PART FOURTH:

HOME LIFE.

163

Though we may not change the cottage
For a mansion tall and grand,
Or exchange a little grass-plot

For a boundless stretch of land-
Yet there's something brighter, dearer,
Than the wealth we'd thus command.

Though we have no means to purchase
Costly pictures, rich and rare—
Though we have no silken hangings
For the walls so cold and bare-
We can hang them o'er with garlands,
For flowers bloom everywhere.

We can always make home cheerful,
If the right course we begin;
We can make its inmates happy,
And their truest blessing win;
It will make the small room brighter
If we let the sunlight in.

We can gather round the fireside

When the evening hours are long; We can blend our hearts and voices In a happy social song;

We can guide some erring brother,

Lead him from the path of wrong.

We may fill our home with music,
And with sunshine brimming o'er,

If against all dark intruders

We will firmly close the doorYet should evil shadows enter,

We must love each other more.

There are treasures for the lowly
Which the grandest fail to find;
There is a chain of sweet affection
Binding friends of kindred mind-
We may reap the choicest blessings
From the poorest lot assigned.

164

Love is always best known by experience, and it is an experience for which individuals have not long to wait. "We are all born for love," says Disraeli. "It is the principle of existence and its only end." This is poetical, and so is Madame de Staël's remark, that "Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end."

Love has been called the "tender passion." Perhaps it is, but there is strength in its tenderness. How the mind reaches forth for the object of its desire, when swayed by the fondness of this affection! The love of money, of fame, of power, illustrates this principle as well as the love of friends or the love of a lover. Longfellow was nearer the truth:

"Love is master of all arts,

And puts it into human hearts

The strangest things to say and do.”

Love often makes a wise man act like a fool, and a fool to play the part of a philosopher. Whoso attempts to explain love's mystic