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THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE,
DELIVERED IN THE
NORTH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, BUFFALO, N. Y.,
NOVEMBER 18, 1858, »
By JAMES LEONARD CORNING,
TV
PASTOR OP WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURC^, BUFFALO, N. T.

" I am seriously inclined to doubt whether the smging of the nightingale has
ever awakened so much enthusiasm or dictated so many sonnets as the singing
of the tea-kettle." Horace Smith. " Gayeties and Gravities," p. 15. __.

NEW YORK:

HALL, CLAYTON & CO., PRINTERS,
g ) 46 PINE STREET.
1859.

My dear Friend and Relative :
This discourse does not deserve the dignity of
an inscription; and yet, since you have demanded,
as well as assumed the entire pecuniary responsibil
ity of its publication, I venture to inscribe it to you,
with the assurances of my hearty good will. I might
add, apologetically, that it was prepared amid a great
pressure of pastoral duty. On this ground it is per
haps entitled to some indulgence at the hands of
critics. And yet I will confess, that "as much as in
me lay," I tried to excite in the hearts of my kind
audience a cheerful gratitude for their happy homes.
Sincerely yours,
THE AUTHOR.
R. H. Winslow, Esq.,
New York City.

SEEMON.

It was a caustic observation of the late Mr. Web
ster, that "many ministers in these days take their
texts from Paul and preach from the newspapers."
We have all of us heard sermons that appeared to
be as thoroughly scissored from the daily gazette as
a gossiping editorial or a maiden speech in Con
gress. Common consent seems to have granted a
plenary dispensation to ministers on Thanksgiving
Day to exchange, according to discretion, the pulpit
for the rostrum, the clerical gown (if they wear the
incumbrance) for the senatorial toga, and (if you
please) the olive branch of gospel peace for the
battle-axe of political strife. Once in a while it
happens that a Senator gets a bruised skull at the

hands of some son of tropical chivalry, and, if the
event is within hailing distance of Thanksgiving or
Fast Day, a thousand pulpits break forth in a con
certed note of horror and indignation. Once in a
while some odious bill, which makes the national
conscience groan with its burden of indignation, is
introduced upon the floor of Congress, or some law
less tribe of border ruffians make a virgin territory
the theatre of savage barbarities; and a theme is
furnished for a thousand sermons.
What the science of political homiletics would do
without these paroxisms in civil affairs, we cannot
tell. Very certain is it, however, that if the sea of
our governmental affairs remains quiet for a single
year, many a preacher has to ransack his brains and
his common-place book and the newspapers with
unusual diligence to discover a skeleton for his
Thanksgiving Sermon; and then what intellectual
agonies, to find muscles and blood and breath to
make the dry bones live and stand erect!
Notwithstanding the past year has been one of
comparative repose upon the usually troubled wa
ters of our political history, it would be no very dif
ficult thing to find, amid the chaotic rubbish of sec
ular affairs, some event of prominence to constitute

a topic of reflection for such a day as this. If
Thanksgiving Day had come a little earlier, when
the rejoicings of the civilized world were celebrating
the nuptials of two continents, and her Majesty, of
Windsor Castle, and his Excellency, of the White
House, were shaking hands across the Atlantic, we
might have preached a telegraphic sermon; and a
kindly sympathy would perhaps even now dictate
that we should say something in behalf of the sub
marine wire, since it cannot longer speak for itself.
If we should narrow down our thoughts to home
interests, we might attempt a discussion of the prob
able success of steam connection between our lakes
and tidal waters, and enlarge upon the issues of this
enterprise in our municipal growth and prosperity.
But we have learned, or ought to have learned, by
our late experience with the Atlantic Telegraph, not
to cry victory till some trophies are brought home ;
and prudence would dictate that we let the canal lie
over till another year — at any rate as far as respects
a theological enlargement.
Far over the sea has sounded the clangor of
bloody strife. We have read of the siege of Luck-
now, of the valor of Havelock and Campbell, and
the success of English arms in India. The smoke

