Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/236

 last of our real Laureates sang in his own matchless way:

Oh, tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, And dark and true and tender is the North!

Oh, tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown; Say that I do but wanton in the South, But in the North, long since, my nest is made!

"My nest is made," is the ultimatum of the lover,—the "nest" or the home being the natural centre of the circle of man's ambition. A happy home is the best and surest safeguard against all evil; and where home is not happy, there the devil may freely enter and find his hands full. With women, and women only, this happiness in the home must find its foundation. They only are responsible; for no matter how wild and erring a man may be, if he can always rely on finding somewhere in the world a peaceful, well-ordered, and undishonoured home, he will feel the saving grace of it sooner or later, and turn to it as the one bright beacon in a darkening wilderness. But if he knows that it is a mere hostelry,—that his wife has no pride in it,—that other men than himself have found the right to enter there,—that his servants mock him behind his back as a poor, weak, credulous fool, who has lost all claim to mastership or control, he grows to hate the very walls of the dwelling, and does his best to lose himself and his miseries in a whirlpool of dissipation and folly, which too often ends in premature breakdown and death.

One often wonders if the "smart" ladies who