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THERE is no event in the household life so momentous as the coming of a friend; it is one of the events for which the home was built and in which its ideal is realized. "The ornament of a house," says Emerson, "is the friends who frequent it."' Their character, culture, aims, reveal the law of its being; whether it stands for show, for mere luxury, or for large and noble living. "Honor to the house where they are simple to the verge of hardship; so that there the intellect is awake and reads the laws of the universe, the soul worships truth and love, honor and courtesy flow into all deeds." How easy it is to collect handsome furniture and crowd a house to suffocation with things which give one no impression of individuality, but only an impression of expense! Elaborate homes abound in these days, but for the most part they serve mainly to emphasize the vulgarity of the people who inhabit them; an elegant house is a dangerous possession for those whose social training has not prepared them for it. Such homes are not without their advantages to the children who grow up in them, but the elders are always out of place in them. The

real charm of a home is the indefinable atmosphere which pervades it, made up of the personalities who live in it, of the friends who frequent it, of the pictures which hang upon its walls, the books which lie upon its tables, and all its furnishings which disclose taste, training, and character. Many elegant houses impress one with a painful materialism; even when all things are in keeping there is an elaboration which offends the mind by making too much of bodily comfort and mere physical luxury. The highest intellectual and social types are not likely to be developed in such an atmosphere; Attic rather than Asiatic influences have inspired the finest social life. The first and final impression of a house should come, not from furniture, but from those material things which stand for thought, for beauty, for the ideal. I should shrink from creating a home which people should remember for its ministration to their bodies; that kind of service can be bought at the inn; I should count myself fortunate if my home were remembered for some inspiring quality of faith, charity, and aspiring intelligence. One cannot write about his own home without egotism, for it is the best part of himself. If I were to write about mine, as I fear I am constantly doing, I should simply write about Rosalind. When I think of what home is and means, I understand the absolute veracity of Lowell's sentiment that "many make the household, but only one the home." In every home there is one whose nature gives law and

beauty to its life; who builds it slowly out of her heart and soul, adorns it with the outward and visible symbols of her own inward and spiritual gifts, and makes it her own by ministrations not to be weighed and counted, so impalpable, so numberless, and so beyond all price are they. But of the friends who pull one's latch-string and sit before one's fire one may speak without offense and with infinite satisfaction to himself; the coming and going of those who know and love us best form the most inspiring records in the domestic chronicles.

Last night the study fire burned late; or rather we sat by it so late that it was only a bed of embers. What a glow came from it, and what heat! The blaze of the earlier evening yielded nothing so grateful, so beautiful, so full of appeal to the memory and the imagination. We lingered long, and with deepening joy and gratitude; we seemed to pause for an hour between a past rich in memories and a future affluent in hopes. We waited for our friend to speak, and every time her voice broke the silence it seemed to recall some half-forgotten phase of a life set to pure and beautiful ends, some trait of a nature full of a sweet strength of mind and heart:

"A soul serene, Madonna-like, enshrined
In her dear self."

The embers glowed with a soft and genial heat which seemed to make the exchange of confidences between us easy and natural. Even with those who

stand nearest to us we can never force one of those interchanges of thought which mark the very best moments of our lives; they must grow out of the occasion and the mood, and they sometimes elude our most patient endeavors. In the story of "Faust" Goethe undoubtedly meant to say, among other things, that a man does not own his soul; he cannot barter it for any price, because it belongs to God. It is certain that the deeper self which we call the soul does not hold itself at our beck and call. There are hours when it is inaccessible, although we make strenuous effort to reach it; when it is dumb, although we urge it to speak. But at the moment when we least expect such happiness, it suddenly reveals itself to us, and to that other whose atmosphere, whose gift or grace or accent, has somehow won its confidence and inspired it with utterance. There have been moments like this in our history which seem to be, as we look back, the real events in our lives-those events which have made us acquainted with our own natures, and held open the door of life at the same time. The glowing embers sent a warm thrill into our very hearts, and in that warmth our thoughts seemed to flow together. Then, for the first time, I understood the real sentiment of that residuum of fire and heat which the flame leaves behind it. The heart of the fire survives the perishing of the material which fed it; that has vanished, but its soul of heat and light remains, a beautiful afterglow. In some kindred

sense friendship is the survival of the perishable element of the years that are gone; actions, experiences, words, are mostly forgotten, but the trust, faith, affection, that grew out of and through these remain to give light and warmth to the later time. The past that has burned out, like the flame of the earlier evening, survives in these glowing embers, radiating heat and light.

As the embers form the residuum of that which is gone, so do they make the surest foundation for future activity and beauty. I have but to lay a few sticks across these coals, and immediately the blaze is kindled; there lies the compressed force of fire. There are hearths on which the glow never dies; it is kindled and rekindled day after day, until it becomes a continuous fire from season's end to season's end. Like the ancient hearth-fires from which the Greek emigrants carried embers when they parted from the overcrowded community, these fires light each new day and each succeeding month with something from the warmth and glow of the day and the month that are gone. Friendship carries into the future whatever was best and truest in our past relationships; whatever could be detached from the perishable forms in which our lives express and manifest themselves. Each year adds to the accumulations of the past, and levels still more those invisible walls which separate us. The solitude of life is known to us all; for the most part we are alone, and the voices of friends come only

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