Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 January 1884 — The Beauty of Home Life. [ARTICLE]

The Beauty of Home Life.

Home is not sustained alone by the ownership of the land, but it is in the observance of the sound principles of temperance, economy and integrity which makes np the best average of life. I pee the boys sometimes going away from the old household, perhaps not attracted by the hard labor o£ the farm, and drawn away, it may be, by the enticements of the greater places. And when they make a good work of life, and when they adorn and improve and benefit those that are around them, they are certainly just as much working out God’s purposes there as if they had remained, perhaps doing the harder toil of the farm. But if there is one thing that brings the deepest grief to anybody’s heart, it is to see those young men, when they are gone away from those homes, depart from those principles that -were instilled into then* by their loving and dutiful parents. Is there a more deplorable sight than that which is presented in the ruin of so many of our young men, who have forgotten that the best of life is purity in every walk upon which they are called to enter? So that, whatever may be our differences in one way or the other —differences of belief, differences of political association—the one thing of all to treasure is the beauty of this home life. Make it the one thought of this xlavioiake care of the home. Keep it! SaVeit! And if your boys and girls go away, keep the place warm, and green, and beautiful, so that they shall want to come back, and so that there shall be no dearer spot on earth than the bn,e that gave them birth. During the war it so happened that at one time the armies on both sides were ene mped on the banks of the river---on the one side the Union army; across, the rebel. And as they lay there in theireucampments the bands on both sides began to discourse music. On the Northern side it was “The Star-Span-gled Banner,” swelling out upon the breeze, and on the Southern side the bands responded with “Dixie’s Land.” Then again, the Northern side said in their music, “Hail Columbia,” and the Southern bands responded with “Dixie’s Land.” And then a chord of “Home, Sweet Home!” was struck on the Northern side of the stream, and the bands on the Southern side took it up, and it was “Home, Sweet Home,” on both sides, and every voice responded in perfect harmony, and the strains of those instruments and the great soul of the country breathed anew and again with the delightful inspiration of the love of home. That was the lesson that was implanted deep in the hearts of all the men assembled there. So long as the sweet influences of such lessons as that are treasured in our hearts, there will be danger for our State, no peril for the nation, but there will be prosperity ahead and forever. — Gov. Robinson, of Massachusetts.