American home

“ Its victories in the wilderness, through a hundred years, have no counterpart in all the history of humanity. The history of America has been the history of the American home—of what that home has accomplished for the citizens that were born and reared under its sheltering roof. ”

“ One has sometimes heard that there is no American home. To one sojourner in America at least this means the strangest of misrepresentations; for, on the contrary, one might almost go so far as to say that in no other country in the world is there such a genuine home-life as in America. ”

“ The common intercourse of life, touched by friendliness and love, may be made to fill every home and neighborhood with a brightness that jewels cannot shed. And it is pleasant to think that in our American home-life we have reached this ideal in a degree unexcelled elsewhere.
I believe that in the American home, whether in the city or on the farm, the American father and the American mother, in their relations to the children, are kinder, more helpful, and benignant than any others. [Cries of "Good! Good!" and cheers.] In these homes is the strength of our institutions. ”

“ The American home is the one thing we cannot afford to lose out of the American life. [Cheers.] As long as we have pure homes and God-fearing, order-loving fathers and mothers to rear the children that are given to them, and to make these homes the abodes of order, cleanliness, piety, and intelligence, the American society and the American Union are safe [Great cheering.]
After the parade the President's party, the Governor and staff, and the citizens' Reception Committee sat down to luncheon. ”

“ In this way and for these reasons the sanctity of the American home became peculiarly marked, and there arose in that home an atmosphere of holiness and purity that was in contrast to the households of other nations at that day. There is no more appropriate place than this, on the border line of the two epochs of colonization, when the American type began to be defined and recognized, for a brief glance at the American home in its spiritual features. ”

“ The daughters in the homes of to-day are the home-makers of to-morrow; if they are estranged irrecoverably from the countryside, what is to become of the countryside in the days that are to come? Can we entertain the hope that the city cousins will come to the rescue? Can we reply upon the inrush of new families from across the seas to enter our widespread fields and valleys and support for us the burden of scientific housekeeping, and high-minded home making, and modern education in the spirit of American institutions? ”

“ Let’s make a real American home. Have you thought at all about that, Carley? Something is wrong today. Men are not marrying. Wives are not having children. Of all the friends I have, not one has a real American home. ”

“ Tell me, is the American husband made entirely of driven snow, with blood distilled from moonbeams, or is he composed of the ordinary ingredients? Because, if the latter, you take my advice and get back home. I take it that in America, proper, there are millions of real homes where the woman does her duty and plays the game. But also it is quite clear there are thousands of homes in America, mere echoing rooms, where the man walks by himself, his wife and children scattered over Europe. ”

“ The purpose of this book is to help in the adjustment of immigrant family life in this country. The immigrant will feel America to be his own land largely to the extent that he feels his American home to be as much his home as was his native hearth. To define what makes a home is harder even than to achieve one. Perhaps more than any other human institution the home is a development, the result and component of innumerable adjustments. ”

“ Where is it but in our favored land that the father is allowed to pursue his own plan for the good of his family, and with his sons to labor in what profession he chooses and then enjoy the avails of his labor? The American Home is the abode of neatness, thrift and competence, not the wretched hut of the Greenlander or Caffrarian, or under-ground place of Kamschatka. The American Home is the house of intelligence; its inmates can read; they have the Bible ”

“ If an American, he simply goes into business, and in most cases away from home, boarding for a while. Then he loves, marries, and sets up a home of his own; a woman-and-child house, which he gladly and proudly maintains and in many ways enjoys.
So satisfied are we in our convictions regarding this status that we really and practically worship the home and family, holding it to be a man's first duty to maintain them. No man does it more patiently and generously than the American, and he is supported in his position by all the moral opinion of our world. ”

“ In answer to the question as to the relation of the home to the welfare of the republic, the head of the house says: "Gentlemen, we are trying to keep our home pure; it is our purpose to make our boys patriotic American citizens and our daughters true American women. We love God and endeavor to keep His commandments, and this is about all I can say about our home." ”

“ For millions of individuals and families, the American Dream starts with owning a home. When families move into a home of their own, they gain independence and confidence, and their faith in the future grows. ”

“ We may say in all truthfulness that there never was a time when the home wielded a greater influence than during the colonial period of American history. For the home was then indeed the center and heart of social life. ”

“ To American eyes the country seems quite uninhabited, there are so few dwellings and so few people. Such a landscape at home would be dotted all over with thrifty farmhouses, each with its group of painted outbuildings, and along every road and highway would be seen the well-to-do turnouts of the independent freeholders. ”

“ In recounting the various influences which assisted the Americans to success in the War for Independence, such as the courage and integrity of the American generals, the generosity of the American people, the skill of Americans in marksmanship, their powers of endurance, their acclimatization, their confidence and faith, etc., we must never forget to add their independence in their own homes of any outside help to give them every necessity of life. No farmer or his wife need fear any king when on every home farm was found food, drink, medicine, fuel, lighting, clothing, shelter. ”

“ Home and mother reign supreme in the American heart, and the American is not ashamed to own it. And, therefore, since the American boy in camp to-day is often undoubtedly and frankly home-sick—a condition which the more reticent Englishman but rarely admits the whole motherhood of America to-day is, mobilizing to set the matter right. ”

