rivolous, married coquettes of the modern drawing-room, her heaven an
opera box on the night of Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable," the ten
commandments an inconvenience, taking arsenic to improve the
complexion, and her appearance a confused result of belladonna,
bleached hair, antimony and mineral acids, until one is compelled to
discuss her character, and wonder whether the line between a decent
and indecent life is, like the equator, an imaginary line.

A PRESSING WANT.

What the world wants now is about fifty thousand old-fashioned
mothers, women who shall realize that the highest, grandest, mightiest
institution on earth is the home. It is not necessary that they should
have the same old-time manners of the country farm-house, or wear the
old-fashioned cap and spectacles and apron that her glorified ancestry
wore; but I mean the old spirit which began with the Hannahs and the
Mother Lois and the Abigails of Scripture days, and was demonstrated
on the homestead where some of us were reared, though the old house
long ago was pulled down and its occupants scattered, never to meet
until in the higher home that awaits the families of the righteous.
While there are more good and faithful wives and mothers now than
there ever were, society has got a wrong twist on this subject, and
there are influences abroad that would make women believe their chief
sphere is outside instead of inside the home.

A DEADLY SIN.

Hence in many households, children instead of a blessing are a
nuisance. It is card case _versus_ child's primer, carriage _versus_
cradle, social popularity _versus_ domestic felicity. Hence
infanticide and antenatal murder so common that all the physicians,
allopathic, hydropathic, homoeopathic, and eclectic are crying out in
horror, and it is time that the pulpits joined with the medical
profession in echoing and re-echoing the thunder of Mount Sinai, which
says: "Thou shalt not kill," and the book of Revelation, which says:
"All murderers shall have their place in the lake which burneth with
fire and brimstone." And the man or the woman who takes life a minute
old will as certainly go straight to hell as the man or woman who
destroys life forty years old. And the wildest, loudest shriek of
Judgment Day will be given at the overthrow of those who moved in the
high and respected circles of earthly society, yet decreed by their
own act, as far as they could privately effect it, the extermination
of the advan