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Saturday, August 28, 2010

Book Review: Home-Making by J.R. Miller

This is one of my favorite books. It is now being sold under the title The Family. I think the name change was probably due to the fact that the book is not so much about Home-making as we think of the term, but about making a home. There are nine chapters, each of which adresses a different aspect of home life. For the most part, it focuses on family relationships, and the reponsibilities of each individual towards the others. This book is beautifully written, and even though it was originally published in 1882, it is still just as relevant to today's families.

Here is an exerpt from the section on "Brothers and Sisters":

"Next to mother and father there is no one who can do so much to help a young man to live nobly as his own sister. She cannot always go with him. Her weak arm could not always shield him if she were beside him. But there is a help which she can give him that will prove mightier than her presence. It is not the help of good advice and earnest words --these should have power too-- but the help rather of silent and holy influence, gained in the home by a life of unselfishness nad beauty, and then held as a potent charm outside and beyond the home walls... May I try to tell you, dear girls, how you can indeed be your brothers' guardian angels? Show them in your own lives at home the perfect grace and beauty of true, noble and lofty womanhood. Strive after all that is delicate, all that is pure, all that is tender, all that is holy and sacred in their divine ideal of woman. Show them in yourselves such perfect loveliness that they will turn away ever after from everything that is unlovely. Make virtue so as they see it embodied in you that they will always be repelled by vice..."

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