Monday, April 20, 2009

Why a House is Not a Home

I have been reading a little less law and a little more law-related literature this past year, and I wanted to share with you a great insight from the book I am reading right now, Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge. By the way, if you are looking for a great law-related novel for the beach this summer, there is nothing better than Dickens' Bleak House, a great novel about the law and so much more. But I digress!

Here is the passage from Barnaby Rudge, about how a home is so much more than a building:

Although the best room of the inn, it had the melancholy aspect of grandeur in decay, and was much too vast for comfort. Rich rustling hangings, waving on the walls; and, better far, the rustling of youth and beauty's dress; the light of women's eyes, outshining the tapers and their own rich jewels; the sound of gentle tongues, and music, and the tread of maiden feet, had once been there, and filled it with delight. But they were gone, and with them all its gladness. It was no longer a home; children were never born and bred there;the fireside had become mercenary--a something to be bought and sold--a very courtezan: let he who would die, or sit beside, or leave it, it was still the same--it missed nobody, cared for nobody, had equal warmth and smiles for all. God help the man whose heart ever changes with the world, as an old mansion when it becomes an inn!


Barnaby Rudge, Chapter 10.