RETURNING HOME.

It is generally supposed that people who live at home,—good domestic people, who love tea and their arm-chairs, and who keep the parlour hearth-rug ever warm,—it is generally supposed that these are the people who value home the most, and best appreciate all the comforts of that cherished institution.  I am inclined to doubt this.  It is, I think, to those who live farthest away from home, to those who find the greatest difficulty in visiting home, that the word conveys the sweetest idea.  In some distant parts of the world it may be that an Englishman acknowledges his permanent resting place; but there are many others in which he will not call his daily house, his home.  He would, in his own idea, desecrate the word by doing so.  His home is across the blue waters, in the little northern island, which perhaps he may visit no more; which he has left, at any rate, for half his life; from which circumstances, and the necessity of living, have banished him.  His home is still in England, and when he speaks of home his thoughts are there.

No one can understand the intensity of this feeling who has not seen or felt the absence of interest in life which falls to the lot of many who have to eat their bread on distant soils.  We are all apt to think that a life in strange countries will be a life of excitement, of stirring enterprise, and varied scenes;—that in abandoning the comforts of home, we shall receive in exchange more of movement and of adventure than would come in our way in our own tame country; and this feeling has, I am sure, sent many a young man roaming.  Take any spirited fellow of twenty, and ask him whether he would like to go to Mexico for the next ten years!  Prudence and his father may ultimately save him from such banishment, but he will not refuse without a pang of regret.

Alas! it is a mistake.  Bread may be earned, and fortunes, perhaps, made in such countries; and as it is the destiny of our race to spread itself over the wide face of the globe, it is well that there should be something to gild and paint the outward face of that lot which so many are called upon to choose.  But for a life of daily excitement, there is no life like life in England; and the farther that one goes from England the more stagnant, I think, do the waters of existence become.

But if it be so for men, it is ten times more so for women.  An Englishman, if he be at Guatemala or Belize, must work for his bread, and that work will find him in thought and excitement.  But what of his wife?  Where will she find excitement?  By what pursuit will she repay herself for all that she has left behind her at her mother’s fireside?  She will love her husband.  Yes; that at least!  If there be not that, there will be a hell, indeed.  Then she will nurse her children, and talk of her—home.  When the time shall come that her promised return thither is within a year or two of its accomplishment, her thoughts will all be fixed on that coming pleasure, as are the thoughts of a young girl on her first ball for the fortnight before that event comes off.

On the central plain of that portion of Central America which is called Costa Rica stands the city of San José.  It is the capital of the Republic,—for Costa Rica is a Republic,—and, for Central America, is a town of some importance.  It is in the middle of the coffee district, surrounded by rich soil on which the sugar-cane is produced, is blessed with a climate only moderately hot, and the native inhabitants are neither cut-throats nor cannibals.  It may be said, therefore, that by comparison with some other spots to which Englishmen and others are congregated for the gathering together of money, San José may be considered as a happy region; but, nevertheless, a life there is not in every way desirable.  It is a dull place, with little to interest either the eye or the ear.  Although the heat of the tropics is but little felt there on account of its altitude, men and women become too lifeless for much enterprise.  There is no society.  There are a few Germans and a few Englishmen in the place, who see each other on matters of business during the day; but, sombre as life generally is, they seem to care little for each other’s company on any other footing.  I know not to what point the aspirations of the Germans may stretch themselves, but to the English the one idea that gives salt to life is the idea of home.  On some day, however distant it may be, they will once more turn their faces towards the little northern island, and then all will be well with them.

To a certain Englishman there, and to his dear little wife, this prospect came some few years since somewhat suddenly.  Events and tidings, it matters not which or what, brought it about that they resolved between themselves that they would start immediately;—almost immediately.  They would pack up and leave San José within four months of the day on which their purpose was first formed.  At San José a period of only four months for such a purpose was immediately.  It creates a feeling of instant excitement, a necessity for instant doing, a consciousness that there was in those few weeks ample work both for the hands and thoughts,—work almost more than ample.  The dear little wife, who for the last two years had been so listless, felt herself flurried.

“Harry,” she said to her husband, “how shall we ever be ready?”  And her pretty face was lighted up with unusual brightness at the happy thought of so much haste with such an object.  “And baby’s things too,” she said, as she thought of all the various little articles of dress that would be needed.  A journey from San José to Southampton cannot in truth be made as easily as one from London to Liverpool.  Let us think of a month to be passed without any aid from the washerwoman, and the greatest part of that month amidst the sweltering heats of the West Indian tropics!

In the first month of her hurry and flurry Mrs. Arkwright was a happy woman.  She would see her mother again and her sisters.  It was now four years since she had left them on the quay at Southampton, while all their hearts were broken at the parting.  She was a young bride then, going forth with her new lord to meet the stern world.  He had then been home to look for a wife, and he had found what he looked for in the younger sister of his partner.  For he, Henry Arkwright, and his wife’s brother, Abel Ring, had established themselves together in San José.  And now, she thought, how there would be another meeting on those quays at which there should be no broken hearts; at which there should be love without sorrow, and kisses, sweet with the sweetness of welcome, not bitter with the bitterness of parting.  And people told her,—the few neighbours around her,—how happy, how fortunate she was to get home thus early in her life.  They had been out some ten,—some twenty years, and still the day of their return was distant.  And then she pressed her living baby to her breast, and wiped away a tear as she thought of the other darling whom she would leave beneath that distant sod.

And then came the question as to the route home.  San José stands in the middle of the high plain of Costa Rica, half way between the Pacific and the Atlantic.  The journey thence down to the Pacific is, by comparison, easy.  There is a road, and the mules on which the travellers must ride go steadily and easily down to Punta Arenas, the port on that ocean.  There are inns, too, on the way,—places of public entertainment at which refreshment may be obtained, and beds, or fair substitutes for beds.  But then by this route the traveller must take a long additional sea voyage.  He must convey himself and his weary baggage down to that wretched place on the Pacific, there wait for a steamer to take him to Panamá, cross the isthmus, and reship himself in the other waters for his long journey home.  That terrible unshipping and reshipping is a sore