th and permit him to imbibe all the juices of life? Energy,
happiness--does it not all come from them? Without family life where
would man learn to love, to associate, to deny himself? A community in
little, is it not this which teaches us how to live in the great one?
Such is the holiness of home, that to express our relation with God we
have been obliged to borrow the words invented for our family life. Men
have named themselves the sons of a heavenly Father!

Ah! let us carefully preserve these chains of domestic union; do not let
us unbind the human sheaf and scatter its ears to all the caprices of
chance and of the winds; but let us rather enlarge this holy law; let us
carry the principles and the habits of home beyond its bounds; and, let
us realize the prayer of the Apostle of the Gentiles when he exclaimed
to the new-born children of Christ:

"Be ye like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one
mind."

FOOTNOTES:

[314-1] This is adapted from _An Attic Philosopher in Paris_.

[315-2] The cheap wine shops of Paris are outside the Barriers, to avoid
the city tax.

ON THE RECEIPT OF MY MOTHER'S PICTURE

_By_ WILLIAM COWPER

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Before we read this beautiful little poem, let us prepare ourselves by
learning something about the author.

William Cowper, the son of an English clergyman, was born in 1731. He
was a delicate, sensitive little boy whose life was made miserable by
his companions in play and at school. So timid was he that the larger
boys tyrannized over him shamefully, and the smaller ones teased him as
much as they liked. When his mother died, William was but six years old,
and the shrinking little lad was placed in a large boarding school where
the other boys were cruel and heartless. At least, so they seemed to the
frightened newcomer. Probably they were no more cruel and heartless than
most strong and healthy youngsters who are accustomed to give and take
without whimpering. Young Cowper was merely the strange lad whose timid
and hesitating manner seemed to call for discipline. Years afterwards,
still remembering the agony of these years, he wrote of one big boy in
particular.

"His savage treatment of me impressed such a dread of his figure upon my
mind that I well remember of being afraid to lift my eyes up higher
than to his knees, and that I knew him better by his shoe-buckles than
by any other part of his dress."

At ten he was removed to We