Homesickness

“ THOSE great changes of place, temporarily, by masses of people, which were brought about by the late war, have drawn the attention of physicians again to a very singular malady, nostalgia, or homesickness, some extremely noteworthy cases of which appeared, particularly among the mobiles collected at Paris during the siege. Indeed, homesickness is a real disease, occasioning a group of symptoms and disturbances of very definite character—a disease the more real, inasmuch as it often ends in death. ”

“ Whoever ridicules and laughs at any one who is truly homesick must have a hard heart and a shallow mind. It is no laughing matter. Homesickness is something midway between a physical disease and a mental worry. It has a real, physiological cause, and is due to the inability of the brain to adapt itself, without a struggle, to the strangeness of new scenes and new surroundings; and that struggle is often a very painful one.
Homesickness had not fallen upon me at first, there [Pg 120] were so many new things to see, so many new cousins and young neighbors to get acquainted with. ”

“ Homesickness is an inexplicable thing. I have heard brides relate how it attacked them unmercifully and without cause in the midst of their honeymoon. Girl students, whose sole aim in life has been to come abroad to study, and who, in finally coming, have fondly dreamed that the gates of Paradise had swung open before their delighted eyes, have been among its earliest and most acutely afflicted victims. ”

“ It would be an incomplete story of life at a post which said nothing of the visits of homesickness, which, many strong men in the West have confessed to me, is the worst sickness with which man is cursed. And it is an illness which comes at irregular periods to those of the men who know and who love the East. It is not a homesickness for one home or for one person, but a case of that madness which seized Private Ortheris, only in a less malignant form, and in the officers’ quarters. ”

“ Homesickness? Yes, even in Picardy, even in the wet weariness of the trenches, in the gray rain that soaked into my soul, I had never felt such utter loneliness as here, in the nausea of the revealing dawn.
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I came out of the city and set my face sternly to the task of readjustment. I would not be true to my determination to set down without disguise or sentimentalization the history of my shifting moods, actions and reactions, emotions and resolves, if I didn’t write this down. ”

“ She didn't try to jolly me up, but instead she was very serious, and talked with me about my home. She put her arm about me and said, "Alice, your kind of homesickness is a blessed thing. One may be homesick because one has no home to be homesick for." ”

“ All I could see of her face was the patient, sweet mouth, which was firmer shut than usual.
And so we went back into the world again: the city, the college, the men, the women, all seemed unspeakably strange, and the strangeness did not wear off. For weeks our feeling was not so much one of homesickness as of bewilderment. No foreigners in a strange land ever found the atmosphere of their lives newer, more inharmonious. ”

“ This American world is made for homesickness. But what a condition to be in, always to be homesick and never to have a home!
I believe that all those whom you count among the despairing are the homesick, homeless wanderers. There is a sort of intellectual or ideal gypsydom, and we all belong to it. ”

“ The truth is, good, old-fashioned home-sickness is at the bottom of it."
"Homesickness, for this?" Ann sneered contemptuously, as she waved her hand broadly—"homesick for the hard bed you had at your step-father's, in a pine-pole cabin, with a mud chimney and windows without glass, when you've been the equal, out there, of the highest and best in the land, and among folks that could and would appreciate your talents and energy and were able to pay cash for it at the highest market-price?" ”

“ Owing, doubtless, to the marked change from isolated conditions of small farm life, to the superior advantages for education, amusement, social enjoyment, and the all-pervading enthusiasm of congenial, co-operative work; which here at Solaris, leaves no time for such fits of brooding over the past, as usually result in that severe mental depression, which we call homesickness. Perhaps one individual in fifty, is so constituted that homesickness becomes a serious illness. ”

“ Love of place rather than love of persons leads to the unhappy condition of homesickness. As “nostalgia,” it becomes an actual disease of body and mind, and men will die of it, unless allowed to return to their native land. ”

