Improved Homes

An improved home - usiug the word in its modern seuse-- is very much liko an improved woman - not mueh of a blessing. "Iniprovement" has killed half the poetry that makes the niemory beautiful. It has rob bed the hartrest field of its songs and rcapcrs, the threshing floor of the merry beat of flails, given us a Singcr's Sewing Machine, that dont sing, and plucked out the word "fii-eside," the heart of its charm. A writer in the Philadelphia Inquirer says: "The romance of home life, liko every other kind of romance, is in a fair way to disappear before the ouward march of improvement. Science is invading our very hearthstones, or rather is reduoing them to mere ligures of speech, and renderiug the domestie inyths and sentiinents as obsolete as the Lares and Penates of the old lloman dweiling. Time was when the fireside wasaliterality, but tho next generation will searce!y understand either the word. or tho thing. It would csrtaiuly be difficult to imagine the family eircle at that modern substitute lor the cheery hcartl], the register ; and Santa Claus is really puzzled as to how he may reaeh his líttle devotees by the orthodox route of the chimney. "The old oaken bucicet that hung in the well" is now a water work existiug only in rural faneyïhe lone student no longer trims the midnight lamp, but objectively as well as subjeetively, lights the gas. In short, "love in a cottage'1 has bocome a picture of almost fabulous antiquity, aud tho true novel must wind up in a pulatial residenoe. If we go on at this rate, all sentiment and simpheity will vanish i'rom thehouschold. Our homes will be woven togethcr into one immense hotel, drawing light, heat and water from the same source. aud it may be, from the sama material. The whole domestie picturo will have an air of labor-saviug contrivance and elegant moehanism, witb. cushioned cars üoiselessly gliding from collar to attic; locomotive dumb waiters circulating with stitf gravity through the table ritual; steam caliopes discoursiug musical asthmas iu the parlor, and uimble sewing machines performiüg miracles of fancy ncedlework. The genius of improvement will havo driven out the spirit of romance from its refuge and birth-plaoe, and home itself shall be left disenchanted."