At-home

“ As it is, all we have to do is pack our trunks—and we can hire professional packers to do that. We have every comfort we could possibly have at home, and a lot besides. And I can see people, Bill, without giving a dinner or a card party or something. I'm going to have an at-home day—lots of permanent guests here do. ”

“ Then, with child-like simplicity, the stayer-at-home leads his welcome relative or friend by the hand to the spot where his luggage has been deposited, and seating themselves thereon they soon get deep into a conversation which renders them oblivious to all around, as the one relates the wonders of his journeyings, the other the news of home. ”

“ I don’t say anything against the good cheer and merriment at home. But there are many homes within a stone’s throw of your chair, where there will be no fine dinner, no presents, no meeting of friends, no tree,—nothing but anxiety and doubt and despair. ”

“ Domestic habits depend greatly upon the employment of the long winter evenings that have to be passed indoors somewhere; whether at home or—elsewhere, depends upon home comforts rather than upon home-missions ”

“ Of course there will be certain viands not cooked precisely according to one's favorite method, and at these prolonged dining-tables you miss the home-feeling of quiet and seclusion; but I should like to know if one does not travel on purpose to miss the home-feeling? If that is what he seeks, it would be so easy to stay at home. One loses half the pleasure and profit of travelling if he must box himself up with his own party. ”

“ Perhaps it is not well to class among Home Amusements a series of entertainments which imply, at first sight, the getting away from home. But, as the basket of luncheon has to be packed at home, and the best part of a picnic is the getting home again, we must be permitted a divergence. ”

“ Who is to stay at home is to be determined by short and long cuts, and the stayer at home may be comforted by a visit from a sweetheart.
"When your master or lady comes home, and wants a servant who happens to be abroad, your answer must be, that he had but just that minute stepped out, being sent for by a cousin who was dying. When you are chidden for a fault, as you go out of the room mutter loud enough to be plainly heard. ”

“ You will be entirely free to follow your own devices from morning to night—except as to going out. Here is a room of good size, where you can make yourself at home; there is a bed, a table, a bench—it is the best furnished room in the house. ”

“ Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Well-content,
Thou knowest of no strange continent:
Thou hast not felt thy bosom keep
A gentle motion with the deep;
Thou hast not sailed in Indian seas,
Where scent comes forth in every breeze. ”

“ SONG Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest; Home-keeping hearts are happiest, For those that wander they know not where Are full of trouble and full of care; To stay at home is best. ”

“ Home is the place where the out-of-date lingers, and where modern conveniences that add to the complexity and the worry of life have no corner. At the modern hotel you are a document in a pigeon-hole—a number, not a person—an accident, not substantive. The chambermaid does not wait on you, but on the room. You get up, breakfast, dine, according to the times fixed by the management. You cannot have your bath before a certain hour, and the bacon is not frizzled until nine o’clock. Luncheon is probably elastic because it is cold, and potatoes can be kept hot without difficulty. ”

“ The Lad knows how I feel about the room, and though he races into his own with muddy feet, stands in awe of the place where only girls are made at home.
I have but two maid-servants, both of whom must be busy in kitchen and dining-room when the house is full of guests. So I always make the rounds of the bedrooms in the evening, to see to lights and water, and to turn down the coverings on the beds. The Skeptic's room needed only a touch here and there to put it in order for the night. The Philosopher's needed none. ”

“ If I stop at home, I amuse myself by reading, or going to see the children in the nursery, or sometimes go again into the kitchen and assist the cook on some new receipt or preparation, and often have several calls ”

“ The children at home are getting older, and I must either teach them myself or earn money to help with their education. And you know, Miss Arbuthnot, I do so much dread going among strangers, and I want to stay at home if I possibly can. ”

“ Wherever you are you should always be contented, but especially at home, because there you must spend the most of your time. ”

“ Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat In a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet? ”

“ A is at home," and return to say she is not at home or not receiving, is a grave discourtesy. Nor should one keep a visitor waiting while she makes an elaborate toilette; better say "Not at home." The call counts as a visit whether the lady is at home or not, and must be returned. It is not customary to invite a visitor to be seated, to come again, or urge a longer stay. ”

“ You go upstairs, not as a visitor, but as one at home. The place is moving with well-dressed people, some passing one way, some another. You show your pass-ticket, and come not without trepidation to the actual tables. ”

“ How jolly to sit once more in the cozy den, his friends and loved ones listening to his tales of adventure! Unconsciously his mind wandered to scenes of his intimate family circle. When the longing heart travels homeward, the half-way inns are but little conveniences on the journey; we take advantage of them because we must; always the heart’s eye looks longingly forward to its goal—home. ”

“ In every house is a bath-room, so much like the bath-room in every other house that a stranger guest feels more immediately at home there than anywhere else. We bathe daily, and talk about it in public: or, to be exact, many bathe, and even more talk. We have become skilled—I am referring, of course, to that important section of society whose members, often otherwise useless, all together establish the amenities of civilization—in leading conversation tactfully up to this topic. A few avoid it, but these are of a passing generation, and regard even the porcelain tub with disfavor. ”

“ “The reason for this in general is that home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserves; it is life’s undress rehearsal, its back-room, its dressing-room, from which we go forth to more careful and guarded intercourse, leaving behind us much débris of cast-off and every-day clothing. ”