“ It is probable, however, that the new surroundings in which the girl finds herself, and the separation from those who are the centre of her personal life, will bring on an attack of this most painful [Pg 34] malady. It takes time to fit comfortably into the new surroundings, and meanwhile everything is strange. Homesickness is not to be laughed at, but it must be less deadly, less fatal than some people think it, or there would not be so many recoveries. ”

“ All of them things which we are wont first to encounter at a later period of life, at a time when the youth or maiden is preparing to sever the family tie and to enter independently upon life, but is still held back by an inward, painful feeling of homesickness for the warmth of the parental hearth. ”

“ Although people are inclined to regard it as a trifling ailment, and extend no sympathy for those who suffer with it, homesickness is a very serious affliction. It is even fatal in some instances. A soldier of a Massachusetts regiment is reported to have died in Cuba recently through homesickness. ”

“ In some cases he passes through a period of miserable homesickness, when everything seems disappointing. Then, even such minor ills as unfamiliar kinds of implements to work with (for instance, in the case of a woman, stoves in place of the accustomed open fires) seem to add sorely to the hardships of life. ”

“ home-sickness, for instance, is a malady of the physical memory. ”

“ Is there any one who has ever been sick "away from home," among strangers, courteous and attentive, perhaps, but whose courtesy and attention were of duty, not love, that cannot understand what it was to be lying, day after day, in a "home" like mine, knowing it was the only one I had a right to, or a hope of, this side heaven, and knowing, through all the exaggerating excitement of fever, and the languid hopelessness of slow convalescence, that in it there was no one to whom the care of me was not a penance, that no hour was so grudged as that spent by my bedside? ”

“ Lord, I live in a land that is called Misery; it is this evil world, for all that is in it cannot [121] comfort me, nor give me joy unmixed with sorrow. In this land I have a house, which is called Painful. It is the house in which my soul lives, namely, my body. This house is old, and small, and dark. In this house I have a bed, which is called Unrest, for all things are a grief to me which have not to do with God. ”

“ We are really struggling and fussing along, trying to live smoothly, healthfully, peacefully; studying all manner of "new thought" to keep us "poised," pining for a "simpler life"; and yet all spending our strength and patience on the endless effort to "keep house," to "make a home"—to live comfortably in a way which is not comfortable; and when this continuous effort produces utter exhaustion, we have to go away from home for a rest! ”

“ But to return to my lane-end. How strange and deep are the impressions of a deep and inviolate peace that some quiet corner like this gives to the restless spirit! It can never be so with the scenes that have grown familiar, where we have carried about with us the burden of private cares—the symptoms of the disease of life. In any house where we have lived, every corner, however peaceful and beautiful in itself, is bound to be gradually soaked, as it were, in the miseries of life, to conceal its beauties under the accretion of sordid associations. ”

“ Sitting on the floor with her cheek pressed against the wall, she revealed to my eager scrutiny only the outlines of her pure, pale profile; but in those outlines and on those pure, pale features, I saw such an [Pg 46] abandonment of hope, mingled with such quiet endurance, that my whole soul melted before it, and it was with difficulty I managed to say:
"Pardon! I do not wish to intrude; but I am shut out of the house also; and the night is raw and cold. Can I do nothing for your comfort or for—for the child's?" ”

“ The vague feeling which illness leaves upon the mind, whispered to me of kind looks and soft voices; and I had a dreamy consciousness about me of being watched and cared for, but wherefore, or by whom, I knew not.
From a partly open door which led into a garden, a mild and balmy air fanned my temples and soothed my heated brow; and as the light curtain waved to and fro with the breeze, the odor of the rose and the orange-tree filled the apartment.
There is something in the feeling of weakness which succeeds to long illness of the most delicious and refined enjoyment. ”

“ In the dark of the night or in the cold bright days when she lay in her bed, the windows opened wide, she would stare at the faded rose and pearl of the ceiling or the faded gray of the walls, and the winter knocking of the woodpeckers among the trees about the house would fit into her sense of light and become identical with it. She would lie in an apathy, scarcely breathing, divided in mind, uncoördinated by hunger and unintegrated by pain. ”

