somehow or other I cannot these

say

mon thing to find those living together intensely ignorant of each other. Whole families grow up in daily contact with each other, yet each as ignorant of each as if a hemisphere divided them. Have you never had a young person come to you and say, "I love to talk with you, things to father and mother, but you understand me "? Is there not a deal of this alienation between the members of a household, this lack of home sympathy, which sends the craving spirit abroad to utter confidences which ought to be home confidences? It seems to be taken for granted by parents and brothers and sisters, that, from the fact of sharing the same blood and dwelling under the same roof, they must be acquainted with each other. They think it necessary to study the character of other men in order to get along with them, but they suppose the home requires nothing of this. Now the home is a miniature world. Within its four walls are brought together the widest contrasts in endowment and attainment. There is every possible diversity in a family, -diversity in the degrees of affection, the love of a brother for a sister is very unlike that of the sister for the brother, that of the child for the mother is very unlike his love for the father. Then there are diversities in character. The mature wisdom of the father differs from the tender affection of the mother. And among the children

one is brave, another timid; one is enthusiastic, another doubting; one is thoughtful, another reckless ; one overflows with humor, another is sedate. These and a thousand other differences appear in the same family, are not accidents, but essential to the idea of a family. In a family meet every variety of human character; the highest possible range of virtue, the strongest possible incentive to excellence, brought into contrast and contact with almost all modes and causes of human disagreement, and these not by any perversion, but by a necessity, of which we need to be at all times aware. The family of but one sex or one pursuit, with no diversity of temper and disposition, is not a family.

It is strange how little a fact so patent seems to be regarded in the intercourse of home life. If you were to say to a father, "You do not know your child," he would consider you guilty of a most unwarrantable impertinence. Not know his own child! wha an absurdity. Absurd as it is, observation and experience both assure us that it is very common; and the one inflexible law of the house, the one iron demand, the one and the same expectation of each and all, prove how little those who stand at the head understand those placed in their charge. home which has boys and girls in it up of the most diverse material.

The fact about a is, that it is made We often amuse

ourselves with being surprised that there should exist these family dissimilarities. We say, "Who would suppose they were brother and sister?" as if ever since Cain killed Abel there had not been in human homes every conceivable range and gradation of character; as if anybody ever did find similarity the law of the family.

This dissimilarity is one of the most perplexing things about a family, requiring patience, care, impartiality; and if parents would prevent the making of a wretched mistake and failure, they should aim to acquire a thorough knowledge of the composition of their own families, — a study taxing mind and heart severely, and the whole family government and life should be based upon what they discover. Dealing with children, always a difficult matter, should not be left to the hazard of impulse or caprice, but be guided by knowledge. You feel that certain households go on much more satisfactorily than others. They are not the homes of great external advantage; you would not mark the parents as superior, or the children as unlike all children; but there is a charm about the family that you may not understand, and puzzle yourself to account for. There is no less of exuberant spirit, no less of jocund mirth, no less of ease and naturalness, nothing to give that painful feeling of the unnatural curb and drill which breaks some families

into premature proprieties, but a freedom which never infringes, a confidence that is never abused, a judgment that seems never to err, control that is not a curb, and a harmony of which such discordant material seems to others incapable. If you could get at the secret of this, you would probably find that the parents had made it a point to know their children, had not been content to know their countenances and voices and manners, and a few outside and obvious peculiarities, but had studied them in each step of their progress, had adapted their intercourse with each to each, had taught their children as they grew to recognize and respect each other's individuality, and so had gradually constructed a genuine family, that truest and most needed of human institutions. I do not believe there is any accident about a good home, any more than there is any accident about a fine tree. Both are the products of well-considered opposites brought into harmony by a superintending wisdom.

I do not think this knowledge is often sought by the parent. I do not think he sets himself to find out what is going on within the heart and mind of his child. Necessity sometimes forces it upon him, accident sometimes reveals it, or a shrewd guess may detect some things; but the deliberate searching into the peculiarities of his children, and the ordering his

and their intercourse by what he discovers, is the rare work of the home-head. How much real conversation goes on in our homes? How much questioning of what is learned at school, from books, from others? how much of what each one learns from himself? how much interchange of thought and feeling? Here is a child's mind, a germ of wisdom, wonder, and power, compassed about by infinite mysteries, of which it is on all hands seeking the solution. The child mind does not stand out in God's world as the adult mind does, callous, or self-satisfied, or sceptical, but in the spirit of childhood, and with more reverence than we know, asks that it may believe. It turns to us, who are its natural teachers, whom it looks up to with the same love and reverence it looks on all things. What do we? Listen, explain, draw out, lead on? or do we rebuff, and send the opening spirit shuddering back within itself, and teach it in its early hours to keep close-locked all its inner wants? Do we dive, as we might, into the mysterious depths of the childnature, or, taking its wings, not clogged as ours, soar upward toward those other mysteries which wait and watch for our coming? A little spirit peering all aglow with wonder in at the doorway of knowledge, do we lift its feet over the threshold, and encourage to pursue its way from room to room, touching and tasting and appropriating of the heaped-up treasure

it