“ The days go by very quickly while I am at work, but the evenings are long. When the work is done, and I leave the gateway of the stables, I suddenly bethink me, with a rather unpleasant mingling of surprise and depression, that I am not going home, but to the hotel. ”

“ Whereas they were easy of innocent solution apart,—as, for instance, some diner out or diner at home, who had not gone near this watchman's gate, might have strayed to my staircase and dropped asleep there,—and my nameless visitor might have brought some one with him to show him the way,—still, joined, they had an ugly look to one as prone to distrust and fear as the changes of a few hours had made me. ”

“ He is not everywhere at home, like flies. When I think how many things I can conveniently carry, I am wont to think it most convenient to stay at home. My home, then, to a certain extent is the place where I keep my thick coat and my tent and some books which 403 I cannot carry ”

“ The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life—the work at home after the holiday is done—is to help in some small, nibbling way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation, and misery on the face of this beautiful [151] earth. ”

“ There was another lot of boys who were always under the impression that the stay-at-homes were going to have so much better time, so much better food, something better than the rest of the crowd, the sort of chaps that are a little afraid of missing a trick. ”

“ Deering at a taverne hard by with intent to do some good upon their agreement in a great bargain of planks. So home to my office again, and then to supper and to bed, my mother being in bed already.
11th Up betimes, and at the office all the morning. At home dined, and then to the office all day till late at night, and then home to supper, weary with business, and to bed. ”

“ At dusk, when the outer doors are shut, she may be allowed to go into other rooms with some friendly guide. For two or three days she should be kept in the house, and great pains should be taken not to trouble or frighten her while she is learning to feel at home. ”

“ If I had been in our own house I would just have rushed out screaming, but when you're away from home you've more feeling of responsibility and I just stood on a chair and pulled at the curtain till I brought it down and stamped on it. ”

“ Up, and all day at the office, but a little at dinner, and there late till past 12. So home to bed, pleased as I always am after I have rid a great deal of work, it being very satisfactory to me. ”

“ "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in." ”

“ Home seems a different thing; before, one has been but a sort of guest after all, only welcomed and indulged, and little festivities held in honor of the released and happy child. But to come home for good,—to have done with school and boyhood,—is to be a guest, a child no more. It is to share the everyday life of cares and duties; it is to enter into the confidences of home. Is it not so? I could have buried my face in my hands and wept!
My father, with all his abstraction and all his simplicity, had a knack now and then of penetrating at once to the heart. ”

“ At that period guests were not expected to stay in a guest chamber longer than was necessary to sleep, wash their faces and hands, brush their hair, and change their clothes. It was, literally, a spare room. If you came to visit, you were supposed to come because you wished to be with the family as much as possible, and only the most needful provision was made for your separate existence. If you were a lady, you might retire for a while in the daytime, and lie down on the bed. ”

“ We had tried boarding for a change, and as such it had been a success, but we were altogether ready to take up our stored furniture and find lodgment for it, some place, any place, where the bill of fare was not wholly deductive, where our rooms would not be made a confessional and a scandal bureau, and where we could, in some measure, at least, feel that we had a "home, sweet home." ”

“ But we must not have a schedule which makes the accomplishment of a [102] certain amount of housework in a given time seem a more important duty than the little pleasant acts which make the comfort and pleasure of a home. If the man of the house wants his wife or daughter to walk to the car with him after breakfast, she should be able to go without feeling anxious or preoccupied. The coming of an unexpected guest should not be thought a torment and a calamity because it disorders a schedule. ”

“ You'll go home with a chill and bother your poor family by lying in bed. Here—see—sit down in that chair and hold the soles of your boots to the fire,' all the time doing things for one's comfort, ringing for tea to be brought in, kneeling down to make fresh toast. ”

“ Six hours a day I lived under school discipline in active intercourse with people none of whom were known to those at home, and the other hours of the twenty-four I spent at home, or with relatives of the people at home, none of whom were known to anybody at school. ”

“ I came up last Friday, sorry to leave Lock Willow, but glad to see the campus again. It is a pleasant sensation to come back to something familiar. I am beginning to feel at home in college, and in command of the situation; I am beginning, in fact, to feel at home in the world—as though I really belonged to it and had not just crept in on sufferance. ”

“ Let the sitting-room at evening be the place where a merry company settle themselves to books and games, till the round of good-night kisses are in order. Let there be some music in the household, not kept to show to company, but music in which all can join. Let the young companions be welcomed and made for the time a part of the group. In a word, let the home be surrounded by an air of cozy and cheerful {92} good-will. ”

“ I have always said that the great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life, sir. ”

“ It’s indoors, sir, as kills half the people; being indoors three parts of the day, and next to that taking too much drink and vittals. Eating’s as bad as drinking; and there ain’t nothing like fresh air and the smell of the woods. ”

“ Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig. ”

“ The influence of home is more likely to be felt by him than by the day boy. Letters from home are an event in the boarder's life. They mean more than a walk on Sunday morning, and the hours are counted to the half-term visit. ”

“ We like open fires. We would have them in every room in the house except the kitchen and bath-room—and perhaps in the bath-room, where we could hang our towels from the mantelpiece (as gallant practical gentlemen, now some centuries dead, named it by hanging up their wet mantles) , and let them warm while we were taking our baths. We go as far as any in regarding the open fire as a welcoming host in the hall, an undisturbing companion in the library, an encourager of digestion in the dining-room, an enlivener in the living-room, and a good-night thought of hospitality in the guest-chamber. ”