8

and thunder of battle have gone to Heaven, carry
ing, as their dreadful burden, the groans of the man
gled and the dying, and the wails of ten thousand
widows and orphans. We could sing a "Tt? Deum!''
that India with its Pagan millions is thrown open
to the Gospel; but when we contemplate the bloody
path over which God's preparative Providence must
needs walk, the heart sickens at the sight.
We approach a more genial and quiet theme, and
you will not think that we disobey the suggestions
of this festive day, if we try for the brief hour that
we spend together to forget the noise and strife of
the great world without, in order that we may
sequester ourselves in the peaceful retreat of the
fireside. If others like to scud out to-day upon the
stormy seas of political and national affairs, let them
do it. We have no fault to find with such adventu
rers, provided only they can navigate the rough
waters without becoming stormy themselves. But
if we put the helm hard down, and point our bow
toward some quiet bay nearer home, where a moth
er's love is the light-house, and a father's protection
the kind lee-shore of the heart, we think that we
shall be in sympathy with the spirit of this day, and
not unlikely too with the natural current of your
thoughts.

9
The words of inspired wisdom recorded in Genesis
45 : 25-28, will suggest the topic of our discourse:
" And they went up out of Egypt and came into
the land of Canaan, unto Jacob their father, and told
him, saying, Joseph is yet alive, and he is Governor
over all the land of Egypt. And Jacob's heart faint
ed, for he believed them not. And they told him all
the words of Joseph, which he had said unto them ;
and when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to
carry him, the spirit of Jacob, their father, revived.
And Israel said, It is enough : Joseph, my son, is yet
alive; I will go and see him before I die."
I do not propose to go into a historical or a logi
cal treatment of the text; but to use it as suggestive
of the wide contrast between a home-circle made
happy by the presence of kindred affection, and a
home-circle made unhappy by the intrusion of
jealousy and mutual strife among the members who
compose it. Could we select a day more fitting
than this on which to speak to you of the blessings
of Home? Does not every historical precedent and
every cherished association of the heart connect
Thanksgiving Day most intimately, and by ties the
most sacred, with the domestic altar? In the noisy
rush of commercial and civil affairs which distin-

10

guishes these latter days from the times of our fore
fathers, very much of the quiet sanctity of this fes
tival has been effaced. The mellow light of kindred
love which once suffused it has been very much lost
in the glare of the great heartless world. It was a
modest lily once, nestling in a quiet vale, and fill
ing its own little firmament with sweet fragrance.
Now it is the staring sun-flower looking over the
garden fence, and up and down the street, with un
blushing effrontery.
Go back three-quarters of a century into one of
those quiet hamlets which chequered the hills and
valleys of New England, and you may see what the
thing we call "Thanksgiving Day " was in its swad
dling clothes, while it was yet a nursing babe in the
lap of our rugged ancestral piety.
The plash of the steam paddle had not then dis
turbed the waters of our lakes and rivers ; the
scream of the locomotive had not echoed in a single
valley or mountain cleft. The electric battery had
not yet lent its lightning wings to thought, and in-
laced continents in a net-work of reciprocal sym
pathy and intelligence.
You might step into the Village Church at the
appointed hour of service, and hear the preacher

11
discoursing with a vociferous patriotism upon the
cruel exactions of the English Crown, and the suc
cess of American arms at Bunker Hill and Lexing
ton. But do not think you have yet seen the
kernel of Thanksgiving Day ; for, in fact, you have
only seen the outer husk. While our preacher is
emptying his lungs and his wits to entertain the
mind, gentle hands are busy around each homely
fireside in preparing a festival for the heart. Yes,
you shall soon see that an old New England Thanks
giving was a day when a political discourse, or any
other pulpit performance, if not an absolute inflic
tion, to be endured only for decency's sake, was
held in subordination to the jubilee of glad hearts
around the family hearthstone. It is the holiday of
the heart, when all its natural affections may romp
and play at will. It is the Eben-ezer spot of
parental and filial piety, sun-lit and sacred. What
a vast array of machinery has been laid under con
tribution to make the day monumental in the his
tory of home delights. Every Martha in the house
hold has been busy for many a day, and not unlikely
a goodly number of Marys have been forced out of
their dignified abstraction from such fleshly things
as roasting spits, and spiders, and frying pans, and
for once been impressed into the grand culinary com
missariat of the household. The field and the gar-

