The Atmosphere of a True Home - Many Houses, but Few Homes - Delights of Furnishing the First Home - A Room of Tender Memories - The Blind Eyes and Deaf Ears

If you were to ask anybody, "What is home?" he or she would probably answer,

"The place where you live." And if you were in any degree a thinking person, you would understand that you might just as well have left the question unasked.

It is a query that has many times been answered by poets, writers, and men of all ages, and the interpretations of the word have been as different as the men who gave them. It has been styled "the Heaven for Beginners," "the Nursery of the Infinite," and so on, and nowhere has it been located between four walls, or confined by bricks and mortar.

The truth is that home is an atmosphere, created in either palace or cottage by the presence of love.

During the -course of a lifetime one may possess many homes; they may one and all partake of the same environment of affection, but among them will be one which will stand out with pre-eminence. It is not the home of one's childhood - though that also has an atmosphere entirely its own, and a niche in one's memory which nothing can displace - but it is that first home to which a young husband brings his bride.

This, perhaps, appeals in a greater degree to a woman than to a man, but to both the first home is a thing apart. Everything connected with it contains some pure, never-to-be-forgotten joy.

The Real Home

It may be a tiny cottage or a modern flat, or a mansion far too big for the requirements of two people, but, be it what it may, it is something essentially home.

Most people will admit that there is nothing more tiring than house-hunting, but never has this complaint been heard from two people who were seeking for a house in which to start their first home together.

They will cheerfully go from agent to agent, from street to street, counting fatigue as nothing.

Each house they see they will, in imagination, people with their own two selves; they will very likely apportion the rooms before they think of inquiring the rent, and decide on the wallpapers before they dream of making investigations about the drains. However, when the house is eventually found, and the preliminary arrangements have been made, they will discover that there has never been so delightful a spot before.

Other houses may be larger, their grounds more spacious, but their own particular one will possess something unique, some charm that is lacking in all the rest.

Furnishing The Nest

When the house is finally decided upon, there comes the excitement of its inner decoration. There are momentous questions to be decided here. It is not. as if one could have the rooms repapered every week if they happened not to please, so every decision is really fraught with great consequences, and sometimes the little bride-elect will turn with a look of hopeless perplexity in her serious eyes, and seek advice and guidance from the equally serious young man at her side. His answer is nearly always the same, and so helpful: "Choose what you like, sweetheart. I am sure it will be delightful!"

Then there is the furniture to be chosen, and the hundred and one little details which go towards making the home complete.

Docs anyone ever forget the hours passed amongst tables and chairs and saucepans? Dear, delicious, bygone hours spent in purchasing so many things that were quite unnecessary, in forgetting so many things that were essential.

Did any woman ever count the different lists she made out of the requirements of that little home? And with them all, is there any one woman who purchased beforehand all that was necessary?

One may furnish a house a second time, buy everything new from garret to cellar, but it cannot be done in the same spirit twice. The freshness will be gone, and possibly weariness may have taken its place.

When the honeymoon - throughout which both husband and wife will have been retly looking forward to the home coming - is over, their real, everyday life together begins in earnest.

Oh, the arranging and the rearranging, the settling and unsettling, the many trials of the different effects caused by moving a chair or a sofa, half an inch, an inch, a foot, or right away to the other side of the room.

It's all so foolish, so sweet, so unforgettable!

Other and far more important things have faded away into the dim recesses of memory, but that first evening of the homecoming stands out clear and distinct, as though it were yesterday.

Have you ever noticed that on entering some rooms you are struck with a sense of chill? One looks round, and wonders how or whence it comes, but there is no apparent reason. The furniture may be costly and well chosen, the whole appurtenances excellent in every way, but the chill is undeniably there, for the indefinable something which is wanting is the spirit of home.

An elderly lady - a widow, very rich and somewhat of an invalid - lived in a beautiful house of which the furniture was exquisite and costly. Thick carpets of moss-like softness covered the floors, and on the walls were hung pictures of rare value, the whole atmosphere of the place breathing sumptuous elegance.

On entering her own room, however, the visitor could not help being struck with the extraordinary difference between this apartment and the rest of the house.

Luxury seemed to have given way to comfort, and costliness to simplicity; the very chairs seemed to be inviting one to rest, and the spirit of the room to whisper a welcome, and in a big armchair by the fire was seated the old lady, who was absolutely one with her surroundings.

She was the mother of daughters and sons who had modernised her home, and bit by bit as her cherished pieces had been discarded she had gathered them together inside the walls of her bedroom.

They were so much more to her than mere bits of furniture. They were dear relics of a dear, dead past; they were the pictures which kept alive the memories which were hers alone; the reminiscences of an early married life which no one should take from her.

She could close her eyes and see her lover-husband as he had sat opposite to her in that selfsame chair on that night so many, many years ago, when they were both wearied by their efforts as amateur furniture movers, and even now a smile would creep into her eyes as she thought of the foolish little tales that high-backed sofa over there could tell.

Only when she has gone to join her husband will that first home of theirs be really broken up.

Unseeing Eyes

There are many people who look upon their household furniture as so many inanimate objects - things to be just bought and used, and thrown away when grown old and shabby. These people miss something out of their lives; they can have no "memory book" with golden leaves, no gallery of pictures which only they can see; they do not hear the voices speaking to them out of the past; they cannot re-enact the scenes through which they have lived in days gone by.

To them a table is just a table, a chair nothing more than a chair; but those who have ears to hear, and eyes to see, and a heart with which to understand, know better.