Homemade

“ Why can't you settle down in your own home, and make it bright, and be contented?"
"Well, what's the use of furniture, or a new house for that matter, when there's no one but Bushies to look at it?" I said. ”

“ At home I may beguile the evening in a thousand innocent sports, designing barbaric patterns upon the new table-cloth, drawing dreamy and ideal landscapes upon the note-paper, decorating my own person in the manner of our British predecessors, sketching strange and ideal adventures for strange and ideal characters. ”

“ The quiet unpretending house, with its exquisite neatness and its abundance of books, the family life, with the heart-happiness underneath, and the gentle trust and courtesy on the surface, the little touches of austerity which betrayed themselves here and there in the household ways—all these surroundings stole into the lad’s imagination, touched in him responsive fibres of taste and feeling. ”

“ You are called to the cultivation of an opposite temper, by the most endearing considerations. As children of one family you reverently bow down at the same table, partake of the same bread, drink of the same cup, and profess to be travelling to the same eternal home. ”

“ There is real beauty in this picture of home and the common things of every-day use.
Finding and Expressing Beauty. In the houses we live in nowadays, there may be no kitchen fireplaces like this; but the thought that we get from the picture is that beauty may be found in those things for which we sometimes care the least. Let us study the common dishes we cook with, the vegetables that come from market or garden, the furniture we use every day. ”

“ We slave at our desks, in our workshops, to make a home for those we love; we give up our pleasures, we give up our rest. We toil in our kitchen from morning till night, and we render the whole feast tasteless for want of a ha’porth of salt—for want of a soupcon of amiability, for want of a handful of kindly words, a touch of caress, a pinch of courtesy. ”

“ In home making, regarded as one of the noblest objects of every woman's life—in fact, the object whenever possible—lies the hope of the future. To this end God speed the kitchen garden and the cooking school! ”

“ Of this unselfish affection home is the expression, and all those material things which we are in the habit of associating with the home are the tools of the expression. Roofs and walls, furniture and dishes, may or may not be part of home. They are such only when they represent some one’s affectionate desire to secure for another the good things of life. ”

“ HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.
First principles of home-making.
In this art of home-making I have set down in my mind certain first principles, like the axioms of Euclid, and the first is,—
No home is possible without love.
All business marriages and marriages of convenience, all mere culinary marriages and marriages of mere animal passion, make the creation of a true home impossible in the outset. Love is the jewelled foundation of this New Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven, and takes as many bright forms as the amethyst, topaz, and sapphire of that mysterious vision. ”

“ The inner life of his household is exceedingly charming, because one is astonished to find the graces and accomplishments of womanhood displayed in a scene which has a certain sort of savage rudeness about it after all, and where all kinds of incongruous accidents are visible in the service of the table, in the furniture of the house, in its decorations, menials, and surrounding scenery. ”

“ Home-made was an adjective that might be applied to nearly every article in the house. Such would not be the case under similar stress to-day. In the matter of clothing alone we could not now be independent. ”

“ If the kitchen is to sustain an organic relationship to the other parts of the house it must represent in the arrangement of all its details the same idea of unity of composition that is expressed in a painting, of unity of development that gives life to a book, of unity of design that makes the perfect engine. ”

“ Every book, every sketch or picture—every carefully selected or characteristic object brought into the home adds to and makes a part of a beautiful whole, and no house can be absolutely perfect without all these evidences of family life. ”

“ The time will surely come when both mistress and maid will prepare for their life’s work—as home-makers—with the same care and enthusiasm that men now put into the work of perfecting themselves in their various trades and professions. Home-making, like piano-playing, is an art—to succeed in which requires something more than temperament. ”

“ For the house is the image of the world, and we that live and labor in it are the image of our Father who made the world; and, like him, we labor to make for ourselves a worthy habitation, which shall not shame our teacher. ”

“ The boy who begins to learn house painting soon expresses the wish to paint his own home; if carpentry, he wishes to build a shed; if joinery, he wishes to make a table; and how often one notices a home where tidiness and order are due to the educated child, and where taste in furnishing is accounted for by the daughter's cultivated æsthetic taste. ”

“ The welcome cheer of the open fire, which graced and beautified even the humblest room, is lost forever with the close gatherings of the family, the household occupations, the homespun industries which formed and imprinted in the mind of every child the picture of a home. ”

“ It will be found so enjoyable that it will seem more like play than labor. There is the pleasure of planning it—the sense of responsibility and importance which comes to the lad who sets out to do something "all by himself," and the delightful consciousness that what is done may result in making home more home-like, and add to the comfort and pleasure of those whose love and companionship go to make home the best place on earth. ”

“ It may seem an impeachment of the taste of our readers to have lingered so long on the lesser lights of games and fortune-telling as “Home Amusements,” when we have before us the great world of decorative art: æsthetic embroidery, dinner-card designing, china painting, the making of screens, and the thousand and one devices by which the modern family can amuse itself. ”

“ Toward the end my mother used to take me off in a corner and tell me that I hadn't spoken a word to the little girl that I had taken in to dinner, and that if I couldn't forget my uncouth western ways for an hour or two, at least, perhaps I'd better not try to mingle with civilized people. I discovered that home isn't always the place where you were born and bred. Home is the place where your everyday clothes are, and where somebody, or something needs you. ”

“ Even rooms furnished without taste often become charming from this one grace, that they seem to let you into the home life and home current. You seem to understand in a moment that you are taken into the family, and are moving in its inner circles, and not revolving at a distance in some outer court of the gentiles. ”

