CONTENTMENT IN THE HOME.
By L. D. Avery-Stuttle
BY MRS. L. D. AVERY-STUTTLE. Where there is true beauty in the home, and remember this always includes love, there is apt to be contentment; for they are twin sisters, and hardly ever far apart. Still, there are some people who seem so constituted that it is hard for them to be contented a very long time in any place. Such people are surely to be pitied. We have all seen people who would not commit any known sin; who pay their honest debts,—not forgetting the Lord’s tithe, and who conscientiously observe the Sabbath, yet whose faces are almost constantly disfigured with a frown of discontent; or, what is almost as bad, a kind of glum, morose expression settles like a pall over the countenance, until it becomes almost unbearable to look at them. I have seen many an otherwise sweet face utterly spoiled by it. Well, I am talking with you about contentment in the home, particularly. Some people are perfectly content anywhere and everywhere except in their home. If they can only be traveling about somewhere, how contented and happy they are! I should not wonder if this was the very reason so many women belong to clubs and circles and orders; they love to get away from home, and these things form an excuse. And again, maybe this is the reason some men spend their evenings away from home,—because they are not contented there,—and I am most sad to say that too often there is good reason for it. O, there is a crying need in the old world to-day—and in the church as well, of homes,—not merely houses, but real homes and real home-keepers. Some of us are excellent house-keepers, but poor home-keepers. I would rather be a good home-keeper than a good house-keeper—they are in greater demand, because rarer. “Well, now; must we never go anywhere? must we always stay at home? Tell me what you mean by a home-keeper.” O, I would not have you bound about by any cast-iron rules; but perhaps I can define the word best by telling you what it does not mean. A home-keeper is not what the world calls a “society woman.” Women are needed who shine brightest, not in “society,” not in the crowded theater, or the ball-room, but in the home circle. And young men and young women are needed to-day who are content to spend a few evenings in the week at home. Contentment in the home! O it is a blessed thing. If there were more of it, there would be fewer divorces to disgrace our courts, and less misery in the world. There would be fewer “missing girls” in our cities, and fewer young men going down to destruction; not so many sensational scandals, and fewer bitter tears shed over the wandering and the erring. Suppose for a moment that there were perfect contentment in every home in all the world. What a state of blessedness would be ushered in! Not a single divorce case in the courts; not a distracted mother or gray-haired father in all the land mourning over a son or a daughter who “ran away from home,” and went to ruin; there would be fewer miserable souls driven to desperation and death from the demon drink. The saloons would do a small business, and the keepers of gambling dens would of necessity close their doors—doors which lead to the bars of hell and the chambers of death; houses of ill-fame would lose their entire patronage, and their closed doors would bar a mighty thoroughfare to destruction—a broad road strewn with the bones of men and women and the pitiful wrecks of thousands of once happy homes. Nor is this all; there would be no more wars, with their crimson rivers of blood; no more whitening skeletons upon the battlefield,—all this, and more, if, in every home in every land, from the palace of the king to the humble cot of the peasant, there abode the sweet dove of contentment. Because, you see, a nation, a world, is made up of its families; and if every family is content, where is the occasion to war? and where would we look for soldiers to fill the armies?—Surely nowhere, if not in the homes of the people. O, there are secret societies and secret orders and clubs; societies for young men and young women; societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals; societies for the betterment of the heathen; societies for the farmer and the mechanic, and unions for the workingmen,—but where under the sky is the order or club or society or association for the universal betterment of our homes? Where is the society to promote contentment in the home? Where is the club or order which has for its chief business the welding and the cementing together of the individual members of the home circle? Where lives the president or secretary of one such society? Let somebody organize such a society, and people will be surprised, and look askance at the promoters as if they were a set of fanatics. But I tell you they would be the men who see that the home is the very foundation of society, and that, when the home goes, society and the nation is gone; in fact, that the home is the most precious institution that is left as a sweet legacy from our Father as a reminder of Eden. “But how can I be contented in a home that is so humble—a home that has few of the real conveniences? I visit my neighbor, and I see his splendid home, his elegant carpets, his fine furniture,—how can I be content without any of these?” Ah, my friend, you do not know of the secret grief that, perhaps, at this very hour is gnawing at the vitals of your wealthy neighbor. Money can not buy happiness; gold can not be accepted as legal tender for a contented spirit. “But what can I do that my sons and daughters may love the home circle better than the theater or the card party or the dance hall or the saloon?” I think I can tell you of a few things that it would be well to do:— It would be wise generalship to make the home as attractive, in every legitimate way, as possible, without extravagance. But if our rooms must be small, they can be cosy; if the pictures must be cheap, they may be cheerful and refined; if the books must be few, they can be well chosen, and, best of all, if the pocketbook must be small, the heart may be very large. We can enter into the feelings of our boys and girls by remembering that, not so very many years ago, we were like them. How did we feel then?—Much as they do now. Do we remember how certain things used to provoke and annoy us then? Well, do not let us do those same annoying things ourselves; and let us try by precept and example to teach them that “godliness with contentment is great gain.”