st of
honor, the wives grow dull beside the solitary hearth, and the children
quarrel while waiting their turn to go abroad, each after his own fancy.

We must learn again to live the home life, to value our domestic
traditions. A pious care has preserved certain monuments of the past. So
antique dress, provincial dialects, old folk songs have found
appreciative hands to gather them up before they should disappear from
the earth. What a good deed, to guard these crumbs of a great past,
these vestiges of the souls of our ancestors! Let us do the same for our
family traditions, save and guard as much as possible of the
patriarchal, whatever its form.

* * * * *

But not everyone has traditions to keep. All the more reason for
redoubling the effort to constitute and foster a family life. And to do
this there is need neither of numbers nor a rich establishment. To
create a home you must have the spirit of home. Just as the smallest
village may have its history, its moral stamp, so the smallest home may
have its soul. Oh! the spirit of places, the atmosphere which surrounds
us in human dwellings! What a world of mystery! Here, even on the
threshold the cold begins to penetrate, you are ill at ease, something
intangible repulses you. There, no sooner does the door shut you in than
friendliness and good humor envelop you. It is said that walls have
ears. They have also voices, a mute eloquence. Everything that a
dwelling contains is bathed in an ether of personality. And I find proof
of its quality even in the apartments of bachelors and solitary women.
What an abyss between one room and another room! Here, all is dead,
indifferent, commonplace: the device of the owner is written all over
it, even in his fashion of arranging his photographs and books: All is
the same to me! There, one breathes in animation, a contagious joy in
life. The visitor hears repeated in countless fashions: "Whoever you
are, guest of an hour, I wish you well, peace be with you!"

Words can do little justice to the subject of home, tell little about
the effect of a favorite flower in the window, or the charm of an old
arm-chair where the grandfather used to sit, offering his wrinkled hands
to the kisses of chubby children. Poor moderns, always moving or
remodeling! We who from transforming our cities, our houses, our customs
and creeds, have no longer where to lay our heads, let us not add to the
pathos and emptiness of our c