.
And I miss the toys
In the lonely hall,
But most of any
I miss his call.

I miss the shouts
And the laughter gay
Which greeted me
At the close of day,
And there isn't a thing
In the house we own
But sobbingly says:
"You are all alone."

It's only a house
That is mine to know,
An empty house
That is cold with woe;
Like a prison grim
With its bars of black,
And it won't be home
Till they all come back.

The Cookie Jar

You can rig up a house with all manner of things,
The prayer rugs of sultans and princes and kings;
You can hang on its walls the old tapestries rare
Which some dead Egyptian once treasured with care;
But though costly and gorgeous its furnishings are,
It must have, to be homelike, an old cookie jar.

There are just a few things that a home must possess,
Besides all your money and all your success--
A few good old books which some loved one has read,
Some trinkets of those whose sweet spirits have fled,
And then in the pantry, not shoved back too far
For the hungry to get to, that old cookie jar.

Let the house be a mansion, I care not at all!
Let the finest of pictures be hung on each wall,
Let the carpets be made of the richest velour,
And the chairs only those which great wealth can procure,
I'd still want to keep for the joy of my flock
That homey, old-fashioned, well-filled cookie crock.

Like the love of the Mother it shines through our years;
It has soothed all our hurts and has dried away tears;
It has paid us for toiling; in sorrow or joy,
It has always shown kindness to each girl and boy;
And I'm sorry for people, whoever they are,
Who live in a house where there's no cookie jar.

Little Wrangles

Lord, we've had our little wrangles, an' we've had our little bouts;
There's many a time, I reckon, that we have been on the outs;
My tongue's a trifle hasty an' my temper's apt to fly,
An' Mother, let me tell you, has a sting in her reply,
But I couldn't live without her, an' it's plain as plain can be
That in fair or sunny weather Mother needs a man like me.

I've banged the door an' muttered angry words beneath my breath,
For at times when she was scoldin' Mother's plagued me most to death,
But we've always laughed it over, when we'd both cooled down a bit,
An' we never had a difference but a smile would settle it.
An' if such a thing could happen, we could share life's joys an' tears
An' live right on together for another thousand y