“ When we say, "our only home," we speak in a general sense, and do not suppose but in individual cases some may, and will, take up a residence under another government, and perhaps in some other quarter of the globe. ”

“ Our country has been populated by pioneers, and therefore it has in it more energy, more enterprise, more expansive power than any other in the wide world.
You whom I am now addressing stand for the most part but one generation removed from these pioneers. You are typical Americans, for you have done the great, the characteristic, the typical work of our American life. In making homes and carving out careers for yourselves and your children, you{229} have built up this State. Throughout our history the success of the home-maker has been but another name for the upbuilding of the nation. ”

“ All over the old thirteen states, from Maine to Georgia, can be found agricultural estates now containing families, the descendants of those who founded them—exceptions to the general rule, we admit, of American stability of residence, but none the less gratifying to the contemplation of those who respect a deep love of home, wherever it may be found. ”

“ Let them begin, however slender their means, the building and perfecting of the national character by the building and adorning of a home which shall be worthy of the habitation of an American family, calm in the assurance that "the gods send thread for a web begun." ”

“ Making the city beautiful and fostering a love for the home-city, however dingy and dreary that city may at present be, is one of the most potent and [Pg 213] attractive expressions of American patriotism, and it is well to note the characteristic. ”

“ The spacious and well-appointed home of the town-builder may now be seen in many a northern community, in a group of less pretentious homes of operatives and tradesmen, the social distinctions between them emphasized by the difference in nationality. ”

“ When the first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost unbearable. ”

“ Everywhere one may see here old parsonages by the side of ivy-mantled churches, and the comfortable mansions where generations of country squires have lived in peace, while their sons have gone forth to fight England's battles, and carry her flags of war and commerce all over the world. We in America can hardly be said to have such a possession as a family home. ”

“ The proprietor of that soil should be the true New England gentleman. His house should be the home of hospitality, the embodiment of solid comfort and liberal taste, the theatre of an exalted family-life which shall be the master and not the servant of labor, and the central sun of a bright and happy social atmosphere. ”

“ He divined that the true expression of America was not civic, not social, but domestic almost, and that the people in the simplest homes, or those who remained in the tradition of a simple home life, were the true Americans as yet, whatever the future Americans might be. ”

“ America is my birth-place and my home. Home has two significations, a restricted one and an enlarged one; in its restricted sense, it is the place of our abode, it includes our social circle, our parents, children, and friends, and contains the living and the dead ”

“ I had been continually asking myself, "What is America? What is this new nation? How are they different from us at home in England?" And one morning, sitting under a bush in Indiana, the answer came to me and I wrote it down. They are fundamentally people who have crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and we are stay-at-homes. They are adventurous, hopeful people. They are people who have thrown themselves on the mercy of God and Nature. ”

“ If you will ask me the greatest need of America I could wish in my reply that I might speak with the power of a Napoleon and that my words might live as long, for I would say, the greatest need of the American nation to-day is homes; not palatial buildings, but homes where Christ is honored, where God is loved, and where the Bible is studied. ”

“ In the soft evening-hour, after the duties of the day are over, you may sit at the door of your own mansion, and while the cool sea-breeze is breathing upon you, and the new moon is hanging in beauty over the western waters, you will look across that ocean, and — thinking of the land of the whites that lies beyond — you will bless the day you left it, to come to the home of. your fathers, the rich country which Providence has set apart for the colored race. ”

“ Nor is it strange that in America—where homes are so transitory and people are like the brooks which go on forever—this sentiment should take hold as firmly as in the Motherland. It is because our home-tenure here is so precarious that we cling to its idealization. Conversely, we have little of that itch to possess land—to own so many roods of earth to the centre—which our adopted citizens display. ”

“ Will swell our hearts with all-resistless power.
Hence, countrymen, intune with deep-felt glee
The stirring " Hymn of Texan Liberty,"
And bear it home and spread it through the lands.
Where'er a homestead lies, a cottage stands,
And where you be, together or alone,
Let rise your hearts on its inspiring tone. ”

“ This, if he loves domestic life, is a great point for him. And in the ordering of a New England home-stead, there is a quiet, smooth despatch—a neatness—a happy fitting of means to ends—a nicety of contrivances for comfort—an economy of trouble in every thing—all calculated doubly to endear it to a home-loving man. ”

“ At home we enjoy an amount of happiness, public and private, which has probably never fallen to the lot of any other people. Besides affording to our own citizens a degree of prosperity of which on so large a scale I know of no other instance, our country is annually affording a refuge and a home to multitudes, altogether without example, from the Old World.
We owe these blessings, under Heaven, to the happy Constitution and Government which were bequeathed to us by our fathers, and which it is our sacred duty to transmit in all their integrity to our children. ”

“ There are no furnishings to a house that really convert it into a home, which have not won their places, one by one, in the heart and brain of the housewife.
Civilization rests, not primarily on the court-house, or the college, or the public school building, or the post-office, or the railway station, or yet in the club, but in the home. ”

“ The city affords comfortable, if not elegant homes, to the invalid sojourner, both in public houses and private families, through which he will have a more or less direct connection with the avenues to the Anglo-American society. ”

“ No hamlet so remote that the name has not penetrated its peasant obscurity. America means two things—money and liberty—the two things which the European peasant (and often prince as well) lacks and wants. Necessity at home pushes; opportunity in America pulls. ”