The mother is the angel-spirit of home.  Her tender yearnings over the cradle of her infant babe, her guardian care of the child and youth, and her bosom companionship with the man of her love and choice, make her the personal center of the interests, the hopes and the happiness of the family.  Her love glows in her sympathies and reigns in all her thoughts and deeds.  It never cools, never tires, never dreads, never sleeps, but ever glows and burns with increasing ardor, and with sweet and holy incense upon the altar of home-devotion.  And even when she is gone to her last rest, the sainted mother in heaven sways a mightier influence over her wayward husband or child, than when she was present.  Her departed spirit still hovers over his affections, overshadows his path, and draws him by unseen cords to herself in heaven.

Our nature demands home.  It is the first essential element of our social being.  The whole social system rests upon it:  body, mind and spirit are concerned in it.  These cannot be complete out of the home-relations; there would be no proper equilibrium of life and character without the home feeling and influence.  The heart, when bereaved and disappointed, naturally turns for refuge to home-life and sympathy.  No spot is so attractive to the weary one; it is the heart’s moral oasis; there is a mother’s watchful love, and a father’s sustaining influence; there is a husband’s protection, and a wife’s tender sympathy; there is the circle of loving brothers and sisters,—­happy in each other’s love.  Oh, what is life without these?  A desolation!—­a painful, glooming pilgrimage through “desert heaths and barren sands.”  But home gives to life its fertilizing dews, its budding hopes, and its blossoming joys.  When far away in distant lands or upon the ocean’s heaving breast, we pine away and become “home-sick;” no voice there like a mother’s; no sympathy there like a wife’s; no loved one there like a child; no resting place there like home; and we cry out, “Home! sweet, sweet home!”

Thus our nature instinctively longs for the deep love and the true hearts of home.  It has for our life more satisfaction than all the honors, and the riches and the luxuries of the world.  We soon grow sick of these, and become sick for home, however humble it may be.  Its endearments are ever fresh, as if in the bursting joys of their first experience.  They remain unforgotten in our memories and imperishable in our hearts.  When friends become cold, society heartless, and adversity frowns darkly and heavily upon us, oh, it is then that we turn with fond assurance to home, where loved ones will weep as well as rejoice with us.

  “Oh, the blessing of a home, where old and young mix kindly,
  The young unawed, the old unchilled, in unreserved communion! 
  Oh that refuge from the world, when a stricken son or daughter
  May seek with confidence of love, a father’s hearth and heart;
  Come unto me, my son, if men rebuke and mock thee,
  There always shall be one to bless,—­for I am on thy side!”