Hoisting

“ We go to a place for a month, and we stay in it for twenty years. We go to a place to settle for life, and our tent-pegs are pulled up in a week. They thought of five years, and it was to be nearly as many centuries. They thought of temporary shelter and food; God meant an education of them and their descendants. Over all this story the unseen Hand hovers, chastising, guiding, impelling; and the human agents are free and yet fulfilling an eternal purpose, blind and yet accountable, responsible for motives, and mercifully ignorant of consequences. So we all play our little parts. ”

“ We have been forced to separate ourselves, been under the necessity of leaving the society of those who did not believe as we did. We have been driven from our homes time and time again without the privilege of disposing of our property, and have taken joyfully the spoiling of our goods repeatedly, until we were under the necessity of fleeing to some land where there were none whom we could annoy.
If we have annoyed our neighbors so seriously, the question naturally arises, From what did this annoyance proceed? ”

“ If these poor heathens were to go a step beyond this in absurdity,—if they were to refuse to supply a famished companion while living with needful food, clothing, and shelter, and then, as soon as he was dead, and no longer sensible of cold and hunger, were to begin to supply his dead body with provisions, which it could no longer use,—they would then be treating him, as some of our European forefathers treated themselves; who seldom or never, during their lives, frequented a house of worship to any profitable purpose, while they might have derived benefit from their attendance ”

“ Does it not happen to us in Europe to pass by a house where the head of the family castigates his wife or children? "That's the butcher punishing his slave", said nonchalantly a big boy of eighteen or twenty years of age, after having listened for a moment, while returning to his home. ”

“ We seek the shelter of his kinship Only knowing through a mind-link Where it was we were begun. Those few individuals learning How to break the tie of passion, Beg all spirits for a sign, Oh for no days of brotherhood. ”

“ And the more we experience this shelter, the more we come to feel that it is protecting even to tenderness. Like as a father pitieth his own children, even so is the Eternal merciful unto them that fear him. ”

“ Would the country gentleman like to sink into a feudal retainer? The merchant follow his procession of packhorses through narrow roads, and in high peril of bandits? The farmer drop down into the born thrall? The parish priest convert his pleasant parsonage and family into the solitary bachelorship of popery? Would the man most pressed by the cares and heart-griping necessities of this populous and struggling time, be willing to accept the quiet simplicity of those days, with their monotonous solitude, ignorance, servitude, and perpetual danger of arbitrary infliction of death or mutilation? ”

“ Prosperous men, who object to this desertion, image to themselves some clean contented family like that which they go home to. But look at the countenance of the poor wives who follow and persecute their good man to the door of the public house, which he is about to enter, when something like shame would restrain him, if stronger misery did not induce him to pass the threshold. That face, ground by want, in which every cheerful, every conversable lineament has been long effaced by misery,—is that a face to stay at home with? ”

“ By yourself alone you had sustained the tottering house, and the house, overwhelming you with labours and cares, was separating your own from you. It is the penalty of material necessities,—they do not leave time enough for the guardianship of souls. ”

“ But how was he returned? As one who came under a feigned name, to seek from usurping hands a shelter 'neath his own roof; a beggar of that from others which it should have been his to grant or to deny those others. ”

“ The gloomy, half-closed house, the garden paths, green with damp and thick with weeds, the servants acting entirely upon their own authority, and the master querulous, impatient, and unjust, either shut up in his own room brooding over the past and present, or freely distributing oaths, complaints, and sometimes even blows, amongst the unfortunate inmates of his household. ”

“ I beg your pardon,—I said;—all I meant was, that men, as temporary occupants of a permanent abode called human life, which is improved or injured by occupancy, according to the style of tenant, have a natural dislike to those who, if they live the life of the race as well as of the individual, will leave lasting injurious effects upon the abode spoken of, which is to be occupied by countless future generations. This is the final cause of the underlying brute instinct which we have in common with the herds. ”

“ Woe to timid hearts and to slack hands, and to the sinner who walks a double path! Woe to the fainthearted who have no trust! Therefore, they will have no shelter. Woe to you who have lost your nerve! ”

“ The family cluster fearfully at the door as the head of the house, with surly resignation, departs for the scene of his daily servitude with the smoke of his pipe trailing behind him, animated by no love for the human race but only by a firm resolution not to lift his hand until the last echoes of the whistle have died away. ”

“ If we consider the many misfortunes that befal private families, it will be found that servants are the causes and instruments of them all: are our goods embezzled, wasted, and destroyed? is our house burnt to the ground? it is by the sloth, the drunkenness or the villany of servants. Are we robbed and murdered in our beds? it is by confederacy with our servants. ”

“ For omens are observed for the whole household, and hold good only for those who live under the one roof, This spiritual unity of the household is jealously guarded. Occasionally one family may wish for some reason, such as bad dreams or much sickness, to withdraw from the house. If the rest of the household is unwilling to remove to a new house, they will oppose such withdrawal, and, if the man insists on separating, a fine is imposed on him, and he is compelled to leave undisturbed the roof and all the main structure of his section of the house ”

“ He lived to see his boys grow up unprincipled men, undutiful sons,—the one a drunkard, the other a thief! He lived to see his home in the hands of a stranger, and to be himself, in his old age, compelled to seek the dreary shelter of a workhouse. ”

“ No house was to shelter them, no church to give them sanctuary, no kind Christian to bestow on them a morsel of bread when starving, nor a cup of cold water when dying of thirst, on pain of being considered accessories to their crime and accursed like them. ”

