Doth a Home Maketh a Soul?

Continued..
While I agree with my great X 6 grandmother on many things, I'm not sure about her take on what made a more effective home or particularly, soul, especially in  the retrospect that we all know to be the best view of all. Perhaps when I was as young as Margaret when she wrote this next entry, and I was making a comfortable nest for my family, I  might have aligned with her philosophy of home and soul.  Thinking back, yes. It was important to have comfort then. And "ornamentation" of sorts.   But these days, I'm more inclined to look for ways to dismantle and disseminate ornamentation. The part about the soul's development being tied to beauty of home? Think I'll leave that leaf unturned for now or I'll write about it in my own personal journal. Margaret, keeper of the written word and home, had this to say about that:

"…When our stone dwelling is done I shall feel something like ornamentation, it may be, for my children’s sake, and especially I shall like to make things enticing. I think people get beauty of soul with growing up among pretty things, particularly girls, but all, indeed, should have their homes beautified so that they may love to stay in them, as the case may be… The holy Pascal said not much of any more than these words: "“Most of the evil of this world grows out of the people’s discontent to stay home.”" This is true."

Well, I think she and Pascal made a good point about straying from home being a possible cause of problems. Perhaps in her time some elemental social stratagem weren't that different from our modern ways. Obviously, there are more factors feeding our discontent with home. Right?
Margaret's philosophic bent continues to endear her to me.

In her journal, she wrote that Staunton continued its steady progression under the enterprising leadership of her husband, John. And she wrote about their newly acquired not-so-friendly neighbors. Her worries went far beyond having "savages" around them to a much more personal and specific one. Margaret wrote:

"…Oroonah, or Tiger King’s son, a lad of sixteen, has crowned Alice with a prairie rose wreath. “Queen of White Doves” he calls her, and has given her a fawn which has become domestic now. I did not like to hear Thomas say last night, (he is older than Omayah)---"“Suppose Sister Alice should grow up and marry Omayah.”" Youth is romantic and thinks strange thoughts. I hope she may have none such."

Are there yet more similarities between times past and present?  And how were Alice and her mother linked in a possible youthful love interest?
More on Margaret and Queen of White Doves in my next post.