Recreation is a necessity of our
hardworking, overstrained life. Men and women need it, and will
have it. But should they go from home to find it? Is home nothing
but a place to sleep, eat, and drudge in--a place to be escaped
from, as from a prison, whenever enjoyment is to be sought?
Plainly false and injurious as is such a view, it seems to be
that which generally prevails among us. The members of our households
seek their recreations abroad. Yielding to different tastes,
or controlled by different circumstances, they seek it in different
places. Husbands and wives, parents and children, thus separate
from one another in their associations, the family unity disappears,
and the seeds of discord are planted in the home circle. Under
this false and fatal idea, that it is necessary to go abroad
to seek after enjoyment, society has become a traveling association
of pleasure-hunters, as if pleasure could be found by thus hunting
for it. The old, happy home-life is disappearing--we had almost
sadly said has disappeared. And with it is vanishing not only
the truest enjoyment, but also the greatest safeguard of our
social state. Miserable or guilty is that man who quits his
home to find enjoyment. Lost is that woman who does it. Unhappy
is the son or daughter who does not find home the happiest spot
on earth. The family circle is a misnomer, as applied to the
members of households thus separate in their associations and
pleasures. With them there can be no golden chains of holy affection,
strengthened and kept bright by loving association, and the
communion of the innocent joys and sacred sorrows of the family.
Home should be the dearest, happiest spot on earth to every
individual. There the weary man of business should find the
needed rest. There the wife and mother should find her purest,
deepest pleasures. And there children should find attractions
stronger than all the world can present.
We tinker away at the evils of society, and go on making new
"societies" to amuse, instruct, or restrain our people,
when the great want is home!
