Convalescent home

“ But to see a house so long deserted reopened, its doors and windows thrown wide to the sun, and the smoke rising once more from its desolate chimneys, was an event calculated to interest all who had felt the indescribable awe surrounding a place abandoned by human life while yet possessing all the appointments of a home. ”

“ If the boundaries of home seem sometimes to circumscribe a woman's sphere, they are also a safe barricade within which husband, and the children who have come to man's estate, find retreat from the outer storm and stress, a sanctuary where love feeds the flame upon the domestic altar. ”

“ The trouble taken over the house would endear it to the dwellers therein, while the comfort would cause them to think twice before they deprived themselves of it; for once let one’s roots really strike home, and no one who has not tried it can tell how difficult it is to drag them out of even an uncongenial soil. ”

“ Alas! the charm of home is destroyed, since our children, educated in distant seminaries, are strangers in the paternal mansion; and our servants, like mere machines, move on their mercenary track without feeling or exciting one kind or generous sentiment. Home, thus despoiled of all its charms, is no longer the scene of any enjoyments but such as wealth can purchase. ”

“ A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there -- in solitary confinement. ”

“ The roof that affords you shelter from heat and cold and rain is not to be judged by the pillars that support it—the finest Corinthian columns though they be—but by the real spirit-pillar who is the centre, the real support of the home—the woman. Judged by that standard, the American home will not suffer in comparison with any home in the world. ”

“ Home and its beauty, home and its comfort, home and its refreshment to tired nerves, its inspiration to worn hearts, this is in no danger of loss or change; but the home which is so far from beautiful, so wearing to the nerves and dulling to the heart, the home life that means care and labour and disappointment, the quiet, unnoticed whirlpool that sucks down youth and beauty and enthusiasm, man's long labour and woman's longer love—this we may gladly change and safely lose. ”

“ In the place where she was homeless All men are at home. The crazy stable close at hand, With shaking timber and shifting sand, Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand Than the square stones of Rome. For men are homesick in their homes, And strangers under the sun, And they lay their heads in a foreign land Whenever the day is done. Here we have battle and blazing eyes, And chance and honor and high surprise, But our homes are under miraculous skies Where the yule tale was begun. A Child in a foul stable, Where the beasts feed and foam, Only where He was homeless Are you and I at home ”

“ I am wedded to old things, old ways, and habitual surroundings. I was not at home in this small and stuffy apartment, with its one narrow window and wretched accommodations. Nor could I forget near what it lay, nor rid myself of the horror which its walls gave me whenever I realized, as I invariably did at night, that only a slight partition separated me from the secret chamber, with its ghastly memories and ever to be remembered horrors. ”

“ Yet with all this din and dirt, this ever-present cloud of blackness settling down each hour upon clean and unclean in a sooty coating, I was told that hundreds of families of wealth and refinement, whose circumstances enabled them to select a home where they pleased, lingered here, apparently well satisfied with their surroundings. ”

“ Where the mother has built her nest, the daughter and the grand-daughter build. They return there every year; their generations succeed to it more regularly than do our own. A family dies out or is dispersed, the mansion passes into other hands; but the swallow constantly returns to it, and maintains its right of occupation.
It is thus that our traveller has come to be accepted as a symbol of the permanency of home. ”

“ For a while none dared ask why the home of their fathers had been thus forsaken; but little by little [80] whispers of the truth got abroad, and it was noticed that men turned down another street sooner than pass the empty mansion.
A little girl was the first to hear the noise and sat up straight in her bed with wide-open eyes peering into the darkness, too frightened even to call to her slave, as a sound like the clanking of chains struck upon her ear. ”

“ The extension of the family from a temporary reproductive group to a permanent social group is another human addition to the home idea. To have lived in one hole all his infancy makes that hole familiar and dear to the little fox. To have lived in one nest all his life makes that nest more familiar and more dear to the rook. But to have lived in one house for generations, to have "the home of my ancestors" loom upon one's growing consciousness—this is to enlarge enormously our sense of the dignity and value of the term. ”

“ What is here sought is simply to give a general impression of the continual flux and growth of the home as an institution, as one under the same laws as those which govern other institutions, and also of the check to that growth resultant from our human characteristic of remembering, recording, and venerating the past. The home, more than any other human phenomenon, is under that heavy check. The home is an incarnate past to us. It is our very oldest thing, and holds the heart more deeply than all others. ”

“ Home is made by those who dwell within its walls, by the atmosphere they create; and if that spirit which makes humble things beautiful and gracious be absent, then there can be no home in the full and true sense of the word.
While each member of the household contributes more or less to the upbuilding of the fabric, it is, of course, those at the head whose influence makes or mars. ”

“ As to the mental and moral—the whole field of psychical error and difficulty—the home is the place where we suffer most. The struggles and falls of the soul, our most intimate sins, the keenest pain we know—the home is the arena for these in large measure. Tender virtues grow there, too—deep and abiding love, generous devotion, patient endurance—faithfulness and care; but for one home that shows us these is another where dominant injustice, selfishness, unthinking cruelty, impatience, grossest rudeness, a callous disregard for the oft-trodden feelings of others is found instead. ”

“ A friend had given us his suburban residence, with all its conveniences, elegances, and snuggeries,—its drawing-rooms and library, still warm and bright with the recollection of the genial presences that we had known there,—its closets, chambers, kitchen, and even its wine-cellar, if we could have availed ourselves of so dear and delicate a trust,—its lawn and cosey garden-nooks, and whatever else makes up the multitudinous idea of an English home,—he had transferred it all to us, pilgrims and dusty wayfarers, that we might rest and take our ease during his summer's absence on the Continent. ”