12

den must bring in their wealth, to make up the cor
ruptible furniture of the occasion. The most prince
ly denizens of the barn-yard will have fulfilled their
earthly destiny before the rising sun ushers in the
festive day. Cost what it may, there shall be a ho
locaust to home delights, a jubilee of kindred hearts,
so grand and singular, that its memory shall descend
to children's children.
If Thanksgiving Day did not occur amid the blasts
of a wintry sky, we could not introduce to you one
feature of a New England home of half a century
ago, which was a most fitting type of ancestral hos
pitality. I mean a genuine, bona fide New England
fire-place. What a capacious receptacle was that.
Perhaps I need not tell you that a New England
fire-place, of fifty years gone, would hold a common
family, besides a cord of hickory logs, and then have
room enough left for the children to play "hide and
go seek." The black cylindical radiators, which de
form our halls and parlors, had not been thought of
then; for not the most sagacious ever dreamed that
the forests would be poverty stricken, and grudge
their contributions to our crackling hearths.
If I could take one of those noble ancestral fire
places, with its rough mantle and generous throat,

13
and set it down in some national antiquarian cabi
net, I would rather give the treasure to my descend
ants than be a Layard or Rawlinson, and bring back
Ninevite and Egyptian lions and bulls from exhumed
sepulchres, to enrich the British Museum. Blessed
relic of the hoary past, sacred symbol of our fathers'
great hearts — hearts where the fire of Christian affec
tion blazed aloft and threw its sparks to heaven,
while children and children's children gathered round
it for warmth and cheer!
Three, and possibly four, generations are assem
bled at the festive board. They have come through
pelting storms and over many a rugged hill, to this
glad convocation. Age is there, wrinkled and re
vered, and infancy ruddy cheeked and caressed —
the one a relic of memory, the other a bud of hope —
the old arm-chair for one, the last link between earth
and heaven; the cradle of the other, where parental
loves and joys converge, and over whose sides, as
from the battlements of a strong castle, the little eye
looks forth on life's storms heedless and defiant.
Come hither and look into the mellow light of joyous
sanctity that suffuses that rustic room, and hangs like
a soft velvet canopy over the bounteous board. Here
affection holds her banquet, and none are guests
but men and women with the royal stamp of God

14

Almighty's mint upon them. More than likely every
squire and matron, and youth and maiden is dressed
in homespun; but you may lay a wager that truer,
sincerer hearts beat beneath their russet than are
commonly buttoned or imprisoned with hooks and
eyes in broadcloth coat or velvet bodice. Home!
Oh friends, our sturdy fathers married a holy mean
ing to that word, which our modern refinements have
very much divorced. Verily, the generation who
followed on the heels of Robinson and Winslow and
Standish, the children of those who had been appren
ticed to adversity on the deck of the May Flower,
and at Plymouth Rock, these knew full well the
sacredness and the uncounted worth of a domestic
altar in its virgin rudeness before the hammer and
chisel of our heartless civilization had been lifted
upon it. They had made their bed on the frozen
earth, with the steel-cold sky for a canopy, the stars
for watchers, snow drifts for a coverlid, and the
howling of tempests for a lullaby. Chased like beasts
of booty over mountain and valley, continent and
ocean — the hunted vagrants of mankind — could they
not, when nestling in the dreariest cabin, through
whose chinks the night wind ever chanted its waihng
requiems, sing, as if it were a jubilee of Israel, or a
triumphal song of Roman conquerors,
" Be it ever so homely, there's no place like Home."

