The Home, Its Work and Influence

Long is the way from the primal home, with its simple child-_motif_, to / the large and expensive house of entertainment we call home to-day. The / innocent "guest-chamber" early added to the family accommodations has / spread its area and widened its demands, till we find the ultra-type of / millionaire mansion devoting its whole space, practically, to the / occupation of guests -- for even the private rooms are keyed up to a / comparison with those frankly built and furnished for strangers. The / kitchen, the dining-room, the pantry, the table-furniture of all sorts, / are arranged in style and amplitude to meet the needs of guests. The / sitting-room becomes a "parlour," the parlour a "drawing-room" with / "reception-room" addition; and then comes the still more removed / "ballroom" -- a remarkable apartment truly, to form part of a home. Some / even go so far as to add a theatre -- that most essentially public of / chambers -- in this culminating transformation of a home to a house of / entertainment.

From what once normal base sprang this abnormal growth? How did this / place of love and intimacy, the outward form of our most tender and / private relations, so change and swell to a place of artificial / politeness and most superficial contact? The point of departure is not / hard to find; it lies in that still visible period when hospitality was / one of our chief virtues.