Household hints

It can be. Children see so deeply into these questions that sometimes, notwithstanding the want of logic, one is almost inclined to believe with Wordsworth that "shades of the prison house" do "close round the growing boy," and that his "birth is but a sleep and a forgetting," such insight does he seem to have at times, so quick his apprehension of truth. How very much easier, if you can make it all right with your conscience, to give the child a good whipping and turn away with no further explanation than you would make to a dog or horse, without even the friendly pat or word with which you express to those animals that there is a hidden kindness in the blows you have given I This course is also more satisfactory to the neighbors. They understand your boy better than you do, though they can not see as you see peculiarities of your own shining out in him, and little suggestions of his father's character which help you to penetrate deep into his mind and to judge as to the kind and measure of reform he needs, and to determine how much of the act was really his. No, they are indebted to no aids of this kind, and still are able to decide with no shadow of doubt as to the correct course for you to pursue. There probably are people — though no man numbers them among his acquaintance — ^who do not care what others say, who are not affected by remarks that are dropped by other parents, and by some who are not parents, for their benefit ; but many of ns are influenced somewhat by them, and are annoyed more than can easily be told. Who has ever estimated the unnecessary suffering of many a poor minister's wife caused by the criticism bestowed upon her boys by the people who are banded together to reclaim the world, and to make the wilderness blossom as the rose ? If our faith in the good sense of our own well-considered system is strengthened, as it may be, by our making every effort possible to be independent and unyielding to the prejudices of those with whom we are sometimes unfortunately associated, we can bear with fortitude many trials of this kind, and learn day by day to give a new and wonderfully practical meaning to that gracious advice tendered so long ago, which is so often forgotten, so often made to mean something far different — we may truly live in the world and yet not be of it. With this lesson learned, anxious mothers may take comfort now and here, and not wait until the Millennium, when some people will have been made over, or so added to and adorned as to render them unrecognizable. DO NOT PROMISE LIGHTLY. When a man chooses the profession of law he does not expect to be a musician and a journalist also ; he knows that if he would succeed he must devote himself to the one chosen calling. When a woman marries she realizes that, in order to reach lofty heights in wife and motherhood, she must sacrifice lesser aims. She must be willing to lay aside the delightful occupations which have made her girlhood pleasant ; she must know that from the hour when her baby is laid in the little cradle, dressed with loving forethought, to that darker hour when the mature man lies down in his last sleep, she will give full meaning to the words "constant care." Her mind once unfettered will be at liberty no more, but will be bound by ties stronger than life or death to those who have come to her from out the great unknown. Wait a while, girls ; think it all over before you promise to become wives — to take these duties and' burdens upon you. Sweet and satisfying as are the obligations of wife and mother, they are not to be taken lightly. A husband must not be looked upon as a sort of perpetual beau, and children as extremely uncertain and