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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10393 ***
+
+MAKING THE HOUSE A HOME
+
+By
+
+Edgar A. Guest
+
+1922
+
+ _Here's our story, page by page,
+  Happy youth and middle-age,
+  Smile and tear-drop, weal and woe
+  Such as all who live must know--
+  Here it is all written down,
+  Not for glory or renown,
+  But the hope when we are gone
+  Those who bravely follow on
+  Meeting care and pain and grief
+  Will not falter in belief._
+
+
+
+Making the House a Home
+
+
+We have been building a home for the last fifteen years, but it begins
+to look now as though it will not be finished for many years to come.
+This is not because the contractors are slow, or the materials scarce,
+or because we keep changing our minds. Rather it is because it takes
+years to build a home, whereas a house can be builded in a few months.
+
+Mother and I started this home-building job on June 28th, 1906. I was
+twenty-five years of age; and she--well, it is sufficient for the
+purposes of this record to say that she was a few years younger. I was
+just closing my career as police reporter for the Detroit "Free Press,"
+when we were married. Up to a few months before our wedding, my hours
+had been from three o'clock, in the afternoon, until three o'clock in
+the morning, every day of the week except Friday. Those are not fit
+hours for a married man--especially a young married man. So it was
+fortunate for me that my managing editor thought I might have
+possibilities as a special writer, and relieved me from night duty.
+
+It was then we began to plan the home we should build. It was to be a
+hall of contentment and the abiding place of joy and beauty. And it was
+all going to be done on the splendid salary of twenty-eight dollars a
+week. That sum doesn't sound like much now, but to us, in January, 1906,
+it was independence. The foundation of our first home was something less
+than five hundred dollars, out of which was also to come the
+extravagance of a two-weeks' honeymoon trip.
+
+Fortunately for all of us, life does not break its sad news in advance.
+Dreams are free, and in their flights of fancy young folks may be as
+extravagant as they wish. There may be breakers ahead, and trials, days
+of discouragement and despair, but life tells us nothing of them to
+spoil our dreaming.
+
+We knew the sort of home we wanted, but we were willing to begin
+humbly. This was not because we were averse to starting at the top.
+Both Mother and I had then, and have now, a fondness for the best things
+of life. We should have liked a grand piano, and a self-making ice box,
+and a servant, and an automobile right off! But less than five hundred
+dollars capital and twenty-eight dollars a week salary do not provide
+those things.
+
+What we _could_ have would be a comfortable flat, and some nice
+furniture. We'd pay cash for all we could, and buy the remainder of the
+necessary things on time. We had found a wonderful, brand-new flat which
+we could rent for twenty-five dollars a month. It had hardwood floors,
+steam heat, two big bedrooms, a fine living room with a gas grate, a
+hot-water heater for the bath, and everything modern and convenient.
+To-day the landlord would ask ninety dollars a month for that place and
+tell you he was losing money at that.
+
+With the rent paid, we should have eighty-seven dollars a month left to
+live on. The grocery bill, at that time, would not run more than twenty
+dollars a month; telephone, gas, and electric light would not exceed ten
+dollars a month; the milkman and the paper boy would take but little,
+and in winter time a ton of coal per month would be sufficient. Oh, we
+should have plenty of money, and could easily afford to pledge twenty
+dollars a month to pay for necessary furniture.
+
+It will be noticed that into our dreaming came no physician, no
+dentist, no expenses bobbing up from unexpected sources. Not a single
+bill collector called at the front door of our dream castle to ask for
+money which we did not have.
+
+If older and wiser heads suggested the possibility of danger, we
+produced our plans on paper, and asked them from whence could trouble
+come? To-day we understand the depth of the kindly smile which our
+protests always evoked. They were letting the dreamers dream.
+
+At last the furniture was bought on the installment plan and the new
+flat was being put in order. It called for a few more pieces of
+furniture than we had figured on, and the debt, in consequence, was
+greater; but that meant merely a few months more to make payments.
+
+It was fine furniture, too! Of course it has long since ceased to serve
+us; but never in this world shall that dining set be duplicated! For
+perfection of finish and loveliness of design, that first oak dining
+table will linger in our memories for life. The one we now have cost
+more than all the money we spent for all the furniture with which we
+began housekeeping; and yet, figuring according to the joy it has
+brought to us, it is poor in comparison.
