Mutual interest and affection is its note.

Such homes do exist by the tens of thousands; even in New York City.

It is not from them that girls go to brothels or boys to the Tombs.
Externally, these homes are often pretty bad to look at--overcrowded, disorderly, and noisy.

Cleanliness, order, and space are good things, but it is a mistake to think that there is no virtue without them.
There are more primary and essential things; things to which they should be added, but without which they are lifeless virtues.

In one of Miss Loane's reports on the life of the English poor, she makes these truthful observations:-- One learns to understand how it is that the dirty, untidy young wife, who, when her husband returns hungry and tired from a long day's work, holds up a smilingly assured face to be kissed, exclaiming, "Gracious! if I hadn't forgot all about your tea!" and clatters together an extravagant and ill-chosen meal while she pours out a stream of cheerful and inconsequent chatter, is more loved, and dealt with more patiently, tenderly, and faithfully, than her clean and frugal neighbor, who has prepared a meal that ought to turn the author of Twenty Satisfying Suppers for Sixpence green with envy, but who expects her husband to be eternally grateful because "he could eat his dinner off the boards,"-- when all that the poor man asks is to be allowed to walk over them unreproached.
Peace and good will may go with disorder and carelessness! They may fly order and thrift.