The Maryville Times

A TRUE HOUSE SPIRIT.
An Essential Feature to the Happiness of Any Household is Love.

The hardest questions that come to us are those that strive to settle a balance, fair and just, between our several duties. How far are we justified in excluding all outside questions from our relative interest? And, still harder, how shall we decide the division of interests in the home, keeping a loving, firm touch on each? We all see homes and husbands suffer from too much housekeeping. We all know women who perceive no difference between housekeeping and homekeeping. That man whose wife knows the difference between the two professions, and chooses to belong to the first, is a fortunate man. Perhaps no question that faces a wife is harder to decide than how she shall be a perfect mother and yet a perfect wife. It is so hard for a mother to educate herself to a little wholesome neglect of her children, that she may be the companion of their father. Yet how can a man find companionship in his home if the mother of his children becomes their nurse at the expense of every other duty or pleasure? The saddest experience that can come to any husband or wife is an acquiescent separation, and this experience is lived in too many homes. One, and sometimes both, are looking forward to the time when the first days of their married life will be lived over again; when there will be more money to hire servants, or when the children will be grown. If we could count on the future there would be a degree of safety in trusting this future time for happiness. But death, mental growth for one and not for the other, and loss of mental power and the terrible possibilities that stand in the path of that future. Each month, yes, each day, is a link in a chain, or a bar between two souls who are interdependent for their happiness, responsible for the happiness of all who share the home or house they create. A mother who sacrifices her husband's companionship to the children that are alike the bond and the burden of each is not a wise mother; the short-sightedness that is at the root of her misconception prevents the clear spiritual perception necessary to the true mother. The first essential in every true home is love, and it is not the quantity in the home, but the quality and disposition of it, that makes happiness. No outer and visible bond can hold the souls of a husband and wife in unison. Companionship, close and intimate, that has in it the spiritual power to shut out every object in life at times except each other, and find Heaven and God in those moments, is the only true relation between husband and wife. The children are better loved, more wisely governed, more spiritually trained, when two souls made one by love are their guardians. That is a home rather than a house where such love is, and the children are nearer perfection when it is a united force, not a divided power, that makes the law and light under which they live.-Christian Union.