15
Our ancestral homes ! shall we not preserve their
memories as we would seal up some sweet perfume
from Araby? Shall we not make our hearts a downy
casket, in which to lay gently away thoughts and
fancies of those faded scenes over whose simple
beauty Death has drawn his curtain? I see in those
ancestral firesides the vouchers of American freedom,
and I hear echoing from their unplastered walls the
triumphant shouts of our rustic soldiery long before
Cornwallis gave up his sword, and the land rung
with the news of victory. It was to defend those
sacred haunts of love from the iron heel of the in
vader that husbands broke from the embrace of
wives, and brothers grew deaf to sisters' plead
ings, to gird on the sword and shoulder the musket.
And it is out of these ancestral homes, and the pa
rental and filial piety which they nurtured, 'that have
issued the broad rivers and all the myriad little rills
and brooks of our national christian civilization. In
those homes were organized our churches and col
leges and schools — in them grew laws and social
customs which lie at the basis of public weal, civil
and moral. Around them grew up the strong granitic
pillars of our hardy agriculture, which has spread
industry and thrift all over the prairies of the West.
Amid their stern discipline our fathers learned the
science of government, and on their hard beds and

16
coarse fare were trained up that heroic endurance and
self-reliance which lie at the basis of all public en
terprise. If I should spend a few moments now in drawing
a picture of a happy home, perhaps some critic would
say that the preacher has told us nothing but what
we knew before. Now, I am not prepared at once
to assent to the truth of this charge. On the con
trary, I am very sure that a picture of a happy home
would be a novelty to many people in this world, and
I think it not unlikely that there may be some here
who would hardly recognize every tint and line on
the canvass as being a portraiture of their own fire
sides. Happy homes are not as common in this
world as some people suppose. As many a green
sward fringes a volcanic crater, so many a face of
smiles dwells above a deep fiery cavern of woe away
down in the human heart, where no explorer's shaft
can penetrate and no healing balm can enter. Blessed
are they who have a real home — an asylum where a
tossed heart may find repose, an unruffled harbor
environed with rocky breakwaters, which no waves
from the great stormy world can overleap, where
hope is the headland and love the lighthouse, and
piety the wharf whence the soul takes in its freight
of blessedness.

17
The essential elements of a happy home are the
same all over the world, and in every grade of man's
social condition. Let the patronage of a prime
minister or a privy counsellor introduce us to the
royal household at Buckingham Palace or Balmoral,
and what a cumbrous retinue of paraphernalia we
behold. How much it takes to make up a home if
this be the standard of our measurement.
There is the Lord Steward, the Treasurer, the
Comptroller, the Lord Chamberlain, the Lords in
Waiting, the Gentlemen Ushers of the Privy Cham
ber, the Mistress of the Robes, Ladies of the Bed
chamber, Maids of Honor, besides a host of under
lings from a vice-chamberlain down to a stable boy.
Oh, if this were the inventory of the live stock with
which a home must needs be furnished, all the world
except kings and princes would be indictable for
vagrancy. But if her British Majesty has nothing
but this hollow parade to make up her domestic bliss,
verily she might better go begging at the door of
the lowliest yeoman on the heaths of Scotland. She
has another home besides this, if we may believe
common fame, a place which bears no resemblance
to this heartless pageant. There is a sanctuary be
hind the splendid scenes of royalty, where only the
high priest of pure affection may burn incense, a

18
sequestered glen where birds sing their matins and
vespers, and hope's choicest buds swell and blossom.
There is a spot where courtier's eye may not intrude,
where children clamber into that royal lap, and play
fully untie the tresses which the crown has pressed,
and fling their arms around her jeweled neck, and
deluge with kisses the face that could overawe an
empire. And that spot is home ! Blessed be God,
home may exist amid the hollow splendors of royal
courts. The case is rare; yet I am in the full belief
that if we could get behind the scenes in Windsor
Castle we should see something very like the ungar-
nished purity of domestic bliss.
Perhaps you are of a romantic turn, and love to
revel in natural scenery. If so, the external features
of a happy home will be somewhat different from
the heartless parade which we have been describing.
If you had an easel, a pallet, and a brush, perhaps
you would draw the picture somewhat on this wise.
It should be a rustic villa, with a vine clambering
up its sides, and a delicious green sward for a door-
yard. An old elm should stretch its great arms
over the roof — a tree that has survived three genera
tions, and has more sweet associations of childhood's
hopes and manhood's achievements clustering round
it than its very leaves could number up. An or-

