| Home Making |
Chapter 4 |
Page 6 |
Definitions are important. It will help very greatly in working out the problem of the home life to settle precisely the object of a home, and what is intended to accomplish for those who are to grow up in it. When boys are to be trained for soldiers, a military academy is what is required. If they are to serve in the navy, they are sent to naval school. If a young girl desires to study art she does not go to a college of music, but to an art school. If she wishes to study the science of medicine she enters not a theological but a medical school. The course of study, the instruction, the tone and spirit of these schools, are not the same in all, but in each are adapted to produce the end desired. If we know definitely what a home ought to do for the children who are brought up in it, we can tell better what the training, the instruction and the influences should be.
What, then, is the object of a home? What is its mission? What is it designed to accomplish? What kind of results is it expected to yield? We know the design of a blacksmith’s shop; articles and implements of iron are forged and fashioned there. We know what a marble cutter’s yard is for; forms of grace and beauty are there chiseled from the block. We know what a great factory is designed to do; its shuttles weave the fabrics which men and women are to wear. When an artist fits up a studio we know what kind of work he expects to send out; on canvas or in marble he will fix the beautiful creations of his genius and send them forth to give inspirations of loveliness to others. In every kind of shop or factory or mill which men build they have some definite design to accomplish, some specific results to be achieved. What are the results which homes are meant to produce? What forms of beauty, what fabrics of loveliness, are they expected to yield?
Page 6
<< Prior Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Next Page >>