RETURNING HOME

by Anthony Trollope




It is generally supposed that people who live at home,--good
domestic people, who love tea and their arm-chairs, and who keep the
parlour hearth-rug ever warm,--it is generally supposed that these
are the people who value home the most, and best appreciate all the
comforts of that cherished institution. I am inclined to doubt
this. It is, I think, to those who live farthest away from home, to
those who find the greatest difficulty in visiting home, that the
word conveys the sweetest idea. In some distant parts of the world
it may be that an Englishman acknowledges his permanent resting
place; but there are many others in which he will not call his daily
house, his home. He would, in his own idea, desecrate the word by
doing so. His home is across the blue waters, in the little
northern island, which perhaps he may visit no more; which he has
left, at any rate, for half his life; from which circumstances, and
the necessity of living, have banished him. His home is still in
England, and when he speaks of home his thoughts are there.

No one can understand the intensity of this feeling who has not seen
or felt the absence of interest in life which falls to the lot of
many who have to eat their bread on distant soils. We are all apt
to think that a life in strange countries will be a life of
excitement, of stirring enterprise, and varied scenes;--that in
abandoning the comforts of home, we shall receive in exchange more