endearments which give to the family its magic power. This home-love is the
mother of all home delights, yea, of all the love of life. We first draw
love from our mother's breast, and it is love which ministers to our first
wants. It flashes from parent to parent, and from parent to child,
making-up the sunshine and the loveliness of domestic life. Without it
home would have no meaning. It engenders the "home-feeling" and the
"home-sickness," and is the moral net-work of the home-existence and
economy. It is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and
towers in sublime beauty above the niggardly selfishness of the world.
Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot
enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick-bed; it
gives an affectionate concord to the partnership of home-life and interest.
Circumstances cannot modify it; it ever remains the same, to sweeten
existence, to purify the cup of life, to smooth our rugged pathway to the
grave, and to melt into moral pliability the brittle nature of man. It is
the ministering spirit of home, hovering in soothing caresses over the
cradle and the death-beds of the household, and filling up the urn of all
its sacred memories.

But home demands not only such love, but ties, tender, strong, and sacred.
These bind up the many in the one. They are the fibres of the home-life,
and cannot be wrenched without causing the heart to bleed at every pore.
Death may dissect them and tear away the objects around which they entwine;
and they will still live in the imperishable love which survives. From them
proceed mutual devotions and confiding faith. They bind together in one
all-expanding unity, the perogatives of the husband, and the subordination
of the wife, the authority of the parent and the obedience of the child.

"O, not the smile of other lands,
Though far and wide our feet may roam,