Brambles and Bay Leaves; Essays on the Homely and the Beautiful (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 46 A HAPPY FAMILY. We are a cosy quiet couple, not frequently haunted by cares, or excited by varieties. We live just far enough from town to be free from temptations of pleasure, yet near enough to avoid lapsing into vapid dullness; in fact, we manage to combine town and country life together in our little household, and to adorn our rustic pursuits with a few of the graces of literature, and some touches of homely art. I might perhaps amuse yon by a relation of our every-day life, its whims and oddities and the utter abandonment to impulse to which, since our first wedding-day, we have been addicted; but it is the family we have reared that I think I may most profitably talk about, and, at the risk of being thought egotistical, I shall give you a brief account of it. I venture to say that few strictly private families are so truly happy as ours; for though it comprises thousands of children of all ages, ?some older than ourselves, many of them differing in temper and taste as widely as the pole differs from the equator, ?yet the most perfect harmony at all times prevails amongst us, and the only anxiety that possesses us is to render each other happy. To be sure, the elements of a row arenever wanting; and were the heads of the family for one single day to forget their responsibilities, bloodshed and cannibalism would make a total ruin of our model Agapemone. Ten or twelve may be considered a fair number for any ordinary family, and on such a limited scale, some little generalship is essential for the preservation of domestic peace: but, as I first remarked, our family consists of thousands?in fact, we ourselves have never attempted a numbering of the people, and frankly confess we do not know how many within a thousand or two are dependent upon us. If I tell you t...