19
chard should be adjacent, with its loaded boughs of
mellow fruit, and its cool shade in which the long
summer hours might wear themselves away. Flocks
should be seen grazing and gambolling in the mead
ows and on the hill slopes, and at nightfall the lowing
of the cows should be heard mingled with the ves
per songs of sweet birds dropping into their dewy
nests. I confess, my hearers, as the spot presents
itself to my fancy, (not, however, as I have daubed
the pigment on the canvass for you,) I would like to
live there. Ah! if this were a home, the world
would be a happier place than it is. But trees, and
lawns, and serpentine walks, and hedge-rows, and
flower-beds, and gable-ends, and clambering ivies
do not make up a home. These are the clothes with
out the man; and remember, if you please, that a suit
of sack-cloth with a real man in it is better than a.
suit of velvet stuffed with cotton.
One of the most exquisite passages of biography
that I ever fell in with occurs in the memoirs of
Robert Southey. He is sitting at his humble fireside,.
an old man whose immense literary labors had been
rewarded with' nothing but fame and poverty. Be
fore him lies a letter of invitation from great men
to visit London, and receive the homage of the titled
and the noble. And thus he answers the flattering

20
billet-deux: " Oh dear, oh dear, there is such a com
fort in one's old coat and old shoes, one's own chair
and own fireside, one's own writing desk and own
library, with a little girl climbing up to my neck,
and saying, 'Don't go to London, papa, you must
stay with Edith,' and a little boy whom I have taught
to speak the language of cats, dogs, cuckoos, jack
asses, &c, before he can articulate a word of his own
— there is such a comfort in all these things, that
transportation to London seems a heavier punishment
than any sins of mine deserve."*
Draw the curtain over such scenes as these. Let
not the eye of heartless curiosity invade such a holy
enclosure. Blessed man or woman to whom absence
from the fireside would be the synonym for "trans
portation" to Botany Bay or Siberia. If after hav
ing watched the binnacle and tugged at the halyards,
and reefed sail all day long, far out on the crested
waves of a busy world, you can round the cape and
drop anchor in such a quiet bay as this, I care not
whether you are a millionaire or a wood-sawyer,
every thought, and word, and deed of your conscious
life should be a practical paraphrase of Israel's ador
ing hymn, "Bless the Lord, Oh my soul, and all
that is within me, bless His holy name."
* Essays from London Times, p. 201.

21
There are some people whose whole lives are
gilded with pleasant memories of their childhood.
Look at almost any one of the inimitable landscapes
of John Constable, the great English painter, and
you will find a mill-seat and herds of cattle without
horns making some of the chief features of the
scenery.* The explanation is, that he was the son of
a miller, of Suffolk County, whose breed of cattle
never have horns. If you had put Constable down
on one of the grassy slopes of Devonshire or Durham,
he would probably have painted all his cows and
oxen after the Suffolk model. And you might take
him sailing down the Rhine, or to the snowy peaks
of Jungfrau, or beneath a delicious Italian sky, and
you could not have allured his brush from its favorite
subject, a water wheel, a grist mill, and a man with
powdered hair and coat attending the hopper. A
few of the denizens of this earth have such sweet,
golden home memories as that. Not a bright picture
do they ever look upon through all the sweat and
tug of manhood, but is associated in nuptial bonds
with some remembered joy of childhood. No matter
how humble the cot where they were born and rear
ed, they would rather have a picture of it hanging
on the parlor wall than to own the galleries of Dus*
seldorf and the Louvre. To visit the old haunts, to
* Tuckerman's Biographical Essays.

