to the figure of the building--the wind finds its way through chinks;
the floors creak and the general impression is that of bare
homeliness. House and Home go together upon tongue and upon pen as
naturally as hook-and-eye, shovel-and-tongs, knife-and-fork,--yet
the coupling is rather a trick learned through habit than an act of
reason. The words are not synonyms of necessity or in fact.

Upon these, the first pages of my unconventional book, I avow my
knowledge of what, so far from humiliating, stimulates me--to wit,
that nine-tenths of those who will look beyond the title-page will be
women. This is well, and as I would have it to be, for without
feminine agency no house, however well appointed, can be anything
higher than an official residence.

Man's first possession in a world then unmarred by sin was a
dwelling-place--but Eden was not a home until the woman joined him
there. Throughout the ages and all over the world, as mother, wife,
sister, daughter (often, let me observe in passing, as old-maid aunt)
she has stood with him as the representative of the rest, sympathy and
love to be found nowhere except under his own roof-tree, and beside
his own fireside. It is not the house that makes the home, any more
than it is the jeweled case that makes the watch, or the body that
makes the human being. It is the Presence, the nameless influence
which is the earliest acknowledged by the child, and the latest to be
forgotten by man or woman. The establishment of this power is
essentially woman's prerogative.

In this one respect--I dare not say in any other--we outrank our
brothers. They can build palaces and the furniture that fits them up
in regal state; they can, even better than we, prepare for the royal
tables food convenient for them, and fashion the attire of the
revelers, and make the music and sing the songs and write the books
and paint the pictures of the world. They may make and execute our
laws and sail our seas, and fight our battles, and--after dutiful
consultation with us--cast our votes. There is no magnanimity in
admitting all this. It is the due of that noblest work of God, a
strong, good, gentle man to receive the concession and to know how
frankly we make it. To them as theologians, logicians, impartial
historians, as priests, prophets, and kings--we do cheerful obeisance,
yet with the look of one who but half hides a happy secret in her
heart that compensates for all she resigns. There is not a
tr