It is not for the par- ticular holiday or evening, but because each one remembers that then the family were all assembled together and enjoyed life at home in common. LIFE AT HOME. 22g To make such memories complete, to fill the canvas with an ideal picture of" Life at Home," many faces must be limned, many colors blend in the sunshine of love, many qualities of many hearts combine. The father, perhaps long dead, must be there, presiding over and revered as well as beloved b}- all. Justice as well as mercy must be written on his brow and remembered in his acts. The mother must be there, loving her children with an equal lov^e, and not helping her smooth-tongued Jacob to supplant his rougher but more honest brother Esau. Rebekah was a bad mother, and designing mothers generally are not good for much. Too often they implant hatred between brothers by their unjust favoritism, where there would other- wise be brotherly affection. Sisters and daughters must be there, one loving her music, another painting, another flowers and garden- ing, another languages and reading best. Out of their several tastes and above them like a canopy must be their love for each other, which began with their first feelings and can never be extinguished by time or absence. Brothers must be there, now parted in the race of life, but who played and worked together in the days of childhood, and gave each his contribution to life at home. Perhaps, an aged grand- father or grandmother is remembered, whose gray heads were crowns of glory in the sweet home picture. And the baby brother or sister may be there, who left the world before its eyes had seen it so as to know even dimly in an infant's dream where and what it was. "The baby wept; The mother took it from the nurse'.s arms, And hushed its fears, and soothed its vain alarms, Anti Vialiy slept. " Again it weeps. And God doth take it from the mother's arms, From present griefs, and future unknown harms, And baby sleeps." The dead brother or sister, baby, child, or youth, is sometimes a sad, sweet memory in the picture of Life at Home. The cradle, the nursery, the library, the kitchen, health and sick- 230 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. ness, pleasure and pain, unions and partings, tears and laughter, pastimes and studies, hopes and aspirations, talents and tempers, for- bearance and little quarrels which are so easily and so much better avoided, mornings and evenings, school-days and holidays, arts and sciences, hurts and healings, likes and dislikes, justice and injustice, charity and severity, all these various states, scenes and ingredients make up the picture of life at home. Virtue and intelligence make the life at home beautiful. Love is the guardian angel of it. Vice spoils the picture. Cruelty, injustice, envy, malice, hatred, lying, selfishness, make life at home a hell instead of a heaven, and old men and viromen shake their heads mournfully as they tell the younger folks around them that theirs was not a happy home. Few spectacles are more piteous than that of an ill-treated son or daughter gazing on the dead face of a stern, tyrannical and unjust father or mother, and thinking, with a tear and sigh of remembered affection and present forgiveness, that if "poor father" or "poor mother" had only dealt niore justly and less harshly with them, this or that calamity would not have happened and the old life

AI-modernized reading of the original text

It is not for the particular holiday or evening, but because each one remembers that then the family were all assembled together and enjoyed life at home in common. LIFE AT HOME. 22g To make such memories complete, to fill the canvas with an ideal picture of "Life at Home," many faces must be limned, many colors blend in the sunshine of love, many qualities of many hearts combine. The father, perhaps long dead, must be there, presiding over and revered as well as beloved by all. Justice as well as mercy must be written on his brow and remembered in his acts. The mother must be there, loving her children with an equal love, and not helping her smooth-tongued Jacob to supplant his rougher but more honest brother Esau. Rebekah was a bad mother, and designing mothers generally are not good for much. Too often they implant hatred between brothers by their unjust favoritism, where there would otherwise be brotherly affection. Sisters and daughters must be there, one loving her music, another painting, another flowers and gardening, another languages and reading best. Out of their several tastes and above them like a canopy must be their love for each other, which began with their first feelings and can never be extinguished by time or absence. Brothers must be there, now parted in the race of life, but who played and worked together in the days of childhood, and gave each his contribution to life at home. Perhaps, an aged grandfather or grandmother is remembered, whose gray heads were crowns of glory in the sweet home picture. And the baby brother or sister may be there, who left the world before its eyes had seen it so as to know even dimly in an infant's dream where and what it was. "The baby wept; The mother took it from the nurse's arms, And hushed its fears, and soothed its vain alarms, And baby slept. " Again it weeps. And God doth take it from the mother's arms, From present griefs, and future unknown harms, And baby sleeps." The dead brother or sister, baby, child, or youth, is sometimes a sad, sweet memory in the picture of Life at Home. The cradle, the nursery, the library, the kitchen, health and sick- 230 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. ness, pleasure and pain, unions and partings, tears and laughter, pastimes and studies, hopes and aspirations, talents and tempers, forbearance and little quarrels which are so easily and so much better avoided, mornings and evenings, school-days and holidays, arts and sciences, hurts and healings, likes and dislikes, justice and injustice, charity and severity, all these various states, scenes and ingredients make up the picture of life at home. Virtue and intelligence make the life at home beautiful. Love is the guardian angel of it. Vice spoils the picture. Cruelty, injustice, envy, malice, hatred, lying, selfishness, make life at home a hell instead of a heaven, and old men and women shake their heads mournfully as they tell the younger folks around them that theirs was not a happy home. Few spectacles are more piteous than that of an ill-treated son or daughter gazing on the dead face of a stern, tyrannical and unjust father or mother, and thinking, with a tear and sigh of remembered affection and present forgiveness, that if "poor father" or "poor mother" had only dealt more justly and less harshly with them, this or that calamity would not have happened and the old life

The hearthstone; or, Life at home