American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian HomesStowe, Harriet Beecher
Religion
American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science;: Being a Guide to the Formation and Maintenance of Economical, Healthful, Beautiful, and Christian Homes
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Home economics
It will be wise for those parents who find little time to attend to
their children, or to seek amusement and enjoyment in the domestic and
social circle, because their time is so much occupied with public cares
or benevolent objects, to inquire whether their first duty is not to
train up their own families to be useful members of society. A man who
neglects the mind and morals of his children, to take care of the
public, is in great danger of coming under a similar condemnation to
that of him who, neglecting to provide for his own household, has
"denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."
There are husbands and fathers who conscientiously subtract time from
their business to spend at home, in reading with their wives and
children, and in domestic amusements which at once refresh and improve.
The children of such parents will grow up with a love of home and
kindred which will be the greatest safeguard against future temptations,
as well as the purest source of earthly enjoyment.
There are families, also, who make it a definite object to keep up
family attachments, after the children are scattered abroad; and, in
some cases, secure the means for doing this by saving money which would
otherwise have been spent for superfluities of food or dress. Some
families have adopted, for this end, a practice which, if widely
imitated, would be productive of much enjoyment. The method is this:
On the first day of each month, some member of the family, at each
extreme point of dispersion, takes a folio sheet, and fills a part of
a page. This is sealed and mailed to the next family, who read it, add
another contribution, and then mail it to the next. Thus the family
circular, once a month, goes from each extreme to all the members of
a widely-dispersed family, and each member becomes a sharer in the
joys, sorrows, plans, and pursuits of all the rest. At the same time,
frequent family meetings are sought; and the expense thus incurred is
cheerfully met by retrenchments in other directions. The sacrifice of
some unnecessary physical indulgence will often purchase many social
and domestic enjoyments, a thousand times more elevating and delightful
than the retrenched luxury.
There is no social duty which the Supreme Law-giver more strenuously
urges than hospitality and kindness to strangers, who are classed with
the widow and the fatherless as the special objects of Divine
tenderness. There are some reasons why this duty peculiarly demands
attention from the American people.
Reverses of fortune, in this land, are so frequent and unexpected, and
the habits of the people are so migratory, that there are very many
in every part of the country who, having seen all their temporal plans
and hopes crushed, are now pining among strangers, bereft of wonted
comforts, without friends, and without the sympathy and society so
needful to wounded spirits. Such, too frequently, sojourn long and
lonely, with no comforter but Him who "knoweth the heart of a stranger."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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