+
+And so it was, too, with the mahogany settee, upholstered in green
+plush, and the beveled glass dresser, and the living-room chairs. We
+used to make evening trips over to that flat merely for the joy of
+admiring these things--our things; the first we had ever possessed.
+
+Then came the night of June 27th. We had both looked forward to that
+wonderful honeymoon trip up the lakes to Mackinac Island, and tomorrow
+we were to start. But right then I am sure that both Mother and I wished
+we might call it off. It seemed so foolish to go away from such a
+beautiful flat and such lovely furniture.
+
+The honeymoon trip lasted two weeks; and one day, at Mackinac Island, I
+found Mother in tears.
+
+"What the matter?" I asked.
+
+"I want to go home!" she said. "I know I am silly and foolish, but I
+want to get back to our own house and our own furniture, and arrange
+our wedding presents, and hang the curtains, and put that set of
+Haviland china in the cabinet!"
+
+So back we came to begin our home-building in earnest.
+
+The rent and the furniture installments came due regularly, just as we
+had expected. So did the gas and electric light and telephone bills.
+But, somehow or other, our dream figures and the actual realities did
+not balance. There never was a month when there was as much left of our
+eighty-seven dollars as we had figured there should have been.
+
+For one thing, I was taken ill. That brought the doctor into the house;
+and since then we have always had him to reckon with and to settle
+with. Then there was an insurance policy to keep up. In our dream days,
+the possibility of my dying sometime had never entered our heads; but
+now it was an awful reality. And that quarterly premium developed a
+distressing habit of falling due at the most inopportune times. Just
+when we thought we should have at least twenty dollars for ourselves, in
+would come the little yellow slip informing us that the thirty days'
+grace expired on the fifth.
+
+But the home-of-our-own was still in our dreams. We were happy, but we
+were going to be still happier. If ever we could get rid of those
+furniture installments we could start saving for the kind of home we
+wanted.
+
+Then, one evening, Mother whispered the happiest message a wife ever
+tells a husband. We were no longer to live merely for ourselves; there
+was to be another soon, who should bind us closer together and fill our
+lives with gladness.
+
+But--and many a night we sat for hours and planned and talked and
+wondered--_how_ were we to meet the expense? There was nothing in the
+savings bank, and much was needed there. Mother had cherished for years
+her ideas for her baby's outfit. They would cost money; and I would be
+no miserly father, either! My child should have the best of everything,
+somehow. It was up to me to get it, somehow, to.... If only that
+furniture were paid for!
+
+Then a curious event occurred. I owed little bills amounting to about
+twenty-one dollars. This sum included the gas, electric light, and
+telephone bills, on which an added sum was charged if unpaid before the
+tenth of the month. I had no money to meet them. I was worried and
+discouraged. To borrow that sum would have been easy, but to pay it back
+would have been difficult.
+
+That very morning, into the office came the press agent of a local
+theatre, accompanied by Mr. Henry Dixey, the well-known actor. Mr. Dixey
+wanted two lyrics for songs. He had the ideas which he wished expressed
+in rhyme, and wondered whether or not I would attempt them. I promised
+him that I would, and on the spot he handed me twenty-five dollars in
+cash to bind the bargain. If those songs proved successful I should have
+more.
+
+The way out had been provided! From Mr. Dixey's point of view, those
+songs were not a success; but from mine they were, for they bridged me
+over a chasm I had thought I could not leap. I never heard from that
+pair of songs afterward; but neither Mother nor I will ever forget the
+day they were written.
+
+It meant more than the mere paying of bills, too. It taught us to have
+faith--faith in ourselves and faith in the future. There is always a way
+out of the difficulties. Even though we cannot see or guess what that
+way is to be, it will be provided. Since then we have gone together
+through many dark days and cruel hurts and bitter disappointments, but
+always to come out stronger for the test.
+
+The next few months were devoted to preparations for the baby, and our
+financial reckonings had to be readjusted. I had to find ways of making
+a little more money. I was not after much money, but I must have more.
+All I had to sell was what I could write. Where was a quick market for a
+poor newspaper man's wares?
+
+My experience with Mr. Dixey turned me to the vaudeville stage. I could
+write playlets, I thought. So while Mother was busy sewing at nights I
+devoted myself to writing. And at last the first sketch was finished. At
+the Temple Theatre that week was the popular character actor, William H.
