must part from those who have surrounded the same parental board, who mingled with you in the gay-hearted joys of childhood and the opening promise of youth. New cares will attend you in new situations, and the relations you form and the business you pursue may call you far from the "play-place" of your youth. In the unseen future your brothers and sisters may be sundered from you, your lives may be spent apart, and in death you may be divided; and of you it may be said:
"They grew in beauty side by side,
They filled one home with glee;
Their graves are severed far and wide,
By mount and stream and sea."
