mpression that we are a little behind the age. To say
the truth, my dear, I think your papers afford a good opportunity of
dropping a thought now and then in their minds. Jennie was asking last
night when you were going to write your next paper. The girl has a
bright, active mind, and thinks of what she hears."

So flattered, by the best of flatterers, I sat down to write on my
theme; and that evening, at fire-light time, I read to my little senate
as follows:--

WHAT IS A HOME, AND HOW TO KEEP IT.

I have shown that a dwelling, rented or owned by a man, in which his own
wife keeps house, is not always, or of course, a home. What is it, then,
that makes a home? All men and women have the indefinite knowledge of
what they want and long for when that word is spoken. "Home!" sighs the
disconsolate bachelor, tired of boarding-house fare and buttonless
shirts. "Home!" says the wanderer in foreign lands, and thinks of
mother's love, of wife and sister and child. Nay, the word has in it a
higher meaning, hallowed by religion; and when the Christian would
express the highest of his hopes for a better life, he speaks of his
_home_ beyond the grave. The word home has in it the elements of love,
rest, permanency, and liberty; but besides these it has in it the idea
of an education by which all that is purest within us is developed into
nobler forms, fit for a higher life. The little child by the
home-fireside was taken on the Master's knee when he would explain to
his disciples the mysteries of the kingdom.

Of so great dignity and worth is this holy and sacred thing, that the
power to create a HOME ought to be ranked above all creative
faculties. The sculptor who brings out the breathing statue from cold
marble, the painter who warms the canvas into a deathless glow of
beauty, the architect who built cathedrals and hung the world-like dome
of St. Peter's in mid-air, is not to be compared, in sanctity and
worthiness, to the humblest artist, who, out of the poor materials
afforded by this shifting, changing, selfish world, creates the secure
Eden of a _home_.

A true home should be called the noblest work of art possible to human
creatures, inasmuch as it is the very image chosen to represent the last
and highest rest of the soul, the consummation of man's blessedness.

Not without reason does the oldest Christian church require of those
entering on marriage the most solemn review of all the past life, the
confession and r