The Art of Living is best exhibited in the Home. The first condition of
a happy home, where good influences prevail over bad ones, is Comfort.
Where there are carking cares, querulousness, untidiness, slovenliness,
and dirt, there can be little comfort either for man or woman. The
husband who has been working all day, expects to have something as a
compensation for his toil. The least that his wife can do for him, is to
make his house snug, clean, and tidy, against his home-coming at eve.
That is the truest economy--the best housekeeping--the worthiest
domestic management--which makes the home so pleasant and agreeable,
that a man feels when approaching it, that he is about to enter a
sanctuary; and that, when there, there is no alehouse attraction that
can draw him away from it.
Some say that we worship Comfort too much. The word is essentially
English, and is said to be untranslateable, in its full meaning, into
any foreign language. It is intimately connected with the Fireside. In
warmer climes, people contrive to live out of doors. They sun themselves
in the streets. Half their life is in public. The genial air woos them
forth, and keeps them abroad. They enter their houses merely to eat and
sleep. They can scarcely be said to _live_ there.
How different is it with us! The raw air without, during so many months
of the year, drives us within doors.
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