eeling. Your home-loving person comes in the
course of time to that state of mind where little else is of importance;
the home becomes the only place where his sympathies and his altruistic
purposes find any real outlet. The capitalist of the stage (and of real
life too) is one so devoted to his home and family that he decorates one
and the other with the trophies of other homes. There is none so devoted
to his home as the peasant, and there is no one so individualistic, so
intent in his own prosperity. The home encourages an intense altruism,
but usually a narrow one. The feeling of warmth and comfort of the
hearth fire when a blizzard rages outside too often makes us forget the
poor fellows in the blizzard.

Thus the home is the backbone of conservatism, which is good, but it
becomes also the basis of reactionary feeling. It is the people that
break away from home and home ties who do the great things.

When the home is quiet and harmonious it is the place where great
virtues are developed. But when it is noisy and disharmonious, then its
very seclusiveness, its segregation, lends to the quarrels the
bitterness of civil war. The intensity of feeling aroused is
proportional to the intimacy of the home and not to the importance of
the thing quarreled about. Good manners and that sign and symbol of
largeness of spirit, tolerance for the opinions of others, rarely are
born in the home.

It is hardly realized how much quarreling, how much of intense emotional
violence goes on in many homes. Its isolation and the absence of the
restraining influence of formality and courtesy bring the wills of the
family members into sharp conflict. Words are used that elsewhere would
bring the severest physical answer, or bring about the most complete
disruption of friendly relations. Love and anger, duty and self-interest
bring about intense inner conflict in the home, and the struggle between
the two generations, the rising and the receding, is here at its height.

That courtesy to each other might be taught the children, might be
insisted on by the parents is my firm belief. Love and intimacy need not
exclude form. Manners and morals are not exclusive of each other. If the
marriage ceremony included the vow to be polite, it might leave out
almost everything else. The home should be the place where tolerance,
courtesy, and emotional control are taught both by precept and example.

Can the home be altered to bring in more of the socia