Home Lights and Shadows

⼦Home Lights and Shadows

The Project Gutenberg Etext of Home Lights and Shadows
by T. S. Arthur (#9 in our series by T. S. Arthur)
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg file.
Please do not remove this header information.
This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to view the eBook. Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words are carefully chosen to provide users with the information needed to understand what they may and may not do with the eBook. To encourage this, we have moved most of the information to the end, rather than having it all here at the beginning.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get eBooks, and further information, is included below. We need your donations.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541 Find out about how to make a donation at the bottom of this file.
Title: Home Lights and Shadows
Author: T. S. Arthur
Release Date: October, 2003 [Etext #4594] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 12, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
The Project Gutenberg Etext of Home Lights and Shadows by T. S. Arthur ******This file should be named hmlgh10.txt or hmlgh10.zip******
Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, hmlgh11.txt VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, hmlgh10a.txt
Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
The "legal small print" and other information about this book may now be found at the end of this file. Please read this important information, as it gives you specific rights and tells you about restrictions in how the file may be used.
*** This etext was created by Charles Aldarondo ([email protected])
HOME LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.
BY T. S. ARTHUR,
AUTHOR OF "LIFE PICTURES," "OLD MAN'S BRIDE," AND "SPARING TO SPEND."
NEW YORK:
1853.

CONTENTS.

RIGHTS AND WRONGS THE HUMBLED PHARISEE ROMANCE AND REALITY BOTH TO BLAME IT'S NONE OF MY BUSINESS THE MOTHER'S PROMISE THE TWO HUSBANDS VISITING AS NEIGHBORS NOT AT HOME THE FATAL ERROR FOLLOWING THE FASHIONS A DOLLAR ON THE CONSCIENCE AUNT MARY'S SUGGESTION HELPING THE POOR COMMON PEOPLE MAKING A SENSATION SOMETHING FOR A COLD THE PORTRAIT VERY POOR

PREFACE.

HOME! How at the word, a crowd of pleasant thoughts awaken. What sun-bright images are pictured to the imagination. Yet, there is no home without its shadows as well as sunshine. Love makes the home-lights and selfishness the shadows. Ah! how dark the shadow at times--how faint and fleeting the sunshine. How often selfishness towers up to a giant height, barring out from our dwellings every golden ray. There are few of us, who do not, at times, darken with our presence the homes that should grow bright at our coming. It is sad to acknowledge this; yet, in the very acknowledgement is a promise of better things, for, it is rarely that we confess, without a resolution to overcome the evil that mars our own and others' happiness. Need we say, that the book now presented to the reader is designed to aid in the work of overcoming what is evil and selfish, that home-lights may dispel home-shadows, and keep them forever from our dwellings.

RIGHTS AND WRONGS.

IT is a little singular--yet certainly true--that people who are very tenacious of their own rights, and prompt in maintaining them, usually have rather vague notions touching the rights of others. Like the too eager merchant, in securing their own, they are very apt to get a little more than belongs to them.
Mrs. Barbara Uhler presented a notable instance of this. We cannot exactly class her with the "strong-minded" women of the day. But she had quite a leaning in that direction; and if not very strong-minded herself, was so unfortunate as to number among her intimate friends two or three ladies who had a fair title to the distinction.
Mrs. Barbara Uhler was a wife and a mother. She was also a woman; and her consciousness of this last named fact was never indistinct, nor ever unmingled with a belligerent appreciation of the rights appertaining to her sex and position.
As for Mr. Herman Uhler, he was looked upon, abroad, as a mild, reasonable, good sort of a man. At home, however, he was held in a very different estimation. The "wife of his bosom" regarded him as an exacting domestic tyrant; and, in opposing his will, she only