+Thompson. To him I showed the manuscript of the sketch, which was called
+"The Matchmaker." Mr. Thompson took it on Tuesday; and on Friday he sent
+word that he wished to see me. Into his dressing-room I went, almost
+afraid to face him.
+
+"It's a bully little sketch," said he, as I sat on his trunk, "and I'd
+like to buy it from you. I can't pay as much as I should like; but if
+you care to let me have it I'll give you two hundred and fifty
+dollars--one hundred and fifty dollars now, and the remaining hundred
+next week."
+
+I tried to appear indifferent, but the heart of me was almost bursting
+with excitement. It meant that the furniture bill was as good as paid!
+And there would be money in the bank for the first time since we were
+married! The deal was made, and I left the theatre with the largest sum
+of money I had ever made all at once. Later someone said to me that I
+was foolish to sell that sketch outright for so little money.
+
+"Foolish!" said I. "That two hundred and fifty dollars looked bigger to
+me than the promise of a thousand some day in the future!"
+
+Once more the way out had been provided.
+
+And then came the baby--a glorious little girl--and the home had begun
+to be worth-while. There was a new charm to the walls and halls. The oak
+table and the green plush settee took on a new glory.
+
+I was the usual proud father, with added variations of my own. One of my
+pet illusions was that none, save Mother and me, was to be trusted to
+hold our little one. When others _would_ take her, I stood guard to
+catch her if in some careless moment they should let her fall.
+
+As she grew older, my collars became finger-marked where her little
+hands had touched them. We had pictures on our walls, of course, and
+trinkets on the mantelpiece, and a large glass mirror which had been one
+of our wedding gifts. These things had become commonplace to us--until
+the baby began to notice them! Night after night, I would take her in my
+arms and show her the sheep in one of the pictures, and talk to her
+about them, and she would coo delightedly. The trinkets on the
+mantelpiece became dearer to us because she loved to handle them. The
+home was being sanctified by her presence. We had come into a new realm
+of happiness.
+
+But a home cannot be builded always on happiness. We were to learn that
+through bitter experience. We had seen white crepe on other doors,
+without ever thinking that some day it might flutter on our own. We had
+witnessed sorrow, but had never suffered it. Our home had welcomed many
+a gay and smiling visitor; but there was a grim and sinister one to
+come, against whom no door can be barred.
+
+After thirteen months of perfect happiness, its planning and dreaming,
+the baby was taken from us.
+
+The blow fell without warning. I left home that morning, with Mother and
+the baby waving their usual farewells to me from the window. Early that
+afternoon, contrary to my usual custom, I decided to go home in advance
+of my regular time. I had no reason for doing this, aside from a strange
+unwillingness to continue at work. I recalled later that I cleaned up my
+desk and put away a number of things, as though I were going away for
+some time. I never before had done that, and nothing had occurred which
+might make me think I should not be back at my desk as usual.
+
+When I reached home the baby was suffering from a slight fever, and
+Mother already had called the doctor in. He diagnosed it as only a
+slight disturbance. During dinner, I thought baby's breathing was not as
+regular as it should be, and I summoned the doctor immediately. Her
+condition grew rapidly worse, and a second physician was called; but it
+was not in human skill to save her. At eleven o'clock that night she was
+taken from us.
+
+It is needless to dwell here upon the agony of that first dark time
+through which we passed. That such a blow could leave loveliness in its
+path, and add a touch of beauty to our dwelling place, seemed
+unbelievable at the time. Yet to-day our first baby still lives with us,
+as wonderful as she was in those glad thirteen months. She has not grown
+older, as have we, but smiles that same sweet baby smile of hers upon us
+as of old. We can talk of her now bravely and proudly; and we have come
+to understand that it was a privilege to have had her, even for those
+brief thirteen months.
+
+To have joys in common is the dream of man and wife. We had supposed
+that love was based on mutual _happiness_. And Mother and I had been
+happy together; we had been walking arm in arm under blue skies, and we
+knew how much we meant to each other. But just how much we _needed_ each
+other neither of us really knew--until we had to share a common sorrow.
+
+To be partners in a sacred memory is a divine bond. To be partners in a
+little mound, in one of God's silent gardens, is the closest
+relationship which man and woman can know on this earth. Our lives had
+been happy before; now they had been made beautiful.
+
+So it was with the home. It began to mean more to us, as we began each
+to mean more to the other. The bedroom in which our baby fell asleep
+seemed glorified. Of course there were the lonely days and weeks and
+months when everything we touched or saw brought back the memory of her.
