The Project Gutenberg EBook of Making the House a Home, by Edgar A. Guest

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Title: Making the House a Home

Author: Edgar A. Guest

Release Date: December 7, 2003 [EBook #10393]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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MAKING THE HOUSE A HOME

By

Edgar A. Guest

1922

_Here's our story, page by page,
Happy youth and middle-age,
Smile and tear-drop, weal and woe
Such as all who live must know--
Here it is all written down,
Not for glory or renown,
But the hope when we are gone
Those who bravely follow on
Meeting care and pain and grief
Will not falter in belief._

Making the House a Home

We have been building a home for the last fifteen years, but it begins
to look now as though it will not be finished for many years to come.
This is not because the contractors are slow, or the materials scarce,
or because we keep changing our minds. Rather it is because it takes
years to build a home, whereas a house can be builded in a few months.

Mother and I started this home-building job on June 28th, 1906. I was
twenty-five years of age; and she--well, it is sufficient for the
purposes of this record to say that she was a few years younger. I was
just closing my career as police reporter for the Detroit "Free Press,"
when we were married. Up to a few months before our wedding, my hours
had been from three o'clock, in the afternoon, until three o'clock in
the morning, every day of the week except Friday. Those are not fit
hours for a married man--especially a young married man. So it was
fortunate for me that my managing editor thought I might have
possibilities as a special writer, and relieved me from night duty.

It was then we began to plan the home we should build. It was to be a
hall of contentment and the abiding place of joy and beauty. And it was
all going to be done on the splendid salary of twenty-eight dollars a
week. That sum doesn't sound like much now, but to us, in January, 1906,
it was independence. The foundation of our first home was something less
than f