“ To ourselves, sleeping and waking there, behind the rainbow, there is no beauty in the house; only a chill damp mist in every room, and, over all, a haunting fear of the hour when the gilded clouds will melt away, and let us fall—somewhat heavily, no doubt—upon the hard world underneath. ”

“ Those who have drawn such agreeable pictures of a residence in the backwoods never dwell upon the periods of sickness, when, far from medical advice, and often, as in my case, deprived of the assistance of friends by adverse circumstances, you are left to languish, unattended, upon the couch of pain. ”

“ Hence our household god, Comfort.
We are not satisfied merely with a home. It must be comfortable. The most wretched, indeed, are those who have no homes—the homeless! But not less wretched are those whose homes are without comfort—those of whom Charles Lamb once said, "The homes of the very poor are no homes." ”

“ A DOLLAR ON THE CONSCIENCE
AUNT MARY'S SUGGESTION
HELPING THE POOR
COMMON PEOPLE
MAKING A SENSATION
SOMETHING FOR A COLD
THE PORTRAIT
VERY POOR
PREFACE.
HOME! How at the word, a crowd of pleasant thoughts awaken. What sun-bright images are pictured to the imagination. Yet, there is no home without its shadows as well as sunshine. Love makes the home-lights and selfishness the shadows. Ah! how dark the shadow at times—how faint and fleeting the sunshine. How often selfishness towers up to a giant height, barring out from our dwellings every golden ray. ”

“ If we select and take a new house before we attempt our decorations let us instal a caretaker. Ay! even with her grimy self and her still more grimy goods and bronchial family, heavy with the continual colds inseparable from living in empty houses and never anywhere else ”

“ Acting on my mind at the same time—in concert with these religious doubts, and the consciousness of my unlucky fortunes—was a strong feeling of home-sickness, which grew and grew with greater intensity as the months rolled by. ”

“ People who had homes to go to, and warm fire-sides to sit down by, and happy smiling faces to welcome them, hurried through the streets in search of such dear enjoyments, while the poor houseless creatures who had no home—no kind kindred, no friend to warm the heart with a soft cheering smile, crept into old doorways and covered courts, and half-built houses, huddling themselves up with a shiver, to try by the unconsciousness of sleep to forget for awhile their miseries. ”

“ Especially he who passes from one city to another readily finds himself, but mountain and plain contain so much that is contrary that the feeling of strangeness is overmastering. So then, if the home-sick person is able, he tries to destroy his nostalgia through the noisiest and most exciting pleasures; if he is not, he sets fire to a house or in case of need, kills somebody—in short what he needs is explosive relief. ”

“ A convalescent, far from home, as his strength returns feels the pangs of home-sickness strengthen and eagerly returns to dispel the misgivings of those made anxious by tidings of his critical illness. ”

“ The perils of reaction are greater for the convert than the first great strain of facing the alternative, "Diana or Christ." Home-sickness comes, wave upon wave, and all but sweeps the soul away; feelings and longings asleep in the child awake in the girl, and draw her and woo her, and blind her too often to all that yielding means. ”

“ Seriously, it gives me great pain to see you sitting silent in my house or slipping through the rooms like a snubbed and neglected child, only waking up into life and brightness when you are out of sight of—those who are longing to see you happy. ”

“ A stranger in the house, with its paintings, its statues and its silence, the light—itself silent and indefinite—awakened painful thoughts in him as to the vanity of bolts and guards and walls. And then, in the dead of night, in the silence and solitude of a strange bedroom, a sensation of unbearable fear swept over the dignitary. ”

“ She was herself suffering for want of attention, for many comforts, and that greatest of all comforts in sickness—cleanliness. She was reduced to a condition too loathsome to describe. If a charitable individual, moved at the sight of so much distress, sent a load of wood, to render her more comfortable during the cold season, her husband was too much of a gentleman to prepare it for her use. It is painful to dwell upon the closing scene. In a filthy apartment, in an obscure part of the metropolis, lay the dying mother, and the wasting child. ”