Beside this there is an assiduous accumulation of little things around
the private home which in the aggregate make a great attraction, while
the denizen of one of these public residences is apt to say: "What is
the use? I have no place to keep them if I should take them."
Mementoes, bric-a-brac, curiosities, quaint chair or cosy lounge,
upholsteries, pictures, and a thousand things that accrete in a home
are discarded or neglected because there is no homestead in which to
arrange them. And yet they are the case in which the pearl of domestic
happiness is set. You can never become as attached to the appointments
of a boarding-house or family hotel as to those things that you can
call your own, and are associated with the different members of your
household, or with scenes of thrilling import in your domestic
history. Blessed is that home in which for a whole lifetime they have
been gathering until every figure in the carpet, and every panel of
the door, and every casement of the window has a chirography of its
own, speaking out something about father or mother, or son or
daughter, or friend that was with us a while. What a sacred place it
becomes when one can say: "In that room such a one was born; in that
bed such a one died; in that chair I sat on the night I heard such a
one had received a great public honor; by that stool my child knelt
for her last evening prayer; here I sat to greet my son as he came
back from a sea voyage; that was father's cane; that was mother's
rocking chair." What a joyful and pathetic congress of reminiscences!