happy hearts and blessed eyes.
We will, we will, brave champions be
In this the lordlier chivalry."

III

OUR COUNTRY, OUR HOMES AND OUR DUTY. A PLEA FOR THE HOME AGAINST THE
SALOON.

The sweetest word in the language we speak is home. No matter in what
clime or country, whether where sunbeams dance and play or frost fiend
rules the air, there's no place like home. At the World's Fair in
Chicago I visited the Eskimo village. To a woman who could speak
English I said: "How do you like this country?"

"Beautiful, beautiful country. Oh, the flowers, the green grass, the
lovely homes!" was her reply.

But when I ventured to ask: "Will you remain here after the fair and
not return to your land of ice and snow," she shook her head and said:
"No, I want to go home. I am so homesick."

"Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." In Lexington,
Kentucky, there is a modest looking house, nestled mid linden and
locust trees. Visitors who pass in quest of historic spots about the
far-famed city, seldom give even a glance at that humble abode. Yet
when I am far away, whether in the wonderful west with its scenic
grandeur, or in the east surrounded by mansions of millionaires, my
heart goes back in memory's aeroplane to the old Blue Grass town,
where six generations of my family sleep, the dearest spot on earth to
me--"home, sweet home." When years ago I was nearing the end of a
three months' lecture tour in California, a friend invited me to join
him on a visit to Yosemite Valley, saying: "You will see the grandest
scenery and biggest trees in the world." My reply was: "I thank you
very much, but my engagements in the golden west close on the eighth
and I will start east on the ninth; my old Kentucky home is grander to
me than Yosemite Valley and my baby bigger than any tree in
California."

Someone has said the nearest spot to heaven in this world is a happy
home, where the parents are young and the children small. I don't know
about that. It seems to me a little nearer heaven is the home where
husband and wife have lived long together, where children honor
parents and parents honor God; where the aged wife can look her
husband in the face and give him the sentiment of the dame of John
Anderson:

"John Anderson, my jo John,
When we were first acquent;
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snaw;
But b