_ SINCERITY should be the keynote of a life,
don't you think?
Sincerity -- beauty -- use -- these are my
watchwords.
I heard such an interesting talk on sincerity the
other evening. I belong to a Little Group of Serious
Thinkers who are taking up sincerity in all its
phases this week.
We discussed Sincerity in the Home.
So many people's homes, you know, do not
represent anything personal.
The SINCERE home should be full of purpose and
personality -- decorations, rugs, ornaments, hangings
and all, you know.
The home shows the soul.
So I'm doing over our house from top to bottom,
putting personality into it.
I've a room I call the Ancestor's Room.
You know, when one has ancestors, one's ancestral
traditions keep one up to the mark, somehow.
You know what I mean -- blood will tell, and all that.
Ancestors help one to be sincere.
So I've finished my Ancestors' Room with all
sorts of things to remind me of the dear dead-and-gone
people I get my traditions from.
Heirlooms and portraits and things, you know.
Of course, all our own family heirlooms were
destroyed in a fire years ago.
So I had to go to the antique shops for the portraits
and furniture and chairs and snuff boxes and
swords and fire irons and things.
I bought the loveliest old spinet -- truly, a fine!
I can sit down to it and image I am my own
grandmother's grandmother, you know.
And it's wonderful to sit among those old heir-
looms and feel the sense of my ancestors'
personalities throbbing and pulsing all about me!
I feel, when I sit at the spinet, that my personality
is truly represented by my surroundings at last.
I feel that I have at last achieved sincerity in the
midst of my traditions.
And there's a picture of the loveliest old lady . . .
old fashioned costume, you know, and all that . . .
and the hair dressed in a very peculiar way. . . .
Mamma says its a MADE-UP picture -- not really
an antique at all -- but I can just feel the personality
vibrating from it.
I got it at a bargain, too.
I call her -- the picture, you know -- after an
ancestress of mine who came to this country in the
old Colonial days.
With William the Conqueror, you know -- or
maybe it was William Penn. But it couldn't have
been William Penn, could it? For she went to New
Jersey -- Orange, N.J. Was it William of Orange?
More than likely . . .
Anyhow, I call the picture after her -- Lady Clarissa,
I call it. She married a commoner, as so
many of the early settlers of this country did.
When I sit at the spinet and look at Lady Clarissa
I often wonder what people do without family
traditions.
And its such a comfort to know I'm in a room
that really represents my personality. _