The Simple Life

hy man and intelligent too, whose head was suddenly turned by the thought that his sovereign might one day descend upon his home. Up to this time he had lived in the house of his f

airs, walk over such superannuated carpets. So the mayor called architect and masons; pickaxes attacked walls and demolished partitions, and a drawing-room was made, out of all proportion to the rest of the house in size and splendor. He and his family retired

ce is most menacing in times of unrest. Our contemporaries are constantly exposed to it, and constantly succumbing. How many family treasures have they literally

sm. To enjoy a normal development, this organism has need of well-tried individuals, each having his own value, his own hall-mark. Otherwise society becomes a flock, and sometimes a flock without a shepherd. But whence does the individual draw his originality-this unique something, which, joined to the di

ized for the exploitation of the whole world. Everything that does not directly concern them is indifferent to them. They live like colonists, I had almost said intruders, in the society around them. Their particularism is pushed to such an excess that they make enemies of the whole human race. In their small way they resemble those powerful societies, formed from time to

f a family are its common memories. An intangible, indivisible and inalienable capital, these souvenirs constitute a sacred fund that each member of a family ought to consider more precious than anything else he possesses. They exist in a dual form: in idea and in fact. They show themselves in langua

domestic sanctuary. What are this stranger's rights? its titles? Upon what does it rest its peremptory claims? This is what people too often neglect to inquire. They make a mistake. We treat the invader as very poor and simple people do a pompous visi

worldly spirit enters. It finds everything out of date, awkward, too simple, lacking the modern touch. At first it restricts itself to criticism and light raillery. But this is the dangerous moment. Look out for yourself; here is the enemy! If

blished in an absolutely transformed setting, even you will view yourself with amazement. Nothing will be familiar, but surely it will be correct; at least the world will be satisfied!-Ah! that is where you are mistaken! After having made you cast out pure

of filling their houses with objects which say: Remember! they garnish them with quite new furnishings that as yet have no meaning. Wait, I am wrong; these things are often symbols, as it were, of a facile and superficial existence. In their midst one breathes a certain heady vapor of mundanity. They recall the life outside, the turmoil, the rush. And were one sometimes disposed to forget this life, they wou

they didn't figure on all sides of it. To stay at home is penal; there they cease to be in view. A horror of home li

uilibrium, calm good sense and initiative, one of the chief reasons lies in the undermining of the home life. The masses have timed their pace by that of people of fashion. They too have become worldly. Nothing can be more so than to quit one's own hearth for the life of saloons. The squalor and misery of the homes is not enough to explain the current which carries each man away from his own. Why does the peasant desert for the inn the house that his father and grandfather found so co

ects, old folk songs have found appreciative hands to gather them up before they should disappear from the earth. What a good deed, to guard these crumbs of a great pas

s! What a world of mystery! Here, even on the threshold the cold begins to penetrate, you are ill at ease, something intangible repulses you. There, no sooner does the door shut you in than friendliness and good humor envelop you. It is said that walls have ears. They have also voices, a mute eloquence. Everything that a dwelling contains is bathed in an ether of personality. And I find proof of its quality even in the apartments of

en. Poor moderns, always moving or remodeling! We who from transforming our cities, our houses, our customs and creeds, have no longer where to lay our heads, let us not add to the pathos and emptiness of our changeful existence by abandoning

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