SUNSHINE saves the world. If you want to kill a plant or a human being you need only shut either up in a crypt and rob it of the life giving influences of heat and light. No wonder that in all ages by stairways of sunbeams our thoughts have climbed to heaven; no wonder that men, ignorantly seeking a God to worship yet knowing Him not, have found in the sun His best type and symbol. A sunshiny household is the abode of good natured people. It is not the residence of the churl or the miser, not the home of the cross or the despotic, or the morbid, or the gloomy. Only brightness and cheer may dwell in the sunshiny house.
The young people in this home are not afraid of their father. His countenance is not frowning and repellent, his presence is no signal for silence. The mother is the queen of her realm, and where she is there can be only pleasure and delight!
In the sunshiny home the mother is not crowded out by her young folk from her true place. There are homes wherein the mother has no rest to the sole of her foot, so aggressive are the juniors. Elsie and her young friends monopolize the parlor, Louise and her lessons occupy the sitting room, Jack and his arithmetic and geography quite fill the vacant spaces in the dining room, and mamma must sit in her own chamber or go to bed. Truth to tell, her own room is not the least charming refuge in the household, for father comes there to sit in his old dressing gown and shabby slippers, Kitty and Mamie would rather stay with mother than in their own room or with their sisters, and the mother’s room is the rallying place for the family in their hours of ease and enjoyment.
In the sunshiny household there are certain stock stories which everybody knows, certain anecdotes which everybody enjoys, certain allusions and reminiscences which are part of the general family fund, and which they would remember and share though they were divided by the width of the globe.
The sunshiny house is a loyal one.
~The Art of Home-making in City and Country, in Mansion and Cottage
