oup, we have the ideal conditions for child development.
For the only child there are happily some substitutes for this home
companionship in the "residential school," or the school with long
days of group relationship of like age and condition, but it is not
the same and seldom as good as the home circle of the right size and
variety.

The modern conditions make the old ties seem less important to many.
In the United States, where people move about so freely across the
vast spaces of our continent, and where in the large cities so many
move each year to try vainly to better themselves in hired houses, the
ties of family outside of the immediate circle seem remote and to be
easily set aside. It is not, however, a sign of advanced social spirit
which makes a young girl declare "she has no use for her relations;
she cares only for her chosen friends," and it is often of the essence
of social danger that a young man wants to give up all connection with
his family. The fact is that one can understand better how one came to
be what one is by knowing something of one's forbears and one's living
relatives.

=Permanent Value of the Family Bond.=--The feeling that one belongs to
a blood group, the feeling so old and so wonder-working in the past,
gives at least one ideal of permanence in a world of affairs whirling
in such rapid change that the common mind becomes dizzy and the common
idealism confused. On the other hand, it is cause for gratitude
unspeakable that the old bondage of the family life is relaxed, never
to be tightened again to such oppression as once prevailed. The fact
that inheritance is now seen to be so varied and so unpredictable that
one child in a family may "take back" to one ancestor and another to a
different one to ends of complete divergence of character and
capacity, shows that the old attempt to keep them together, whether
they could love each other or not, was a social mistake. To-day we are
more reasonable. We even say that fathers and mothers may not be
taken into the home of their children if it best serves the mutual
happiness for them to have separate homes. We seldom now in
enlightened families make the mistake of holding to "living together"
when living apart is clearly the wiser thing.

The old sense of family responsibility is, however, happily not lost
and in its new ways of working often gives a finer representation of
mutual aid than was common of old. The will of one rich man which
i