+I came home many an evening to find on Mother's face the mark of tears;
+and I knew she had been living over by herself the sorrow of it all.
+
+I learned how much braver the woman has to be than the man. I could go
+into town, where there was the contagion of good cheer; and where my
+work absorbed my thoughts and helped to shut out grief. But not so with
+Mother! She must live day by day and hour by hour amid the scenes of her
+anguish. No matter where she turned, something reminded her of the joy
+we had known and lost. Even the striking clock called back to her mind
+the hour when something should have been done for the baby.
+
+"I _must_ have another little girl," she sobbed night after night. "I
+_must_ have another little girl!"
+
+And once more the way out was provided. We heard of a little girl who
+was to be put out for adoption; she was of good but unfortunate parents.
+We proposed to adopt her.
+
+I have heard many arguments against adopting children, but I have never
+heard a good one. Even the infant doomed to die could enrich, if only
+for a few weeks, the lives of a childless couple, and they would be
+happier for the rest of their days in the knowledge that they had tried
+to do something worthy in this world and had made comfortable the brief
+life of a little one.
+
+"What if the child should turn out wrong?" I hear often from the lips of
+men and women.
+
+"What of that?" I reply. "You can at least be happy in the thought that
+you have tried to do something for another."
+
+To childless couples everywhere I would say with all the force I can
+employ, _adopt a baby_! If you would make glorious the home you are
+building; if you would fill its rooms with laughter and contentment; if
+you would make your house more than a place in which to eat and sleep;
+if you would fill it with happy memories and come yourselves into a
+closer and more perfect union, adopt a baby! Then, in a year or two,
+adopt another. He who spends money on a little child is investing it to
+real purpose; and the dividends it pays in pride and happiness and
+contentment are beyond computation.
+
+Marjorie came to us when she was three years old. She bubbled over with
+mirth and laughter and soothed the ache in our hearts. She filled the
+little niches and comers of our lives with her sweetness, and became not
+only ours in name, but ours also in love and its actualities.
+
+There were those who suggested that we were too young to adopt a child.
+They told us that the other children would undoubtedly be sent to us as
+time went on. I have neither the space here nor the inclination to list
+the imaginary difficulties outlined to us as the possibilities of
+adoption.
+
+But Mother and I talked it all over one evening. And we decided that we
+needed Marjorie, and Marjorie needed us. As to the financial side of the
+question, I smiled.
+
+"I never heard of anyone going to the poorhouse, or into bankruptcy," I
+said, "because of the money spent on a child. I fancy I can pay the
+bills."
+
+That settled it. The next evening when I came home, down the stairway
+leading to our flat came the cry, "Hello, Daddy!" from one of the
+sweetest little faces I have ever seen. And from that day, until God
+needed her more and called her home, that "Hello, Daddy" greeted me and
+made every care worth while.
+
+The little home had begun to grow in beauty once more. That first
+shopping tour for Marjorie stands out as an epoch in our lives. I am not
+of the right sex to describe it. Marjorie came to us with only such
+clothing as a poor mother could provide. She must be outfitted anew from
+head to toe, and she was. The next evening, when she greeted me, she was
+the proud possessor of more lovely things than she had ever known
+before. But, beautiful as the little face appeared to me then, more
+beautiful was the look in Mother's face. There had come into her eyes a
+look of happiness which had been absent for many months. I learned then,
+and I state it now as a positive fact, that a woman's greatest
+happiness comes from dressing a little girl. Mothers may like pretty
+clothes for themselves; but to put pretty things on a little girl is an
+infinitely greater pleasure. More than once Mother went down-town for
+something for herself--only to return without it, but with something for
+Marjorie!
+
+We pledged to ourselves at the very beginning that we would make
+Marjorie ours; not only to ourselves but to others. Our friends were
+asked never to refer in her presence to the fact that she was adopted.
+As far as we were concerned it was dismissed from our minds. She was
+three years old when she was born to us, and from then on we were her
+father and her mother. To many who knew her and loved her, this article
+will be the first intimation they ever have received that Marjorie was
+not our own flesh and blood. It was her pride and boast that she was
+like her mother, but had her father's eyes. Both her mother and I have
+smiled hundreds of times, as people meeting her for the first time would
+say, "Anyone would know she belonged to you. She looks exactly like
+you!"
