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LV. American love of home.

It is common to say that love of home does not exist in America — that it is not a supposable quality in a nation founded on immigration, and only kept contented by constant migration. Nothing is easier than to misunderstand people, even whole races at a time. We insist on saying that Frenchmen, for instance, have no love of their home because they call it chez moi, forgetting that this moi identifies the abode with its proprietor far more unequivocally than the English word. You may speak of some one else as also having a home, but chez moi can belong to the speaker alone. So in regard to the selection of a place where to fix one's abode; we all assume that every Frenchman wishes to live in Paris, when in truth almost every Frenchman, if born in the country, dreams always of retiring to a little estate of his own, where for the rest of his life he may patrol the woods in long gaiters, and occasionally shoot at a cock-sparrow. We all observe this home-loving spirit in the French Canadians, who are perhaps

Harper and Brothers, Franklin Square, New York. 1888.

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