Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1907 — HOME THE FINAL TEST OF HUMAH NATURE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOME THE FINAL TEST OF HUMAH NATURE.

The human being attains his highest earthly development at home. Home Is the crucial test of human nature. If, when divested of “company, manners” and free from all restraint and necessity for pretending, we are still lovable,

■till free from actual coarseness, still endeared to the ennobling side of life, which so many people ■ only pretend to hold to, we are Indeed fortunate, f I am often struck with the indoinitable quality of the homemaker whq persists cheerfully and patiently In her taak Of presenting attractive rooms and good meals to~a. famlly>whlch fakes them as a matter of course, never stopping to consider what a gigantic task it Is. Not that the inere work of homekeeping is so hard, though it is hard work in reality, but that so much of the real homemaking Is creative. It comes out of the vital force of the woman. She must furnish her family with a spiritual essence—not religious training, or correct manners, or good taste —none, of these things in the abstract so much as a mere quality of llveableness which she must tyring to her home. For this reason a woman’s tastes must be varied if she is to give to her children the much-to-be-deslred talent for living.

To those earnest women who are so diligently seeking the key to smooth, pleasant dally living without annoyance-or friction, let me say that they are on a fruitless quest —Life Is very muCh alike for us all. Home Is a thing of various phases, Its sharp contrasts only the more endearing us to its pleasant and restful moods. We all have our cold mornings with nothing but furnace gas coming up the registers, our bad dinners, when the roast la tough and the tablecloth not quite immaculate, our grouchy evenings ’when business has gone wrong and the children’s report cards haven’t been satisfactory. Again, we have our golden daybreaks with the robins singing, our fireside confabs, our evenings when somebody softly touches the piano keys and the young folks take a waltz turn in the dusky hall and father’s and mother’s voices chord touchingly In an old duet.—Juliet V. Strauss, in Chicago Journal.

JULIET V. STRAUSS.