+
+Marjorie made a difference in our way of living. A second-story flat,
+comfortable though it was, was not a good place to bring up a little
+girl. More than ever, we needed a home of our own. But to need and to
+provide are two different propositions. We needed a back yard; but back
+yards are expensive; and though newspapermen may make good husbands they
+seldom make "good money."
+
+One evening Mother announced to me that she had seen the house we ought
+to have. It had just been completed, had everything in it her heart had
+wished for, and could be bought for forty-two hundred dollars. The price
+was just forty-two hundred dollars more than I had!
+
+All I did have was the wish to own a home of my own. But four years of
+our married life had gone, and I was no nearer the first payment on a
+house than when we began as man and wife. However, I investigated and
+found that I could get this particular house by paying five hundred
+dollars down and agreeing to pay thirty-five a month on the balance. I
+could swing thirty-five a month, but the five hundred was a high
+barrier.
+
+Then I made my first wise business move. I went to Julius Haass,
+president of the Wayne County and Home Savings Bank, who always had been
+my friend, and explained to him my difficulties. He loaned me that five
+hundred dollars for the first payment--I to pay it back twenty-five
+dollars monthly--and the house was ours.
+
+We had become land owners overnight. My income had increased, of course;
+but so had my liabilities. The first few years of that new house taxed
+our ingenuity more than once. We spent now and then, not money which we
+had, but money which we were _going to get_; but it was buying
+happiness. If ever a couple have found real happiness in this world we
+found it under the roof of that Leicester Court home.
+
+There nearly all that has brought joy and peace and contentment into our
+lives was born to us. It was from there I began to progress; it was
+there my publishers found me; and it was there little Bud was born to
+us. We are out of it now. We left it for a big reason; but we drive by
+it often just to see it; for it is still ours in the precious memory of
+the years we spent within its walls.
+
+Still, in the beginning, it was just a house! It had no associations and
+no history. It had been built to sell. The people who paid for its
+construction saw in its growing walls and rooftree only the few hundred
+dollars they hoped to gain. It was left to us to change that _house_
+into a _home. It sounds preachy, I know, to say that all buildings
+depend for their real beauty upon the spirit of the people who inhabit
+them. But it is true.
+
+As the weeks and months slipped by, the new house began to soften and
+mellow under Mother's gentle touches. The living-room assumed an air of
+comfort; my books now had a real corner of their own; the
+guest-chamber--or, rather, the little spare-room--already had
+entertained its transient tenants; and as our friends came and went the
+walls caught something from them all, to remind us of their presence.
+
+I took to gardening. The grounds were small, but they were large enough
+to teach me the joy of an intimate friendship with growing things.
+To-day, in my somewhat larger garden, I have more than one hundred and
+fifty rosebushes, and twenty or thirty peony clumps, and I know their
+names and their habits. The garden has become a part of the home. It is
+not yet the garden I dream of, nor even the garden which I think it will
+be next year; but it is the place where play divides the ground with
+beauty. What Bud doesn't require for a baseball diamond the roses
+possess.
+
+Early one morning in July, Bud came to us. Immediately, the character
+of that front bedroom was changed. It was no longer just "our bedroom;"
+it was "the room where Bud was born." Of all the rooms in all the houses
+of all the world, there is none so gloriously treasured in the memories
+of man and woman as those wherein their children have come to birth.
+
+I have had many fine things happen to me: Friends have borne me high on
+kindly shoulders; out of the depths of their generous hearts they have
+given me honors which I have not deserved; I have more than once come
+home proud in the possession of some new joy, or of some task
+accomplished; but I have never known, and never shall know, a thrill of
+happiness to equal that which followed good old Doctor Gordon's brief
+announcement: "It's a Boy!"
+
+"It's a Boy!" All that day and the next I fairly shouted it to friends
+and strangers. To Marjorie's sweetness, and to the radiant loveliness of
+the little baby which was ours for so brief a time, had been added the
+strength and roguishness of a boy.
+
+The next five years saw the walls of our home change in character.
+Finger marks and hammer marks began to appear. When Bud had reached the
+stage where he could walk, calamity began to follow in his trail. Once
+he tugged at a table cover and the open bottle of ink fell upon the rug.
