ome." She is
unquestionably right in her judgment, that it is a woman who can, if
she will, turn a house into a home, but she is much in the wrong in her
assertion that it is a woman all by herself, without any man to help
her, who can effect such a beneficial transformation. Woman possesses
magical powers in the way of building up a home; but home naturally
implies the presence and protection of man--and it is man himself, if
he likes, and without any woman to help him, who can give that home a
semblance of that place where, as some people believe, the wicked
suffer after they have "shuffled off this mortal coil." The husband
can never make the home, but he can succeed most admirably, if so he
choose, to unmake it, to banish its happiness and comfort, to exile
from it its ministering angels of peace and content, to shatter woman's
sweet and blessed work to its very foundation. Let the wife
concentrate, all day long, all her care and ingenuity and love upon
building up her little paradise at home, let her hands be ever so busy
in strewing fresh flowers around the domestic hearth, let her heart be
ever so happy throughout the day in the discharge of her domestic
duties, let her countenance be ever so beaming in her sweet
anticipation of the happy smile of appreciation, of the kind word of
sympathy and encouragement, which shall be her reward when her husband
returns; and then see this star in her domestic firmament enter,
sulking and surly, blind to all that her busy hands have so lovingly
prepared, grim and gruff to her and the little ones, who have been
fitted up in their neatest and cleanest, in which to welcome their
father's return, and then see whether you can agree with Miss Cobb's
assertion "that it is a woman, and only a woman--a woman all by
herself, if she likes, and without any man to help her--who can turn a
house into a home." See how her heart sinks, how her voice, full of
mirth and glee and music before his coming, dies in her throat, how the
little ones, full of merriment all day long, tremblingly hide in the
corner, or withdraw from the room; see how the intrusion of this grim
spectre of malcontent shuts the door upon domestic peace and happiness,
and withers every pious resolve to make home the dearest, sweetest,
most contented and most sacred spot on earth, and then calculate how
long, under such disheartening surroundings, woman will be able all by
herself, and without any man to help her, to pre