tual room for all to grow and be happy each in his own way?

I doubt if there is any problem in the Woman's Business which requires
a higher grade of intelligence, and certainly none that requires
broader sympathies, than this of giving to her home that quality of
stimulation and joyousness which makes young and old seek it gladly
and freely.

To do this requires money, freedom, time, and strength? No, what I
mean does not depend upon these things. It is the notion that it does
that often prevents its growth. For it is a spirit, an attitude of
mind, and not a formula or a piece of machinery. As far as my
observation goes it is quite, if not more likely, to be found in a
three-room apartment, where a family is living on fifteen dollars a
week, as in an East Central Park mansion! In these little families
where love prevails--it usually does exist. It is the kind of an
atmosphere in which a man prefers to smoke his pipe rather than go to
the saloon; where the girl brings her young man home rather than walk
with him. Mutual interest and affection is its note. Such homes do
exist by the tens of thousands; even in New York City. It is not from
them that girls go to brothels or boys to the Tombs.

Externally, these homes are often pretty bad to look at--overcrowded,
disorderly, and noisy. Cleanliness, order, and space are good things,
but it is a mistake to think that there is no virtue without them.
There are more primary and essential things; things to which they
should be added, but without which they are lifeless virtues. In one
of Miss Loane's reports on the life of the English poor, she makes
these truthful observations:--

One learns to understand how it is that the dirty, untidy young
wife, who, when her husband returns hungry and tired from a long
day's work, holds up a smilingly assured face to be kissed,
exclaiming, "Gracious! if I hadn't forgot all about your tea!" and
clatters together an extravagant and ill-chosen meal while she
pours out a stream of cheerful and inconsequent chatter, is more
loved, and dealt with more patiently, tenderly, and faithfully,
than her clean and frugal neighbor, who has prepared a meal that
ought to turn the author of Twenty Satisfying Suppers for Sixpence
green with envy, but who expects her husband to be eternally
grateful because "he could eat his dinner off the boards,"--when
all that the poor man asks is to be allowed to walk over them
unreproached.