House Blessing, Philadelphia Library Fraktur Collection

“A TRAMP may become a hired soldier, but he can hardly rise to the promptings of patriotism. His life has too little in it to be worth much defending. His life is cheap. He waits for whatever may happen. When a man has a home he becomes immediately interested in the peace of a community. He has given hostages against mobs. It is important for him that the pavement stones should keep their places, and not go flying through the air. Both heads and windows acquire a sacredness from those in which he is interested. A man without a home has little motive for standing against public perils. If a land does not furnish a man so much as a home, he can drift away when it becomes dangerous to remain anchored. Fill any land with good homes and it must be a good place in which to live. … The walls about the hearth shut out all the world, and shut in a kingdom. This is the fort; keep it clean and free, and religion will thrive and liberty will dwell in the land forever.

— C.H. Fowler and W.H. De Puy, Home and Health and Home Economics, (Phillips & Hunt, 1880); p. 10.

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