o pass away time, which is so
precious to most of us that we should like to feel we had something at
the end of an hour by which our lives were richer than at the beginning.
Yet games have their place. Young-people have their times of liking
them. If they really enjoy them and play with thorough good temper,
they get true recreation from them, and all innocent enjoyment has a
moral effect as valuable as the intellectual effect of a good book. So a
mother who wishes to make a true home for her children will not grudge
whole evenings spent in games which would be unspeakably wearisome to
her if played with people of her own age; indeed, the chances are she
will thoroughly enjoy such evenings, and be as interested in capping
verses or asking twenty questions as any of the youngsters, while if she
is a worn and anxious mother, such simple pastime may be the best
refreshment. I believe there is less to be said in favor of cards than
of other games, but I often think of the words of a friend, "We are
strict people," she said, "but when the boys were growing up and began
to be wild for cards, we played regularly every evening till they were
tired of it, and I think they did not care to play elsewhere."

If a home is to be ideal, it must contain a father and mother and
children. A lonely man or woman who is so unfortunate as not to have
this ideal home should, I think, try to find as many of its elements as
possible. A man should not live altogether at his club, and it is a pity
for a woman to live permanently with women alone. And a home is so
incomplete without children that it seems almost necessary that every
childless man or woman should adopt one or two. Unfortunately this is
often impossible, and then it becomes the more essential to seek for a
boarding-place where we may get a little of the cheer of other people's
children and at the same time practice some of the virtues which
children always call out in older people. No home is truly homelike in
which there is not a large hospitality. I have so much to say on this
head that I must leave it for another chapter.

I have said little about the qualities of character which make a happy
home. Beyond a loving nature, on which all the others rest, I know of
nothing more essential than a serene temper. Let a woman be "mistress of
herself, though china fall." The daily temptations to irritation are
incessant, and irritability will destroy the comfort of any home, even
if i