know that there is no greater homesickness in
the world than that of the man who is sick of home."

"I am not an imitator," said Boswell, "but I must imitate you to the
extent of saying humph! I quote you, and, doing so, I honor you. But
really, I never thought you could be sick of home, as you put it--you
who are so happy at home and who so wildly hate being away from home."

"I'm not surprised at that, my dear Boswell," said I. "But you are, of
course, familiar with the phrase 'Stone walls do not a prison make?'"

"I've heard it," said Boswell.

"Well, there's another equally valid phrase which I have not yet heard
expressed by another, and it is this: 'Stone walls do not a home make.'"

"It isn't very musical, is it?" said he.

"Not very," I answered, "but we don't all live magazine lives, do we? We
have occasionally a sentiment, a feeling, out of which we do not try 'to
make copy.' It is undoubtedly a truth which I have not yet seen voiced
by any modern poet of my acquaintance, not even by the dead-baby poets,
that home is not always preferable to some other things. At any rate,
it is my feeling, and is shortly to represent my condition. My home,
you know. It has its walls and its pictures, and its thousand and one
comforts, and its associations, but when my wife and my children are
away, and the four walls do not re-echo the voices of the children, and
my library lacks the presence of madame, it ceases truly to be home, and
if I've got to stay here during the month of August alone I must have
diversion, else I shall find myself as badly off as the butterfly man,
to whom a vaudeville exhibition is the greatest joy in life."

"I think you are queer," said Boswell.

"Well, I am not," said I. "However low we may set the standard of man,
Mr. B."--and I called him Mr. B. instead of Jim, because I wished to be
severe and yet retain the basis of familiarity--"however low we may set
the standard of man, I think man as a rule prefers his home to the most
seductive roof-garden life in existence."

"Wherefore?" said he, coldly.

"Wherefore my home about to become unattractive through the absence of
my boys and their mother, I shall need some extraordinary diversion to
accomplish my happiness. Now if you can come here, why can't others?
Suppose to-night you dash off on the machine a lot of invitations to the
pleasantest people in Hades to come up here with you and have an evening
on earth, which isn't all bad."

"I