Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines. HOME LIGHTS AND SHADOWS. BY T. S. ARTHUR, AUTHOR OF "LIFE PICTURES," "OLD MAN'S BRIDE," AND "SPARING TO SPEND." NEW YORK: 1853. CONTENTS. RIGHTS AND WRONGS THE HUMBLED PHARISEE ROMANCE AND REALITY BOTH TO BLAME IT'S NONE OF MY BUSINESS THE MOTHER'S PROMISE THE TWO HUSBANDS VISITING AS NEIGHBORS NOT AT HOME THE FATAL ERROR FOLLOWING THE FASHIONS A DOLLAR ON THE CONSCIENCE AUNT MARY'S SUGGESTION HELPING THE POOR COMMON PEOPLE MAKING A SENSATION SOMETHING FOR A COLD THE PORTRAIT VERY POOR PREFACE. HOME! How at the word, a crowd of pleasant thoughts awaken. What sun-bright images are pictured to the imagination. Yet, there is no home without its shadows as well as sunshine. Love makes the home-lights and selfishness the shadows. Ah! how dark the shadow at times--how faint and fleeting the sunshine. How often selfishness towers up to a giant height, barring out from our dwellings every golden ray. There are few of us, who do not, at times, darken with our presence the homes that should grow bright at our coming. It is sad to acknowledge this; yet, in the very acknowledgement is a promise of better things, for, it is rarely that we confess, without a resolution to overcome the evil that mars our own and others' happiness. Need we say, that the book now presented to the reader is designed to aid in the work of overcoming what is evil and selfish, that home-lights may dispel home-shadows, and keep them forever from our dwellings. RIGHTS AND WRONGS. IT is a little singular--yet certainly true--that people who are very tenacious of their own rights, and prompt in maintaining them, usually have rather vague notions touching the rights of others. Like the too eager merchant, in securing their own, they are very apt to get a little more than belongs to them. Mrs. Barbara Uhler presented a notable instance of this. We cannot exactly class her with the "strong-minded" women of the day. But she had quite a leaning in that direction; and if not very strong-minded herself, was so unfortunate as to number among her intimate friends two or three ladies who had a fair title to the distinction. Mrs. Barbara Uhler was a wife and a mother. She was also a woman; and her consciousness of this last named fact was never indistinct, nor ever unmingled with a belligerent appreciation of the rights appertaining to her sex and position.