CHAPTER XXI.
SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE.
"The primal duties shine aloft like stars; The charities that sooth and heal and bless Are scattered at the feet of men like flowers.
* * * * The smoke ascends To heaven as lightly from the cottage hearth As from the lofty palace." -- WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
Home life ought to be happy.

The benediction of Christ on every home to which he is welcomed as an abiding guest is, "Peace be to this house." While perfection of happiness is unattainable in this world, rich, deep, heart-filling happiness certainly may be, and ought to be, attained.
Yet it requires wise building and delicate care to make a home truly and perfectly happy.

Such a home does not come as a matter of course, by natural growth, wherever a family takes up its abode.

Happiness has to be planned for, lived for, sacrificed for, ofttimes suffered for.
Its price in a home is always the losing of self on the part of those who make up the household.

Home happiness is the incense that rises from the altar of mutual self-sacrifice.
It may be said, in a word, that Christ himself is the one great, blessed, secret of all home happiness; Christ at the marriage altar; Christ when the baby is born; Christ when the baby dies; Christ in the days of plenty; Christ in the pinching times; Christ in all the household life; Christ in the sad hour when farewells must be spoken, when one goes on before and the other stays, bearing the burden of an unshared grief.