are provocative of rankling or exploding resentments. The blessed antidotes that sweeten and enrich domestic life are refinement, high aims, great interests, soft voices, quiet and gentle manners, magnanimous tempers, forbearance from all unnecessary commands or dictation, and generous allowances of mutual freedom. Love makes obedience lighter than liberty. Man wears a noble allegiance, not as a collar, but as a garland. The Graces are never so lovely as when seen waiting on the Virtues; and where they thus dwell together they make a heavenly home.

There is too little of the "I thank you" spirit in many households. Not that there is an utter want of gratitude for the numberless little attentions bestowed, one way or another, but the expressions of appreciation don't come out with a hearty, "Why, how pleasant you make things look, wife!" or, "I am obliged to you for taking so much pains!" They thank the tailor for giving them "fits," they thank a man in a full omnibus who gives them a seat, they thank a young lady who moves along in the concertroom-in short, they thank everything out of doors, because it is the custom, and come home, tip their chair back and their heels up, pull out the newspaper, grumble if their wife asks them to take the baby, scold if the fire has gone down, or if everything is just right shut their mouths with a smack of satisfaction, but never say "I thank you."

"I tell you what, men, young and old, if you did but show an ordinary civility toward those common articles of housekeeping, your wives, if you would give them the hundred and sixteenth part of the compliments you almost choked them with before you were married, fewer women would seek for other sources of affection. Praise your wife, then, for all the good qualities she has, and you may rest assured that her deficiences are counterbalanced by your

own.

"An indifference to personal behavior among the members of a family in their domestic retirement shows that their behavior in the presence of guests is a mere Sunday suit put on for the occasion. Good manners, politeness, respectful attention to others, if they be at all ingrain, are not a respecter of persons and occasions. They should be ever-pervading; and, although they may be in their

fullness observed between parents and children, they should be relaxed in none of their essential application. What is more charming than to behold a gallant and affectionate consideration between man and wife; or that ever-present courtesy and lovingkindness between brothers and sisters? The respect due to parents on the part of the children, without regard to the number of years that have passed over the heads of the latter, should never be forgotten; but it should be held in remembrance, not so much as an exacting duty as an ever-conscious happiness.

"While I love to see and often join in the light-hearted pleasures and frivolities of the family circle, think that children should never be checked in their innocent enjoyments, I nevertheless abhor the behavior of boys and girls, and especially of parents, who forget practical good manners at home. How many wives and husbands are careless in their dress, captious or rough in their conversation, unbecoming in their postures; and the children, following the example set before them with so much authority, grow up without the true instincts of what is thoroughly becoming in society. If persons can put on and put off their manners as they can a dress or a coat, they are often liable to be discovered in dishabille. Saying, 'You must put on your best behavior' on such and such an occasion is an insult to a gentleman or lady, and implies that the utterer himself or herself is lacking of qualities in which others are attempted to be taught. Good manners should be as inseparable in well-bred persons as their epidermis from their bodies, and such being the fact, they can never be betrayed into conduct unbecoming a proper regard for the feelings and opinions of all with whom they may be thrown in contact."

The obligations which married life imposes upon the contracting parties are as sacred as they are binding. They lie at the very foundation of human happiness and social prosperity. "Before real society can come," says James Freeman Clarke, "true homes must come. As in a sheltered nook in the midst of the great sea of ice which rolls down from the summit of Mont Blanc is found a little green spot full of tender flowers, so in the shelter of home, in the warm atmosphere of household love, spring up the pure affections of parent and child; father, mother, son, daughter; of

brothers and sisters. Whatever makes this insecure, and divorce frequent, makes of marriage not a union for life, but an experiment which may be tried as often as we choose, and abandoned when we like. And this cuts up by the root all the dear affections of home; leaves children orphaned, destroys fatherly and motherly love, and is a virtual dissolution of society. I know the great difficulties of this question, and how much wisdom is required to solve them. But whatever weakens the permanence of marriage tends to dissolve society; for permanent homes are to the social state what the little cells are to the body. They are the commencement of organic life, the centres from which all organization proceeds."

Mere compatability of temper, harmony of taste, and degree of intellectual sympathy, are not questions for consideration after the free and deliberate choice has been exercised. "For better, for worse" is one indispensable feature of the contract. It may be hard for individuals here and there, but it is better for society that the unfortunate husbands and unfortunate wives "grin and bear" their burdens. If future generations would escape such evils, let the coming men and women be more careful in their wooings. Domestic trouble is easier avoided than cured.

Especially do home happiness and social welfare exact a high order of chastity. Domestic virtue is a primal test of character in the individual, the community, and the nation. In connection with this subject, Rev. Dr. J. M. Arnold says: "To attain the present Christian standard has required eighteen hundred, and, in fact, four thousand years of desperate conflict with the tendencies and propensities of mankind. Men complain of the vulgarity of the Old Testament, who have never considered the necessity of defining, describing, forbidding and denouncing the crime that most pervaded society. It is because this sin was all around them, and, like some fearful contagion, was contracted from the example of their heathen neighbors, that every period of Bible history is replete with allusions to it. The teachings of Christ are still more searching and severe in their bearing upon social crime. The Epistles show how constantly and severely the morality of the New Testament was challenged at this point."