22
stretch one's self on the grassy bank beneath the
ancient oak before the door-step — to enter the di
lapidated casement, and wind up the creaking stairs,
and around through all the rooms of the decaying
house — to drink at the mouldering well-curb out of
that dripping "moss-covered bucket" — to go up into
the garret, that labyrinth of Minos where childhood's
joys run dodging about under wrecked bureaus and
old broken bedsteads — the garret, where one loved
to while away a dark rainy day, listening in trium
phant security to the pattering drops — to sit down of
a still Sabbath morning in the little village church,
where father and mother, now gone up to God, used
to guide one's tiny feet, and teach one's little voice to
sing and pray: Oh, there are some that would rather
make an excursion to that hallowed spot than get
into a beautiful ship and sail round the world, and
visit all its cities and grand palaces, and be presented
at the courts of all its monarchs. Thou busy man
of the world, tossing up and down like a whaler's
skiff upon the great, cold, stormy sea of life, if ever
it pleased God to bless your childhood with a happy
home, cherish the memory of that spot more than any
other earthly thing the sun ever looked upon. You
will need it as an incentive to goodness, as a balm in
sorrow, as a help to heroic endurance, as an impulse
to every onward step in the rugged path of duty.

23
Those were noble sentiments to which Daniel
Webster once gave utterance:
"It is only shallow-minded pretenders who make
either distinguished origin a matter of personal merit
or obscure origin a matter of personal reproach. A
man who is not ashamed of himself, need not be
ashamed of his early condition. It did happen to
me to be born in a log cabin, raised among the snow
drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early that
when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney and
curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evi
dence of a white man's habitation between it and
the settlements on the rivers of Canada. Its re
mains still exist. I make it an annual visit. I carry
my children to it, and teach them the hardships en
dured by the generations before them. I love to
dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties,
the early affections, and the narrations and incidents
which mingle with all I know of this primitive fam
ily abode. I weep to think that none of those who
inhabited it are now among the living; and if ever I
fail in affectionate veneration for him who raised it
and defended it against savage violence and destruc
tion, cherished all domestic comforts beneath its
roof, and through the fire and blood of seven years'
revolutionary war shrunk from no toil, no sacrifice,
to serve his country, and to raise his children to a

24
condition better than his own, may my name and
the name of my posterity be blotted from the mem
ory of mankind."
I pity the man who has no pleasant memories of
childhood. Nothing that earth can give will com
pensate for the absence of such memories. Let him
have wealth and literary fame, and civil preferment,
and all that can be included within the compass of
what is called worldly success, and all is a gairish
mockery if he has no sweet remembered joys of his
early days, to send out their aroma far on into the
heavy air of manhood. The splendid career of Dr.
Johnson was darkened with recollections of parental
neglect and partiality, and there was a sadness,
wrapped like sepulchral cerements, around his boyish
heart, which he was never able to throw off to the
latest day of life. He tells us that his parents lived
unhappily together, and hence made the home cheer
less; that he and his brother had a constant rivalry
to secure their mother's affection. "My mother,"
he says, "was always telling me to 'learn behavior.'
Sunday was a heavy day to me, and for punishment
my mother would compel me to read 'The whole
duty of Man,' and her pious admonition was com
posed only of complaint, fear, and suspicion."
Oh, I fear many a grown-up man could tell a tale
very much like this. I know a minister of the gos-

25
pel, whose school-teacher, when he was a naughty
boy, used to oblige him commit to memory the first
chapters of Genesis and the first chapter of John's
Gospel as a penalty; and to this day a perusal of
those sublime and melting passages of Holy Writ is
like standing in the pillory.
My friends, if there is anything earthly which more
than another I desire to bequeath to that curly-
headed little boy when he becomes a man, it is the
remembrance of a childhood as full of glee as a for
est is of bird-songs on a May morning, or as a sum
mer meadow is of daisies and buttercups. Oh yes,
life's cares and corroding anxieties, its tears and its
hope-thwartings, its burdens and its heart-crushings
will come full early. Well, well, for the opening
blossoms of joy, if the wintry days do not come pre
maturely, and blight all that is fair and lovely in that
young heart. Away, then, with harsh severity, and
the cruelty of savage and impatient rebuke around
the fireside, where our children gather. Trustingly
they turn their bright eyes and little round faces up
to ours, and God forbid that we should send them
skulking from us with an icy scowl. Tender lambs,
whose fleece has not yet grown; unfledged bird-
lings, whose very heart-throbs we can count beneath
their bare wings, how shall they endure the wintry
storms that blow up and down the broad highways

