Moralists may squabble over the discipline of living with one's
mother-in-law, and of the loss to the children of grandmother's petting,
but at least physical content and mental satisfaction have increased. Has
selfishness also? Who shall say? And anyway it is a part of the progress
of the age, and what are we to do about it?

For one group of single persons the change has been only beneficial. It
was a strict code of the early nineteenth century that a single woman
should find shelter under the roof of some family house, however
independent, financially, her condition. Latch-key privileges were denied
her. Result, the boarding-house of the later half of the century,
nominally a family home, actually a hotbed of faultfinding and gossip,
most wearing to the teacher and fledgling professional woman, however
acceptable to the milliner and seamstress. Privacy could not be maintained
in a house built for a family of five made to do duty for twelve, with one
bath-room, thin-walled bedrooms with connecting doors through which the
light streamed when one wished to sleep, and words frequently came not
intended for outsiders. Who that has experienced the two could ever think
the bachelor apartment with its neat bath-room and double-doored entrance
an objectionable feature in modern intellectual life? Ah! here is the key.
We are to-day living a life of the intellect far more than ever before,
and for that a certain amount of withdrawal from our fellow man is
needed, at least a withdrawal from that portion which finds its interest
in the affairs of others.

But if we eliminate the house itself, and the heavy furniture from the
"home" possessions, what have we left? The little girl was right: "My home
is where my dishes is." My _possessions_, whatever they are--the things I
can call my own under all circumstances make my home. These circumstances
change from time to time, but the ideal is there. As a concrete instance: