ever barren. Besides, so kindly is human
nature, that Love, uninvited before marriage, often becomes a guest
after, and with Love always comes a home.

My next axiom is,--

_There can be no true home without liberty._

The very idea of home is of a retreat where we shall be free to act
out personal and individual tastes and peculiarities, as we cannot
do before the wide world. We are to have our meals at what hour we
will, served in what style suits us. Our hours of going and coming
are to be as we please. Our favorite haunts are to be here or there;
our pictures and books so disposed as seems to us good; and our
whole arrangements the expression, so far as our means can compass it,
of our own personal ideas of what is pleasant and desirable in
life. This element of liberty, if we think of it, is the chief
charm of home. "Here I can do as I please," is the thought with
which the tempest-tossed earth-pilgrim blesses himself or herself,
turning inward from the crowded ways of the world. This thought
blesses the man of business, as he turns from his day's care and
crosses the sacred threshold. It is as restful to him as the slippers
and gown and easy-chair by the fireside. Everybody understands him
here. Everybody is well content that he should take his ease in his
own way. Such is the case in the ideal home. That such is not always
the case in the real home comes often from the mistakes in the
house-furnishing. Much house-furnishing is too fine for liberty.

In America there is no such thing as rank and station which impose a
sort of prescriptive style on people of certain income. The
consequence is that all sorts of furniture and belongings, which in
the Old World have a recognized relation to certain possibilities of
income, and which require certain other accessories to make them in
good keeping, are thrown in the way of all sorts of people.

Young people who cannot expect by any reasonable possibility to keep
more than two or three servants, if they happen to have the means in
the outset furnish a house with just such articles as in England would
suit an establishment of sixteen. We have seen houses in England
having two or three housemaids, and tables served by a butler and two
waiters, where the furniture, carpets, china, crystal, and silver were
in one and the same style with some establishments in America where
the family was hard pressed to keep three Irish servants.

This want of servants is the one thing