A DREAM OF HOME.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1983, 17 December 1889, Page 3

A DREAM OF HOME.

It has just transpired that the week before Mr Barfield, the Unionist lecturer, who was supposed to be murdered by Invincibles but had only bolted with a girl, leaving his wife and child destitute, planned his elopement, he wrote an article in the Rural World, entitled “ A Dream of Home,” _ It was a most extraordinary composition, and depicted a husband and wife who seemed in perfect accord with each other. There was in that home perfect freedom, because the law of liberty was supreme, and the law of liberty was the law of love. The husband knew that he was above all others in the affections of that home queen, and that knowledge was the sweetest support G-od had given him on earth. Here he was at home with one he trusted utterly without fear, and without the dread - of being misunderstood, not on account of his own good qualities, but solely and simply because his wife, and the queen of his home, loved him. The day began with prayer, and ended with praise. The years passed by, and with those passing years the children grew to manhood and womanhood, while streaks of silver began to whiten their parents’ hair; “ and I dreamed on,” he wrote, “ about home, concerts in the long winter \ evenings and lengthened rambles on I

summer nights; about pictures on summer days in forest, on lake, or wooded hill, and social parties here and there, when the remark was made, ‘ What nice people these are; what a united family they always seem—so loving and so ready to oblige ! ’ Then other homes were set up by the young people on the model of the old one; but always on Christmas day,| or the birthday of either of the old people, as well as on the anniversary of the wedding day there was a gathering under the old rooftree. Such was my dream of home. Has it ever been realised ? Perhaps not in its entirety. It was a dream, and life is not a dream, but an education, and into all education the Cross must enter. Of this, however, I am sure, the Cross will have more flowers round it, and the dream will be more nearly realised, if our young men and maidens, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters would only embrace and endeavor to carry out the principles laid down and th® advice given in this and the following articles upon ‘ Our Rural Pamily Life.’ Thus would the family life on earth symbolise the grander, purer, and eternal life of heaven.”