26
of the great world without. Tall grown-up man,
remember, there is a kind of city of refuge to which
you may flee, if unrequited love and suspicion meet
you, like a spectre with ghastly grin, at the fireside.
You can plunge into business; you can engage in
politics; you can travel over land and sea. You can
go to California, as many a man has done, the world
thought to make his fortune, but, as he bitterly knew,
to get out of the dismal rattle of Jezebel's or Xan-
tippe's scolding tongue. But, remember, tall grown
up man, your little child has no such alternative as
this. Your fireside is the only spot in all the world
where it can look for happiness. Crush the tiny bud
in this little garden, break off the delicate tendril,
and the vine may never bear blossom or cluster
again, nurture and transplant it as you will.
Let me give you a genial picture from the family
history of Leigh Richmond. Look into his house
hold, and you will find a vast array of machinery for
making his children happy. Says his biographer:
"He had recourse to what was beautiful in nature
or ingenious in art or science, and when abroad he
collected materials to gratify curiosity. He fitted up
his museum, his auctarium. and his library with
specimens of mineralogy, instruments for experimen
tal philosophy, and interesting curiosities from every
part of the world. He had his magic lantern, to

27
exhibit phantasmagoria and teach natural history;
to display picturesque beauty and scenes and ob
jects, far-famed in different countries; his various mi
croscopes for examining the minutiae of plants and
animals; his telescope for tracing planetary revolu
tions and appearances; his air-pumps and other ma
chines for illustrating and explaining the principles
of pneumatics and electricity; authors of every coun
try who treated on the improvements connected with
science; whatever, in short, could store the mind with
ideas, or interest and improve the heart. Music
was another source of domestic enjoyment in which
he excelled. Many of his children played on some
instrument, and occasionally joined their father in a
concert of sweet sounds." This was a part of the
machinery of home delights which Leigh Richmond
constantly put into use. No wonder his daughter
thus describes that fireside, and may my children
draw such a portrait of their father's domestic circle.
" Our dear father has succeeded in making his home
dear to all his children. Home was never talked of
without emotion by any of them. They left it with
regret. They returned to it with the fondest affec
tion, and connected with it every endearing associa
tion. No patriot Israelite ever sang of the place of
his nativity with more enthusiasm, ' Let my tongue

28
cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not
Jerusalem above my chief joy.' "*
How shall I speak of the central object in a happy
home? Dare I command my pen to enter into that
inner sanctuary? There are two words which the
lips never utter without a heart-swell. There are
not three syllables like them in the whole vocabulary,
not a substantive with its possessive pronoun in all
the grammars of every dialect like this — ' 'My mother!"
If you are a man in the hurry of business, you can
always find leisure to speak a love tribute to that
name. If you are a child of gaiety and mirth un
used to weep, you will hardly dwell upon her mem
ory without a tear-drop.
Is she living yet? Dear withered blossom, her
leaves are crumpled and wilted, but sweeter perfume
than ever do they exhale. Every wrinkle on that
face is sacred. They are the long valleys, cleft by
the plow-share of anxious love, out of which has
sprung up the waving harvest of manhood's joys
and successes. Proud day when you can support that
bent form, as it totters to and from the sanctuary,
where a generation gone she held you a helpless
babe in her arms, and gave you to Christ. If she is
with you to-day at the festal board, every bounding
impulse of your heart will accord to her the seat of
* Dr. Boardman's Bible in the Family, pp. 212-214.

