HOME. SWEET HOME

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 19, 15 October 1937, Page 37 (Supplement)

HOME. SWEET HOME

Man's End-of-Day Haveri is at His Fireside. A WIFE'S SACRED TRUST "Home is a man's end-of-the-day haven — that for which he works and realises anew each evening. She, who makes and maintains the haven, is honoured, and holds a sacred trust."

JHEEE IS A VAST DIFFERENCE between housekeepers and homemakers, but when we find them. united in the person of some dear woman, then we know why her family loves her, why they caH her blessedj and why joy abounds in her home. She takes a pride in her house, and keeps it well, but she loves her husband and children and, therefore, strives to make her house a homely place for them. Not so that 'good, but unfortunate woman, wiio beeomes a slave to her house, and where all the family are obliged to live , for it. Mosfc meals are talceu in the kitchen, so that the -dining-room may preserve its unsullied cleanliness. Fires are not lighted in the sitting-room till well on in the winter season (perhaps not at all), because of the trouble of cleaning the fireplace daily; and they are discontinued at the earliest hint of spring, for the same reason. The handsome cushions cannot be uscd for their natural purpose without calling down a torrent of reproach. The children can never play unrestrainedly in such a place, and they grow up with an inherent dread and dislike of home. It means nothing to them except a place that they would rather be out of; and this has a terrible effeet on their af ter life. The mother in such a home is merely a beast of burden, too busy in the day, and too tired . at night to - enter into the mental and spiritual life of her children — she .really never. learns to know them and nobody is more sur-

prised than she, when, later on, th 3y kick over the traces, and break through all her conventional ideas. Sympathy between parent and child must be developed early — it is almost impossible to achieve later on. The opposite type of woman, who eares almost nothing for the house, but devotes herself to the task of briuging up the children, and making her home a homely place, is infinitely to be preferred, if the choice lay between the two. In the love and kindness showered upon them, the family will not notice particularly that the domestic arrangements are a little out of order. When the fire is burning brightly in the grate, one hardly notices that the bars have not been polishcd for a day or two. And so when the flame of affection lights up the home, many deficiencies are unnoticed by the happy inmates. If these two types are united and exemplified in one woman, then her people are indeed among earth's blessed ones.