+There was a great splotch of ink forever to be visible to all who
+entered that living-room! Yet even that black stain became in time a
+part of us. We grew even to boast of it. We pointed it out to new
+acquaintances as the place where Bud spilled the ink. It was an evidence
+of his health and his natural tendencies. It proved to all the world
+that in Bud we had a real boy; an honest-to-goodness boy who could spill
+ink--and _would_, if you didn't keep a close watch on him.
+
+Then came the toy period of our development. The once tidy house became
+a place where angels would have feared to tread in the dark. Building
+blocks and trains of cars and fire engines and a rocking horse were
+everywhere, to trip the feet of the unwary. Mother scolded about it, at
+times; and I fear I myself have muttered harsh things when, late at
+night, I have entered the house only to stumble against the tin sides of
+an express wagon.
+
+But I have come to see that toys in a house are its real adornments.
+There is no pleasanter sight within the front door of any man's castle
+than the strewn and disordered evidences that children there abide. The
+house seems unfurnished without them.
+
+This chaos still exists in our house to-day. Mother says I encourage it.
+Perhaps I do. I know that I dread the coming day when the home shall
+become neat and orderly and silent and precise. What is more, I live in
+horror of the day when I shall have to sit down to a meal and not send a
+certain little fellow away from the table to wash his hands. That has
+become a part of the ceremonial of my life. When the evening comes that
+he will appear for dinner, clean and immaculate, his shirt buttoned
+properly and his hair nicely brushed, perhaps Mother will be proud of
+him; but as for me, there will be a lump in my throat--for I shall know
+that he has grown up.
+
+Financially, we were progressing. We had a little more "to do with," as
+Mother expressed it; but sorrow and grief and anxiety were not through
+with us.
+
+We were not to be one hundred per cent happy. No one ever is. Marjorie
+was stricken with typhoid fever, and for fourteen weeks we fought that
+battle; saw her sink almost into the very arms of death; and watched her
+pale and wasted body day by day, until at last the fever broke and she
+was spared to us.
+
+Another bedroom assumed a new meaning to us both. We knew it as it was
+in the dark hours of night; we saw the morning sun break through its
+windows. It was the first room I visited in the morning and the last I
+went to every night. Coming home, I never stopped in hall or
+living-room, but hurried straight to her. All there was in that home
+then was Marjorie's room! We lived our lives within it. And gradually,
+her strength returned and we were happy again.
+
+But only for a brief time.... Early the following summer I was called
+home by Doctor Johnson. When I reached there, he met me at the front
+door, smiling as though to reassure me.
+
+"You and Bud are going to get out," said he. "Marjorie has scarlet
+fever."
+
+Bud had already been sent to his aunt Florence's. I was to gather what
+clothing I should need for six weeks, and depart.
+
+If I had been fond of that home before, I grew fonder of it as the days
+went by. I think I never knew how much I valued it until I was shut out
+from it. I could see Mother and Marjorie through the window, but I was
+not to enter. And I grew hungry for a sight of the walls with their
+finger marks, and of the ink spot on the rug. We had been six years in
+the building of that home. Somehow, a part of us had been woven into
+every nook and corner of it.
+
+But Marjorie was not thriving. Her cheeks were pale and slightly
+flushed. The removal of tonsils didn't help. Followed a visit to my
+dentist. Perhaps a tooth was spreading poison through her system. He
+looked at her, and after a few minutes took me alone into his private
+office.
+
+"I'm sorry, Eddie," he said. "I am afraid it isn't teeth. You have a
+long, hard fight to make--if it is what I think it is."
+
+Tuberculosis had entered our home. It had come by way of typhoid and
+scarlet fevers. The specialist confirmed Doctor Oakman's suspicions, and
+our battle began. The little home could serve us no longer. It was not
+the place for such a fight for life as we were to make. Marjorie must
+have a wide-open sleeping porch; and the house lacked that, nor could
+one be built upon it.
+
+And so we found our present home. It was for sale at a price I thought
+then I should never be able to pay. We could have it by making a down
+payment of seventy-five hundred dollars, the balance to be covered by a
+mortgage. But I neither had that much, nor owned securities for even a
+small fraction of it.
+
+But I did have a friend: a rich, but generous friend! I told him what I
+wanted; and he seemed more grieved at my burden than concerned with my
+request. He talked only of Marjorie and her chances; he put his arm
+about my shoulders, and I knew he was with me.
+
+"What do you need?" he asked.
