No doubt the migratory habit is stronger in America than
in England, and family life is not apt to flourish in hotels or
boarding-houses. The Saratoga trunk is not the best cornerstone for the
home: so much we may take for granted. But the American families who are
content to go through life without a threshold and hearthstone of their
own must, after all, be in a vanishing minority. They very naturally cut
a larger figure in fiction than in fact. It has been my privilege to see
something of the daily life of a good many families living under their
own roof-tree, and in every case without exception I have been struck
with the beauty and intimacy of the relation between parents and
children. When my friend laid down his theory of the intractable
American boy, I could not but think of a youth of twenty whom I had seen
only two days before, whose manner towards his father struck me as an
ideal blending of affectionate comradeship with old-fashioned
respect.[E] True, this was in Philadelphia, "the City of Homes," and
even there it may have been an exceptional case. I am not so illogical
as to pit a single observation against (presumably) a wide induction; I
merely offer for what it is worth one item of evidence.
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