Page:Creole Sketches.djvu/200

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CREOLE SKETCHES

tune has cast their lot or run the risk of losing all and beginning the struggle with the world over again, do forever pursue after the chimera of a home, and cannot understand, until they have tried all possible expedients and suffered all varieties, of disappointments, why they cannot make a home for themselves. To such as these, of course, the idea of a home is coupled with memories of the home of one's youth — cozy rooms, quiet, good fare, kindly attention, liberty to act and think, something to regret leaving, and to delight returning to of evenings; — a pleasant greeting, a dog barking with joy, a cozy chair by the fire, and a cat purring on the rug. And yet how one can obtain these things without a woman's ministry nobody has ever pretended to explain. A woman is the soul of home; and without her there is little more than furniture and brick walls there. She transforms and