Not at Home.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 65, 26 August 1904, Page 5

Not at Home.

There is a custom, common to people of good standing, or "society people," as the newspapers sometimes call them, that, although considered quite a new thing and the mark of the modern " toney " class, is in reality a very ancient usage. I refer to the well-known excuse which is put into the mouths of servants or others who " answer the door " to visitors who cannot for the time being be received. " Not at home " in itself is, in most cases, a deliberate untruth, a lie. This is admitted as a necessary evil, and servants who are so straitlaced as to object to utter the He, soon rind th- ir services dispensed with. It is rather a cuiious anomaly, and a proof of the falseness of the excuse that, when it is given, the mistress is more truly at Koine than when she gives an "At Home." On the latter occasion she keeps open house, a id many crosvd into her reception rooms whom .she would scarcely invite into the sanctity of her home. The excuse that she puts into the mouth of waiting-maid or footman is meant on ordinary occasions to keep " impossible " people from intruding upon the privacy of her real home. " N'ot receiving to-day " might with truth be substituted for " Not at home,' 1 but the latter has received the sanction of time for its use. Time and usage have given it the meaning ol the former; In this variation of meaning it is not alone. For example, such words as villain, knave, and temperance originally signified villager, boy, and moderation, respectively ; they are now synonymous with rascal, scoundrel, a. id t tal abstinence. It is a question how far the altered meanings are indicative of an inherent falseness in human nature. Lately a compendium of Roman history came into my hands, and therein I found related an incident in the life of Publius Cornelius Scipis Nasic.i, who was a censor in the year 159 H.c. j —that is, 2063 years agi>. It was his duty as : censor to exercise general control over the conduct and m -nils of the citizens. The incident I refer to shows what he thought of the " not-at-home " excuse, even when practised by a friend. He lived in very familiar intercourse with Ennius, a poet of the time, and once took a rather humorous way of attending to that gentleman's morals, without calling him before the censorial court. Going one day to visit Ennius, Nasica knocked nl his duor to gain admittance. The poet's servant said that her master was not at home. Nasica felt sure that Ennius was within and had ordered the servant to tell him that he was not nt home ; but he departed without comment. Some days afterwards Ennius tLsired to visit Nasica. Nasica saw him coming and himself went to the back of the door, and called out that he was not at home. " What !' said Ennius, do you think I do not know your voice?" Nasica replied, "You impudent fellow, when your servant told me that you were not at home, I believed her ; and now you will not believe my very self !" Nevertheless, " not at home " will continue to be the common and hypocritical excuse for all who have a home with a door that must be knocked at for admission, when they do not wish to be intruded upon, for the idea is co-eval with man. It goes back to the world's beginning when there were neither doors nor houses, when man's only visitor was his Creator (Gen. 111, 8): "And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day : and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of (he Lord God amongst the trees of the garden." " Not at home " was really a new thing then. It was caused by shame, which was caused by sin. It was the first sin, and that sin, just as surely as the law begetteth sin, was caused by the law of prohibition — " Of it thou shalt not eat.' [ust as surely^ shall all prohibitions lead to sin. This first sin was committed when the object prohibited was clearly in view and free to be handled. To human nature the prohibition was the instigation to sin. Where there is added to the prohibition the further stimulus of absence from view, together with ihe difficulty of obtaining, shall human nature be found wanting? Nay ! " God made man upright but he hath found out many inventions." Has man deteriorated in the inventive faculty in the twentieth century since these words, or their equivalents, were uttered ? The greater the prohibiting the more the sinning . the more the sinning the greater the responsibility of those prohibiting. Prohibi tion does not save the soul. It may in some cases save money ; and the possession of money and what money will buy gives respec. lability — God save the mark ! In these times it has thus come about that Christianity and worldly respectability are nearly interchangeable terms. O. L.