“ Your own taste and love, if you set about the work in the right spirit, will teach you better than any one else can do. Arrange the necessary articles and all the embellishments with care and thought, so that when you stand at the door and survey the work, the room shall lie before you like a picture, speaking of cheerfulness, rest, and comfort. ”

“ The authors hold that harmony will be the keynote of the home in proportion as the makers of the home regard the plan, the sanitation, the decoration of the house itself, and as they exercise economy and wisdom in the provision of clothing. ”

“ Clothing, home planning and furnishing, care of the sick, serving of foods, care of children, and family relationships, all have an "art" side. The successful discharge of household responsibilities is conditioned largely upon a perception of this truth. ”

“ The home is of importance only as a tool, a means to the final ends of the family life; the test of its efficiency is not whether it maintains traditional forms but whether it best serves the23 highest aims of family life. We may abandon all the older customs; our regret for them, as we look back on the days of home cooking, cannot be any greater than the regrets of our parents or grandparents looking back on the spinning-wheel and the hand loom that cumbered the kitchen of their childhood. ”

“ All, or nearly all, of the work of the home seems to be done by people from the outside—from the cleaning of the windows to the education of the children. The modern home is but a fireside around which one hardly sees the family gathered for intimate talk. ”

“ CHAPTER I.—THE HALL.
In studying how to make home beautiful, we must not forget that, first of all, there must be a home; and that in a true home, the household, and not the house, is of primary importance. We have all seen careful housekeepers whose first and last thought was to keep their domains with absolute neatness, and whose domestic law was of Median and Persian inflexibility. ”

“ A lady who has kept house with marked success for fifty years once said to me: “My dear, there are only three things of any importance in a house. First the husband, then the nurse, then the cook, and after that it doesn’t matter.” ”

“ Will the men folks stay in the house all day
Dressed in their silks and laces—
Their soft white hands bedecked with rings,
And powder on their faces?
Will they play the piano, with no thought
To the morrow ever giving—
While the woman goes, and tries to find
Some way to get a living?{86}
Will she be a carpenter,
And build houses tall and grand ”

“ Our home, the place where we spend the most of our time, should be the field in which to exercise our best gifts, wherein we both sow and reap, and which is left to us to brighten and beautify, or to darken and disgrace. ”

“ Yes, everything that has life must have food of some kind. You remember I told you we had iron, lime, and other things to build the body-house, just as a man must have wood, brick, iron, and glass when he wishes to build. We have looked at the outside of the house we live in, and we have learned some things about its frame, its servants, the telephone system, and the master who lives inside. ”

“ Your dressing according to your station in life is as much in accordance with the will of God concerning you, as your living in a drawing-room instead of a kitchen, in a spacious mansion instead of a peasant's cottage. ”

“ You shall choose everything for your own rooms—as I told you my wife should—from the best looms and workshops in the world. And then when we come home we will take a house somewhere while we superintend the fitting up of our own. ”

“ The Deities.—The worship of the household seems to have originated, as has been suggested, in the sense of the sacredness of certain objects closely bound up with the family life—the door, the protection against the external world, by which the household went out to work in the morning and returned at evening, the hearth, the giver of warmth and nourishment, and the store-cupboard, where was preserved the food for future use. ”

“ Thoroughly domestic in all her tastes, with a love of gardening, and a practical knowledge of all the details of country life, which tend to make the home so comfortable, her unfailing sweet temper, ready wit and espièglerie, her powers of sympathy and strong common sense, caused her to be the life and center of her large household. ”

“ Almost nothing that was made was of a character that could be done by mere routine. A man had to occupy both mind and body in the making of the textiles, of the kitchen utensils, of the furniture, of the various metal utensils required for houses, and so for nearly everything else. ”

“ When we build a house, it shall not be for its uses only. We shall have kitchens and drawing rooms and libraries and pictures and flowers, if possible. But the house, with all its comforts and luxuries, is mere framework, and our words and doings construct the true, the spiritual home. ”

“ The glow of this consciousness even in so small an organism was part of the charm of these retreats offered me cityward upon our base of [Pg 72] provisions; a part of the rest of which, I disengage, was in my fond perception of that almost eccentrically home-loving habit in my father which furnished us with half the household humour of our childhood—besides furnishing him with any quantity of extravagant picture of his so prompt pangs of anguish in absence for celebration of his precipitate returns. ”

“ Families look forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain, the common fund for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dressmaker, and take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your cooking-stove to her own. ”

“ They look upon creation with much the same feeling as that with which we look upon the first house built from cellar-drain to chimney-top by a self-made artisan. As a house pure and simple, it may be a failure, but as a self-made artisan's first attempt it is a wonderful success. ”

“ Every arrow strikes them; every cold wind blows full upon them; every storm beats against them. What, in the world, we would pass by in sport, in our homes would wound us to the quick. Very little can we bear at home, for it is a sensitive place.
If we would have a true home, we must guard well our thoughts and actions. A single bitter word may disquiet the home for a whole day; but, like unexpected flowers which spring up along our path full of freshness, fragrance, and beauty, so do kind words and gentle acts and sweet disposition make glad the home where peace and blessing dwell. ”

“ You will express yourself in your house, whether you want to or not, so you must make up your mind to a long preparatory discipline. You may have only one house to furnish in your life-time, possibly, so be careful and go warily. ”