29
honor. Precious heir-loom of God's beneficence, we
will treat her tenderly, gently, till the relentless
spoiler cross the threshold, and wrest the faded treas
ure from our bosom!
More than likely she is not with you to-day — no,
nor with the living. Long since, it may be, the hands
that rocked your infancy were folded together beneath
a coffin lid, and the eyes that slept and waked, and
slept and waked again through the live-long nights
of years over your pillow, were shut for the last time;
and the ears which caught your feeblest cry were
deaf till the last trump should sound an " Ephpha-
tha," and the heart that never, since your liquid eyes
beheld the light, knew a throb, but was the echo of
a hope, a joy, or a pang for you — that heart stood
still forever. Come, blessed memories of that sainted
one, and mingle your chastened radiance with the
festivities of this day; and though you look on tears,
yet it shall be as when the thronging sunbeams of
the breaking day look on the dew drops, nestling in
petal, hanging from leaflet, and clinging to the
myriad blades of the meadow !
There were many more things roughly sketched
on my blotter, which I was going to say; but your
patience has been already too thoroughly tested. I
was going to tell husbands their duty orthographically .

30
House-band is the idea. To bind the household to
gether is the sublimest earthly mission of ' man, and
he is a marvel of virtue who fulfills this idea in its
largest intent.
I was also going to attempt a sketch of a model
wife, and was intending to say, that to make home
happy was one of "woman's rights," which she
ought most inflexibly to insist upon. I had also
jotted down an observation on this wise, that the
wife who makes her husband's home a tavern need
not be surprised if before long he makes the tavern
his home.
I had also a word of counsel indicated for a repre
sentative class among young men, who are losing a
relish for home delights, and have got to love a dog
and gun, and, perhaps, something a great deal worse,
far better than the society of their mothers and sis
ters. Pity for them; they are already noosed like
an ox for the shambles.
I had even dared to put down in my blotter a
thought for youth of the gentler sex, and was seri
ously meditating the assertion that the old apostolic
admonition would decidedly fit some of our fair sisters
who do little but shop and make calls — "Exhort
young women to be keepers at home."

31
I must ask pardon at this late hour for even dar
ing to indicate these suggestions.
A pleasing duty awaits me, which, when I have
tried with Christian chivalry, yet with brevity to
discharge, we will leave the theory of home for the
practice thereof.
I have eighty heads, more or less, to present
to you in application of our subject. They are
not on my paper here, but yonder before your
very eyes.* I stand here to-day, mothers and
fathers, the self-elected champion of these orphans.
If I am a true Knight, and succeed in sending a
lance to the hearts and pockets of some of you, all
the reward I a.sk is a smile from the ruddy face of
that little girl who has neither father nor mother to
smile upon. She is a little solitaire in the great
maze and whirl of life; a fallen leaf caught on a
swollen river; a skiff driven from its moorings, far
out on the billowy sea; a birdling whom the wind
has seized in her first timid effort to fly, and swept
away off on a prairie where are neither bough nor
twig to support its nest.
Now fathers and mothers, if I should come to you
* The pupils of the "Buffalo Orphan Asylum" here rose in the
gallery before the audience, and at the conclusion of the discourse
a collection was taken up for their benefit.

32

to-morrow morning when the prattle of your first
born wakes you out of bright dreams to a brighter
reality, and if I should say, "Come, give me the
child, and I will feed and clothe it, and give it a bed
to sleep on, and fire to warm its tiny feet at night
fall," would not every fervent instinct of your hearts
repel the proffer as an insult to a parent's love ?
Yes, the snow-bird flies and hops about on the great
cold white drift under my window, gleeful and grate
ful for the crumbs which I throw to it. "But my
child is not that snow-bird," you say; " crumbs, yea
loaves it shall have, and a warm coat and a bed well
tucked up, and affluent in blankets and coverlids;
but in addition to this, it shall have a home;" and
you have a glossary in your heart which tells you
the ample meaning of that word, when applied to
the child begotten and born of you. It shall have
a nest, and the down of that nest shall be a mother's
love ; and it shall have a bough for that nest to swing
on; but the great trunk which sustains that bough
shall be a father's strong heart. I dare not ask such
a boon for my little clients, for God has denied it.
But for that little bird who cannot find a nestling
place in your chimney or under the eaves of your
dwelling, I would sing Israel's triumphant home-
song, "Yea, the sparrow hath found a house, and the
swallow a nest for herself — even thine altars, 0 God."

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