Thinking/Quoting Out Loud

The following quote was written by Charles Buxton in 1873.

 It was brought to my attention by a family member recently.

Unless your family is the exception, I think most of us could heed the lesson from this.

"The great want in family life that strikes me is this, 

that there are so few tete-a-tetes.

You live on from year's end to year's end,

surrounded by those whom you love, and chatting together;

but it is rare to be thrown alone with any one individual

and have really intimate talk with him or her.

Yet the difference in value is immense between mere social chat

and that mingling of mind with mind,

which is impossible if others are by.

But the real fact is, that unless some effort is made for it,

or unless circumstances are unusually favorable,

the very members of the same family live,

one might say,

on parallel lines,

without ever touching."