THE KINGDOM OF HOME HOME LOVERS HOMELY POEMS FOR EDITED BY ARTHUR GILMAN, M. A. "Home is the Kingdom, and love is the King." "O fortunate, O happy day, When a new household finds its place LONGFELLOW. ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS. BOSTON D LOTHROP COMPANY WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMFIELD TH HIS volume is intended to illustrate the subject of Home in some of its phases Home is the heart of American civilization - of the civilization of all the Teutonic races, indeed. When it has been threatened with harm, as it has been at different periods, the energy and promptness with which the attack has been resented, shows how deep is the appreciation of its sanctity. This love of a pure Home has led to some of the greatest movements that Teutonic civilization has known in all its long history. This it was which stirred our forefathers, while they were still in the German woods, to rise under Hermann against the great Roman general Varus,-who impersonated the entire power of Rome at the time of its highest empire, when he ventured to invade the sanctity of the home circle, and nerved them to resist his progress and to hurl back the Roman eagles, forever stopping their advance in that direction. It was the same feeling that led their descendants, twelve centuries later, to deand of the English King John the establishment by law of the freedom of Home from royal invasion, and forced him to put his English and to the Magna Charta, which has ever since been the palladium of sign manual American freedom. In American society the Family has been the unit ever since the Pilgrims distributed themselves into families at Plymouth, in 1620, and it has always been the theme upon which the orator, the writer, the preacher have touched with complete assurance of meeting a ready sympathy. Even in our republic the poets have not hesitated to call Home a kingdom, and their simplest verses have gone to the national heart, as they have been the out |