“ We must, however, allow, that a well-regulated great family may improve a neighbourhood in civility and elegance, and give an example of good order, virtue, and piety; and so its residence at home may be of much advantage. But if a great family be disorderly and vicious, its residence at home is very pernicious to a neighbourhood. ”

“ The home where all sat on the floor had not so much advantage in comfort over "out-of-doors" as had the home where all sat on chairs, and became unable to sit on the ground with ease. So safety and comfort grew in the home concept. Shelter, too, became more complex as door and window and curtain guarded us better, and made us more susceptible to chill. Peace became more dear at home as war increased outside; quiet, as life waxed louder in the world; love, as we learned to hate each other more. The more dangerous and offensive life outside, the more we cling to the primal virtues of the home ”

“ Our convictions about the home go down to the uttermost depths, and have changed less under the tooth of time than any others, yet the facts involved have altered most radically. The structure of the home has changed from cave to tent, from tent to hut, from hut to house, from house to block or towering pile of "flats"; the functions of the home have changed from every incipient industry known to past times, to our remaining few; the inmates of the home have changed, from the polygamous group and its crowd of slaves, to the one basic family relation of father, mother, and child ”

“ Is it not a confession of the discord and pain we so stoutly deny, that we are not willing to pour light into this dark place and see what ails it?
There is no cause for fear. So long as life lasts we shall have homes; but we need not always have the same kind.
Our present home is injured by the rigidly enforced maintenance of long-outgrown conditions. We may free ourselves, if we will, from every one of those injurious, old conditions, and still retain all that is good and beautiful and right in the home. ”

“ Our ideas of the home are, as we have seen, among the very deepest in the brain; and to reach down into those old foundation feelings, to disentangle the false from the true, to show that the true home does not involve this group of outgrown rudiments is difficult indeed. Yet, if we will but use that wonderful power of thought which even the most prejudiced can exercise for a while, it is easy to see what are the real conditions of the average home to-day. ”

“ So, living, really living in the world and loving it, the presence there of father, mother, and child will gradually bring out in it all the beauty and safety, the refreshment and strength we so vainly seek to ensure in our private home. The sense of duty, of reverence, of love, honestly transferred to the world we live in, will have its natural, its inevitable effect, and make that world our home at last. ”

“ If his sister's room is adorned with exquisite etchings and choice paintings, while his is the refuge for chromos that have had their day—will he not draw his own inferences? If his mother never climbs to the sky-parlor to see that the careless housemaid does her duty in sweeping, dusting and picking-up, does not he divine why his chamber is systematically neglected? ”

“ They lived, as you probably recall, in a quaint old-fashioned home near Hubbard Woods—just the two of them; no children. Following the tragedy, the house was closed up and for a long while remained unoccupied. Despite the scarcity of dwelling places, nobody apparently cared to live there. ”

“ To the child who longs to grow up and be free; to the restless, rebelling boy; to the girl who marries all too hastily as a means of escape; to the man who puts his neck in the collar and pulls while life lasts to meet the unceasing demands of his little sanctuary; and to the woman—the thousands upon thousands of women, who work while life lasts to serve that sanctuary by night and day—to all these it may not be unwelcome to suggest that the home need be neither a prison, a workhouse, nor a consuming fire. ”

“ For forty years we held sweet fellowship in the columns of the New York Evangelist.
The experience of the great Apostle at Rome, who dwelt for nearly two years in his "hired house," has been followed by numberless examples of the ministers of the Gospel who have had a migratory home life. My experience under rented roofs led me to build, in 1865, this dwelling, which has housed our domestic life for seven and thirty years. A true homestead is not a Jonah's gourd for temporary shelter from sun and storm, it is a treasure house of accumulations. ”

“ What is the home to her who has no "home of her own"?
The wife and mother has a real base in her home: distorted and overgrown though it may have become, away in at the centre lies the everlasting founder—in the little child. ”

“ Each day, when the glow of sunset Fades in the western sky, And the wee ones, tired of playing, Go tripping lightly by, I steal away from my husband, Asleep in his easy-chair, And watch from the open doorway Their faces fresh and fair. Alone in the dear old homestead That once was full of life, Ringing with girlish laughter, Echoing boyish strife, We two are waiting together ”

“ What would one think of a housekeeper so intent upon saving that she could waste no time on beauty or cleanliness? How many who would storm if they came home to an untidy house, feel no shadow of uneasiness that they have all day been defiling the house of the Father, nor at night lifted hand to cleanse it! Such men regard him as a fool, whose joy a foul river can poison ”

“ It is really a monstrous folly, this fashionable treatment of home, which leads people to abandon it almost every night in pursuit of pleasure, or else to sweep it with a rout, which considers a household evening very dull, and makes Sunday a day for sleeping and yawning. The central idea of home is stability, and this has much less chance to be realized in the city than in the country. ”

“ The orphan, the foundling, the neglected child of the street is contrasted with the well-fed and comfortably clothed darling of the household, and we relapse into our profound conviction that the home is all right. ”

“ The New England farmer would not think a home comfortable that was full of slaves—even a butler he would find oppressive; the New York banker would not enjoy seeing his wife do dirty work. Ideals change—even home ideals; and whatever kind of home we have, so that we grow up in it and know no other, we learn to love. Even among homes as they now are, equally enjoyed by their inmates, there is a wide scale of difference. ”