+
+"Seventy-five hundred dollars in cash."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Have a lawyer examine the abstract to the property, and if it is all
+right come back to me."
+
+In two days I was back. The title to the house was clear. He smiled
+again, and handed me his check for the amount, with not a scratch of
+the paper between us.
+
+I suggested something of that sort to him.
+
+"The important thing is to get the house," he said. "When that is done
+and you have the deed to it and the papers all fixed up, you come back
+and we'll fix up our little matter." And that is how it was done.
+
+So into our present home we moved. We had a bigger and a better and a
+costlier dwelling place. We were climbing upward. But we were also
+beginning once more with just a house. Just a house--but founded on a
+mighty purpose! It was to become home to us, even more dearly loved than
+the one we were leaving.
+
+For four years it has grown in our affections. Hope has been ours. We
+have lived and laughed and sung and progressed.... But we have also wept
+and grieved.
+
+Twice the doctor had said we were to conquer. Then came last spring and
+the end of hope. Week after week, Marjorie saw the sunbeams filter
+through the windows of her open porch; near by, a pair of robins built
+their nest; she watched them and knew them and named them. We planned
+great things together and great journeys we should make. That they were
+not to be she never knew.... And then she fell asleep....
+
+Her little life had fulfilled its mission. She had brought joy and
+beauty and faith into our hearts; she had comforted us in our hours of
+loneliness and despair; she had been the little cheerful builder of our
+home--and perhaps God needed her.
+
+She continued to sleep for three days, only for those three days her sun
+porch was a bower of roses. On Memorial Day, Mother and I stood once
+more together beside a little mound where God had led us. Late that
+afternoon we returned to the home to which Marjorie had taken us. It had
+grown more lovely with the beauty which has been ours, because of her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The home is not yet completed. We still cherish our dreams of what it is
+to be. We would change this and that. But, after all, what the home is
+to be is not within our power to say. We hope to go forward together,
+building and changing and improving it. To-morrow shall see something
+that was not there yesterday. But through sun and shade, through trial
+and through days of ease and of peace, it is our hope that something of
+our best shall still remain. Whatever happens, it is our hope that what
+may be "just a house" to many shall be to us the home we have been
+building for the last fifteen years.
+
+
+
+HOME
+
+By Edgar A. Guest
+
+  It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home,
+  A heap o' sun an' shadder, an' ye sometimes have t' roam
+  Afore ye really 'preciate the things ye lef' behind,
+  An' hunger fer 'em somehow, with 'em allus on yer mind.
+  It don't make any differunce how rich ye get t' be,
+  How much yer chairs an' tables cost, how great yer luxury;
+  It ain't home t' ye, though it be the palace of a king,
+  Until somehow yer soul is sort o' wrapped round everything.
+
+  Home ain't a place that gold can buy or get up in a minute;
+  Afore it's home there's got t' be a heap o' livin' in it;
+  Within the walls there's got t' be some babies born, and then
+  Right there ye've got t' bring 'em up t' women good, an' men;
+  And gradjerly, as time goes on, ye find ye wouldn't part
+  With anything they ever used--they've grown into yer heart:
+  The old high chairs, the playthings, too, the little shoes they wore
+
+  Ye hoard; an' if ye could ye'd keep the thumbmarks on the door.
+  Ye've got t' weep t' make it home, ye've got t' sit an' sigh
+  An' watch beside a loved one's bed, an' know that Death is nigh;
+  An' in the stillness o' the night t' see Death's angel come,
+  An' close the eyes o' her that smiled, an' leave her sweet voice dumb.
+  Fer these are scenes that grip the heart, an' when yer tears are dried,
+  Ye find the home is dearer than it was, an' sanctified;
+  An' tuggin' at ye always are the pleasant memories
+  O' her that was an' is no more--ye can't escape from these.
+
+  Ye've got t' sing an' dance fer years, ye've got t' romp an' play,
+  An' learn t' love the things ye have by usin' 'em each day;
+  Even the roses 'round the porch must blossom year by year
+  Afore they 'come a part o' ye, suggestin' someone dear
+  Who used t' love 'em long ago, an' trained 'em jes' t' run
+  The way they do, so's they would get the early mornin' sun;
+  Ye've got t' love each brick an' stone from cellar up t' dome:
+  It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home.
+
+[_From "A Heap o' Livin'"_]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Making the House a Home, by Edgar A. Guest
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10393 ***