Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1881 — The Homes of America. [ARTICLE]

The Homes of America.

It is not a mer® accident that the home of America are the most comfortable and comforting on earth. Nor are these home comforts due simply to mechanical skill or economic judgment. A country which has limited the power its governments stimulates the society, and high moral society produces the most perfect homes which human eyes or poetic visions can behold. No one knows the American system well who does not know the American home. Our political system is publicity itself; American society has never yet been fully characterized; while the best result of both, the perfect home has been praised in general terms, but not described and explained in its stillness. The novel writers, from whom such descriptions might be expected, have failed Ignominiously in their attempts at showing the maturest result of our social system. Yet this system is unique, ahd it is a marked advance upon all European models. The English home approaches the American home, while the German approaches the English; but the ideal American home, not rarely realized, has a comfort, a character and dignity of its ow n. It may seem to be wanting in the graces, traditions and responsibilities jeculiar to the best English homes; t surpasses them in moral dignity; it differs from all others in being the result of a highly refined civilization. It is the best and purest outcome of our ethical and ethnical system. There has been much pleasant banter about-the great American novel that is to come. Let us not dwell too much on politics; British politics are larger than ours. Let us not tell too much of busy people ; the French are as industrious aHd ndustriai as we are. Let it not confine itself to analysis of character or sentiment; other nations have both in abundance. Let it describe the purest and sweetest of our American homes, and let it describe, not an ideal, but that reality which distinguishes the American nome from all others, and shows it to be the best outcome of our history, oua political institutions and our social system.