Can e'er untie the genial bands
That knit our hearts to home!"

The mother is the angel-spirit of home. Her tender yearnings over the
cradle of her infant babe, her guardian care of the child and youth, and
her bosom companionship with the man of her love and choice, make her the
personal center of the interests, the hopes and the happiness of the
family. Her love glows in her sympathies and reigns in all her thoughts and
deeds. It never cools, never tires, never dreads, never sleeps, but ever
glows and burns with increasing ardor, and with sweet and holy incense upon
the altar of home-devotion. And even when she is gone to her last rest, the
sainted mother in heaven sways a mightier influence over her wayward
husband or child, than when she was present. Her departed spirit still
hovers over his affections, overshadows his path, and draws him by unseen
cords to herself in heaven.

Our nature demands home. It is the first essential element of our social
being. The whole social system rests upon it: body, mind and spirit are
concerned in it. These cannot be complete out of the home-relations; there
would be no proper equilibrium of life and character without the home
feeling and influence. The heart, when bereaved and disappointed, naturally
turns for refuge to home-life and sympathy. No spot is so attractive to the
weary one; it is the heart's moral oasis; there is a mother's watchful
love, and a father's sustaining influence; there is a husband's protection,
and a wife's tender sympathy; there is the circle of loving brothers and
sisters,--happy in each other's love. Oh, what is life without these? A
desolation!--a painful, glooming pilgrimage through "desert heaths and
barren sands." But home gives to life its fertilizing dews, its budding
hopes, and its blossoming joys. When far away in distant lands or upon the
ocean's heaving breast, we pine away and become "home-sick;" no voice there