Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 November 1874 — Home and Happiness. [ARTICLE]

Home and Happiness.

TpEBJt can be no doubt that the truest happiness is ever to be found at home No man without a home can be long and truly happy. But the domestic group can be productive of happiness only when it is assimilated by affection and kept in union by discreet friendship. Then it tends to produce as much happiness as this world is capable of; and its sweet repose is sought for by all sensible men, as ever by the wisest and the greatest. What can be compared in our intercourse of life with the attentions on onr family, with their exhilarating Bmlles and undissembled love? All this raises the gentlest and most pleasing emotions, and calls forth all the sentiments of uncontrolled nature. What are the rap tures of ambition, the pleasures of fame, the delights of honor, in comparison with this? Utterly worthless and insipid. Hence it is that we see Senators and heroes shutting out the acclamations of an applauding world to partake the endearments of family conversation, and to enjoy the prattling of their little children in their harmless pleasures. This is one of the purest sources of mirth. It has influence, too, in amending the heart; for innocence is communicated by coming in contact with it; and the sweet simplicity of children tends to purify the heart from the pollution that it has ac quired from moving in the world and mixing with men. Into what an abyss of moral degradation should we not be sunken were it not for women and children. Well might the Great Author of evangelical philosophy have been delighted with the presence of children and found in them—-what he in vain sought among those who judged themselves their superiors—goodness and virtue. Cicero, with all his liberality of mind, felt the tenderness of home attachment. At one time he acknowledged that he received no satisfaction in any company but in that of his wife, his little daughter, and—to use his own language —“ his honied young Cicero.” Sir Thomas More, with his great powers of mind, devoted a great share of his time —because he knew it to be his duty and felt it to be his delight—to the amusement of His children. Homer, in his Iliad, in the parting interview between Hector and Andromache, has interested the heart of the reader in his terrible hero by showing the amiability of his Trojan chief, by depicting him, while standing completely armed for the battle-field, taking off his helmet that he might not frighten his little boy with its nodding plumes. How refreshed are we by this scene of domestic love! And how pleased to see the arm which is shortly to deal death and destruction among a host of foes employed in caressing an infant son with the embraces of paternal love. —Pen and Plow.