OCR Text |
Show HOME THAT IS TRULY HOME ,U Creation is Wholly the Art of Woman, and Really Her Life's Best Work. A home is not merely a bouse; It Is an atmosphere; it is a place of beloved be-loved associations, where you can wear old clothes, and think old thoughts, and hear familiar voices without hearing them. You can be happy there, and be comfortably unhappy, un-happy, be thoroughly unpleasant even, and know that those you love will think no worse of you than they do already. Luxury cannot make a home, nor can books, or pictures, or rugs, or bric-a-brac. A cat, a canary, two geraniums, a Bible and an old rocking chair may make one of the loveliest homes in the world. At the same time a Tiome is not necessarily happy because it is the house of poverty, pov-erty, as some would have us believe. The art of creating home atmosphere atmo-sphere is wholly the art of woman, and she has none more charming. Mere care will not do it, or mere neatness and tidiness; indeed those things sometimes work the other way. The lov- of prettincss will not do it; good cooking will not do it, although al-though it is a mighty help. Even being be-ing gay and merry, and kindly yourself is not quite- enough, although it helps even more- than the cooking. Success Suc-cess in homemaking, as in everything else, requires that you shail feel a real' joy in your work. If it is a drag, if it is an irksome duty, if your mind is on a thousand outside things that are not home, you cannot make home what it should be. Not that the home-maker home-maker should think of nothing else. That is neither desirable nor possible. But the woman whose first pleasure Is to create that beautiful thing, home, will be a precious and permanent influence in-fluence not only to her own family, but to all her household, to all hex guests, to the whole community in ! which che lives. Youth's Companion. |