spirit of hospitality which pervades New England, not showy, or obtrusive, but delighting to minister of such as it has to the want of the stranger and the pleasure of the friend.

If now I were to be asked my ideal of a New England home, which is my ideal of an earthly home,

; a house standing

I should answer somewhat thus alone, roomy, convenient, that should convey, immediately and only, to the beholder the idea of home, not far from some thrifty New England village. About it should cluster all the means and appliances of the farm, above it droop the branches of the elm, before it spread meadow and orchard, and somewhere, not far, woods, waters, and hills. It should wear within in every appointment the aspect of home,-no show furniture, no show rooms, no waste decoration, no useless expense, but only such luxuries as should subserve the growth of heart and mind, with such accessories of comfort as should minister to ease without provoking sloth. Here I would have children of both sexes, including the baby, without which no household is complete. And the house should be for them as much as for me; more for them than for any guests. With these children I would grow old, establishing between myself and them the fullest confidence, causing them to find in me their truest friend, and making home the dearest of all places, the sweetest of all

words. It should be the centre of gentle but permanent influences, and from its daily converse and its evening fireside should go precept and example to mould the life and bless the memory. For its relaxation there should be amusements; for its mental culture, books; for its refinement, music and such works of art as could be afforded; for its higher nature, daily religion, and on the Sabbath that keeping of holy time which should not weary, while it led them into a deeper contemplation of the things of God than the routine and bustle of other days allow. Wellordered, thrifty, and hospitable, such a home would combine all that man has a right to ask, all that is best of what God has to give. Such homes there have been, and by the blessing of God such homes shall ever be.

Leaving out that which to me is essential to the picture, but not essential to the fact, the homestead, what is there here impossible to any one? What is there essential to a true home that we may not all make? I insist upon it that we should think more of the house we live in. Even in the crowded, illybuilt suburbs, of high rents and taxes, in which many of us are forced to live, there is a choice. A few dollars, too often foolishly begrudged, may make a vast difference in your doctor's bill and your children's character. Plague and cholera have been known to

waste the shady side of the street, and spare that on which the sun shone. The home needs the sunshine for the body and the heart. If I could make my voice heard, I would proclaim in every New England village the folly of rushing toward a centre, of pinching men and children up in little pens near a main street, when God's great wide world is open, and there is room enough, near enough, for every necessity. Healthier would life be morally and physically could we break away from the absurdity of crowded villages, and spread out into the country which God made, where sun and air, pure as He creates them, could reach us. The house you live in should be such as will help you carry out the purposes of the family organization, and in no way hinder; the home you build within it should be a place of happiness, a nursery for the world and a training-ground for heaven; and there is no one of us but may make it these if we will.

Wherever you find man, you find his strongest instinct is his love for home. Take the Esquimaux from his blubber and his ice-hut to the luxury and splendor of the tropic, and he droops and dies; the Swiss peasant amid the gayety of the Parisian metropolis sickens at the thought of the wild mountain-air and the evening cry of the goats; and the New-Englander, cosmopolitan as he is, stifles the yearnings of

his heart by surrounding himself with the things that remind him of his old home. In every language there are songs of home, touching the heart's deep deeps; and among them all one to us dearer than the rest, that seems a special inspiration, so exquisitely do the music and the words join hands to express what otherwise were inexpressible. Scarcely thirty years ago, a man of genius and of disappointment, child of a New England home, gave in his need to Charles Kemble, then manager of the theatre at Covent Garden, for the sum of thirty pounds, the manuscript of the opera of "Clari, or the Maid of Milan." As I remember it, it is mainly noticeable for its one lyric gem, the low, longing utterance of a weary and despondent exile. It made the fortune of every one prominently connected with it, except the author, who was not even complimented with a copy of his own song. It secured to Miss Tree, who first sang it, a wealthy husband; it filled the treasury of the theatre; within two years the publishers were estimated to have made $10,000 by it. Since then it has gone wherever the English tongue has gone, it is enshrined in every heart, its music and its words wake in each and all one sentiment, the first to live, the last to die. When the returning regiments the wreck and remnant of that great Crimean struggle-marched in triumph through the streets of London, stepping to

the martial strains of England's grand anthem, "God save the Queen," as the first rank wheeled beneath

the gates of the Horse Guards, the great head

quarters of the army, the anthem died away, and slowly, sweetly, softly, and with an electric power that thrilled through every soldier heart, and called, unbidden, warrior tears, arose the strains of "Home, sweet, sweet Home!" They were men who had faced death for months and years unmoved, and many of the quicker sensibilities had been blunted by familiarity with scenes of violence and blood, but there slumbered underneath, pure and strong and fervent, the love of home; and as those long-familiar notes fell on their ears, there amid old scenes and sympathetic faces, they were no longer war-worn veterans, proudly returning from hard-earned fields, but little children at the cottage-door, the dear, far-off, long-left home! So is it with us, warriors on another field and in a sterner strife. Life's stirring duties and necessities, calling for the strong and stern in man, make us oblivious to, suspicious of, the finer sentiments, which proudly and foolishly we strive to crush. But in the pauses of the fight, in scenes of peril or success, in moments of victory and triumph, some stray, secret influence of the long past comes surging over us, some well-remembered token of our own home," and we are children again in that far by

"sweet