A good home. What is it? Food and shelter? Yes. But it is something more. Personal comfort, the exercise of individual taste in the choice of one’s intimate surroundings, the joy of ownership, the privilege of entertaining one’s friends, a sense of privacy, a certain liberty of habits—all these, added to that greatest of all great gifts, love, and the presence of the loved ones, make a true home. We were approaching the Missouri River when black clouds heaped themselves across the horizon, and soon blasts of wind and rain forced us to seek the shelter of a rude shack on the river bank. A bent, white-bearded man opened the door and invited us in with all the warmth and grace of real southern hospitality. There was scant room for the wheel beneath the tiny porch, and the two rooms were already over-crowded. A feeble old lady, swathed in shawls, sat in a rough box chair at the window. A young girl with a baby but a few days old on her arm lay on the bed, while a woman, evidently the daughter of the old couple, fussed about her. A tall, incredibly lanky girl was kept busy placing pots and pans to catch the drippings from the roof, which leaked in a dozen places. In ten minutes we were chatting as freely as lifelong friends. The old man was a Confederate veteran, who had been wrecked financially and physically by the Civil War. He and his invalid wife had moved by degrees from Kentucky across Illinois and Iowa to their present location. One child only had survived the many privations. She had married young and been left a widow with two little girls. The eldest of these, the pale girl in the bed, had married a youth of eighteen when little more than a child. The baby which formed the fourth generation in this home of poverty awakened with a feeble wail. The mother showed me the wriggling red mite with an air of pride, but suddenly she turned her head away and burst into tears. “Oh, Tony, Tony,” she moaned, “how can they keep you away from your own beautiful baby boy?” “Her Tony’s in the jail,” the old man volunteered with slow bitterness. “In the jail because he couldn’t see his wife and unborn baby starve. We had bad luck last winter. I’m an old man. My right hand never has been worth anything since the War.” He extended his withered arm, drawn and distorted by an old wound. “I’ve done all I could, but work is scarce for such as me.” “Folks won’t give Grandpap a job. They call him an old Copperhead.” The younger girl spoke for the first time. “I fought for the South. I love her. Should my great-grandchild be starved for that?”