“ Obedience in my own house and from my children dependent upon me, I shall have. So step over the threshold of that door in disobedience to me, and you shall never come into my house again. Now go; go to your room and go to your knees, and later, when you are yourself, I shall send for you. ”

“ Here, we think it impossible to live without a house or permanent abode; they look upon this as a voluntary imprisonment, and regard it as much more convenient, to be at liberty to change their habitation, when, and unto wherever it is most agreeable to them, fabricating it in the evening, for the use of the night and the next day, either in the valley, on the side of the mountain, or in the plain. ”

“ They consulted the king concerning the matter, and he said: "Let each (father) slay his son, but let my fosterlings be spared."
"Leave, leave!" says every one: "it shall be done for thee."
"Nay indeed," quoth he; "no ‘cast of life’ by me is the doom I have delivered. ”

“ One married a servant girl, and she dying, the son brought himself and several children to the old man’s to live. Warned by this—for, with all his clownish parsimony, he has pride—the pride of property—he has put the others on farms, and they have married farmer’s daughters: but, always living in expectation of the old man’s death, they attend to no business; always looking forward to the possession of his wealth, they have already condemned a good part of it. ”

“ So, again, in old age, if he will not resign his liberty, he must be content with just enough to keep body and soul together, to sit panting with asthma in a little draughty hovel, longing for death to release him, and saying bitterly with the patriarch, "Few and evil have been the days of the years of my pilgrimage." ”

“ This farmer, fearing that the English might be driven out of the country and that he would lose his possessions, because he is a great worker for the enemy, did find a young girl, who was related to one of the leaders of your holy cause, and he lured her into his house and holds her as a hostage. ”

“ It is a time which leads them to clean up their houses, to look forward and prepare for a renewal of their wardrobe; and which cheers the spirit of many an otherwise solitary and labouring person with the prospect of a short season of relaxation, a short pause in the otherwise ever-going machinery of servitude. ”

“ Each presented circumstance of fertility or shelter, salubrity or beauty, may be named as what is wanting to a much greater number of the occupants of the world, than those to whom the "lines are fallen in such pleasant places." ”

“ He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men ”

“ But how will they explain the magnificence of one habitation as compared with the squalid misery of another? Through what medium can the idea of servitude enter their minds? When will they comprehend the great and miserable fact—the evidences of which appeal to their senses everywhere—that one portion of earth’s lost inhabitants was rolling in luxury while the multitude was toiling for scanty food? ”

“ Many a home has been cheered by domestic forbearance, and placid submission to circumstances, even in the higher classes, during the life-time of a father, or in the course of those long expectancies, in which the fortitude and principle of many of the aristocracy are tried and proved. ”

“ The feelings of a man hereditarily sensitive to property accused her of a trespassing imprudence, and knowing himself, by testimony of his household, his tenants, and the neighbourhood, and the world as well, amiable when he received his dues, he contemplated her with an air of stiff-backed ill-treatment, not devoid of a certain sanctification of martyrdom. ”

“ If so, did the fact argue habitual destitution, or merely habitual leisure? Did the slaves in the coffle make acquaintance, or remain strangers to one another, though they were closely neighbored night after night by their misery? Perhaps they joked away the weary hours of waiting; they must have their jokes. Which of them were old-comers, and which novices? Did they ever quarrel over questions of precedence? Had they some comity, some etiquette, which a man forced to leave his place could appeal to, and so get it back? Could one say to his next-hand man, “Will you please keep my place?” ”

“ One solitary old labourer, a dreary bachelor, inhabited, it is true, a corner of the old roomy house, calculated for the convenient accommodation of the patriarchal family of sons and daughters, men-servants and maid-servants, of which a farmer's household consisted in former days ”

“ Consequently many really marry just to obtain a home — which is foolish enough, although the natural consequence of social conditions. We remember one case in this city — a young Frenchman who was continually changing his quarters for years, never being able to find rest or comfort in any one house. ”

“ Do you not perceive that as soon as this golden rule of action is applied to yourselves, that you involuntarily shrink from the test; as soon as your actions are weighed in this balance of the sanctuary, that you are found wanting? Try yourselves by another of the Divine precepts, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." ”

“ I can't tell what our folks would do with so many people. We shall have to keep all the weddeners, like enough—'tis a savage night, out, I guess.' At this crisis the son of 'mine host,' and heir-apparent of house and homestead, came forward. ”

“ Did any one think to shelter himself in the hut of a neighbour?—ere long there commenced a300 regular emigration, which very speedily came to a conclusion, by each and all having the melancholy satisfaction of perceiving that Fortune had set to work with rigorous impartiality, and had resolved to let each one of us feel the weight of her displeasure. ”

“ If your house and its belongings are so constructed that the decencies of life are impossible, remember that because you "don't mind your husband or the men on the farm," your lady boarders may, even at the risk of being called "fussy." ”

“ The “homestead instinct” of our primitive forefathers formed the first, and perhaps the most potent, stimulus to the acquisition of personal property. There is a period in life when the desire for the possession of a private domicile asserts itself with the power almost of a vital passion ”

“ As the man himself—no matter what his occupation—be lodged and fed, so influenced, in a degree, will be his practice in the daily duties of his life. A squalid, miserable tenement, with which they who inhabit it are content, can lead to no elevation of character, no improvement in condition, either social or moral, of its occupants. ”

“ Born of unfortunate marriages, inheriting dangerous inclinations, neglected in childhood, with bad habits and bad associates, as certainly must be the case with some of you, how terrible will be the struggle when you leave this shelter! O, be sure that you are fitted to triumph over evil, before you again expose yourselves to it! ”