Repose the Secret of Power.
A PEACEFUL life is most likely to be a full one, with finer and keener sensibilities; better related to beauty and poetry and all higher matters; more dignified and self-respecting. Repose is the secret of power in persons, pictures, statues, architecture, books, and nature, as if it were a means of retaining as well as disclosing life; and health demands a frequent pausing to restore the balance of the system, and keep up perfect circulation. The night, if spent in healthy sleep after proper evening hours, reduces the world's chaos, and we are new every morning. Who does not know the magic of a brief pause in the midst of the worst confusion? A calm of five minutes will invite back our vagrant ideas and powers. So the home should be like a hush and a lullaby in this headlong, whirling, noisy, furious, and distracted world of the nineteenth century—a nook apart from the thoroughfares—a grot or bower under the sky, where the beautiful spirits of the air will hover and dance. Its atmosphere should be a little oriental and cheering, as if exhaled from poppies and balsams.