| Home Making |
Chapter 4 |
Page 7 |
We begin to think of these questions, and we say, “A home is a place in which to sleep and get one’s meals. It is a place in which to rest when one is tired, to stay and be nursed when one is sick; a place in which to rock the babies and let the children romp and play; a place to receive one’s friends and keep the treasures one gathers.”
Is that all? Some one asked a young lady who had just completed her education, what her aim in life now was, and she relied, “To breathe.” Her reply may have been made in jest, yet there are many who have no higher aim in living. And about as high an aim as most married people have in their home making is to have as good and showy a house as they can afford, furnished in as rich a style as their means will warrant, and then to live in it as comfortably as they are able, without too much exertion or self denial.
But the true idea of a home is that it is a place for growth. It is a place for the parents themselves to grow – to grow into beauty of character, to grow in refinement, in knowledge, in strength, in wisdom, in patience, gentleness, kindliness, and all the Christian graces and virtues. It is a place for children to grow – to grow into physical vigor and health and to be trained in all that shall make them true and noble men and women. That is, just as the artist’s studio is built and furnished for the definite purpose of preparing and sending out forms of beauty, so is a true home set up and all its life ordered for the definite purpose of training, building up and sending our human lives fashioned into symmetry, filled with lofty impulses and aspirations, governed by principles of rectitude and honor and fitted to enter upon the duties and struggles of life with wisdom and strength.
If this be the true object and design in setting up a home, the question arises, what sort of home culture and home education will produce these results? What influences will best fashion human infancy and childhood into strong, noble manhood and lovely, queenly womanhood? The smith furnishes his shop with the appliances and tools which are best fitted to do the work he intends to do. The gardener prepares his soil, sows his seeds, waters his plants, regulates the temperature and provides just the conditions adapted to promote the growth of his flowers. What sort of implements do we need in training tender lives? What are the conditions which will best promote growth in human souls? What kind of home life must we try to make if we would build up noble character in our children?
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