I want to adjure you to-day by the cradle in which you were rocked, and by the family altar where you knelt, and by the family Bible out of which you were instructed, and by the graves of your parents, if they have gone to their last sleep, to war against everything that would bring the marriage relation into disrepute. The best eulogy you can pronounce upon it is by making your own home relation right and beautiful.-Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D.D. STAY AT HOME, MY HEART Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest! For those that wander they know not where To stay at home is best. Weary and home-sick and distressed They wander East and wander West, And are baffled and beaten and blown about Then stay at home, my heart, and rest; O'er all that flutter their wings and fly To stay at home is best.-Longfellow. THE CHEER-GIVING FATHER Give your home your loving attention and interest. Money does not take the place of these. Nothing can fill the gap made in the home circle by the father's unnecessary absence. Spend as much of your time as possible at your own fireside. You have no idea how much you can add to its cheer and happiness and the home-folks' sense of dignity, by showing that you had rather be there with them than anywhere else in the world. Your wife's step will be lighter, her hand will be busier all day, expecting the comfortable evening at home when you return. Household affairs will have been well attended to. A place for everything, and everything in its place, will, like some good genius, have made even an humble home the scene of neatness, arrangement, and taste. The table will be ready at the fireside. The loaf will be one of that order which says, by its appearance, "You may come and cut again." The cups and saucers will be waiting for supplies. The kettle will be singing; and the children, happy with fresh air and exercise, will be smiling in glad anticipation of that evening meal when father is at home, and of the pleasant reading afterwards.-Sir Arthur Helps. She need not be rich to be bountiful. A mother may be very poor in this world's goods and yet be able to give her children life's most precious and beautiful things, which shall enrich them forever. Houses and lands and gold are not the eternal verities, but faith, hope and charity are. A mother may live in a palace and own jewels and laces and have much gold, and give her children. fine raiment and delicate food and costly playthings; yet their better natures may starve because she has not the highest and best things to impart. Her soul may be poor. Our illustration is the reproduction of a famous painting. Beautiful Lotte Buff, later Frau Kestner, was greatly admired and revered by Goethe, the great German author, because of her motherliness to her little brothers and sisters. Through her true character of daughter, sister, wife and mother, she influenced Goethe for good. Herself and husband were faithful friends to the poet. This picture, though portraying a commonplace scene, and such as happens daily in millions of homes the world over, yet shows woman in the exercise of a high and sacred office-that of the bread-giver and the love and life dispenser. THE KINGDOM OF HOME Dark is the night, and fitful and drearily Rushes the wind like the waves of the sea. Little care I, as here I sit cheerily, Wife at my side and my baby on knee. King, king, crown me the king. Home is the kingdom, and Love is the king. Flashes the firelight upon the dear faces, Forces the shadow behind us, and places. Brightness around us with warmth in the glow. Home is the kingdom, and Love is the king. Flashes the lovelight, increasing the glory, Beaming from bright eyes with warmth of the soul, Telling of trust and content the sweet story, Lifting the shadows that over us roll. King, king, crown me the king. Home is the kingdom, and Love is the king. Richer than miser with perishing treasure, Served with a service no conquest could bring: Home is the kingdor., and Love is the king. The first sure symptoms of a mind in health is rest of heart and pleasure felt at home.-Young's Night Thoughts. CHRISTIAN MOTHERHOOD 66 John Quincy Adams, till the day of his death, said the little prayer his mother taught him: Now I lay me down to sleep." Lincoln said: All I am on earth I owe to my sainted mother." General Grant's mother went into a room at a certain hour each day during the war to pray for her son Ulysses, and he wrote to his parents a letter every week from the field when it was possible. MOTHER MC KINLEY Garfield kissed the wrinkled face of his mother on the day of his inauguration and said: "Mother, you have brought me to this." Grover Cleveland often expressed his debt of gratitude for his Christian parents. President McKinley left the capital and the affairs of State to watch at the bedside of his dying mother, to receive her last blessing, and to give her his last kiss. There are facts connected with Mother McKinley's life more significant than those of fortunate circumstance. She was an humble, sincere Christian mother, who taught her children the principles of truth, honesty, bravery, patriotism and piety. She bore, and in humble sainthood fitted for leadership, the ruler of the people. It is such homes that have made the nation great. The German empire is great because German homes are good, because German mothers are industrious, economical, honest and virtuous. Great Britain is great because it has model homes, because British mothers are intelligent, virtuous and pious. In the spectacular display of the Victorian jubilee, nothing was so beautiful or so glorious as the queen kneeling at the altar taking communion, throwing her arms around her children and grandchildren as they came one after another to kneel by her side, kissing, and crying like a child over them. She never rose so high in her royalty as when she knelt, a simple mother, crying over her children at the altar of her God. English ships and soldiers, and gold and colonies, are the incidents; the real secret of a nation's greatness is a sanctified Christian motherhood. Tennyson's genius reaches its highest point when he sings of Christian womanhood. The Anglo-Saxon peoples will continue to march to the mastery of the world so long as they shall preserve the purity and piety of the home. In these days, when woman is compelled, in justice to herself, to enter the doorways into the new callings, into learned professions, or business, or art, or some other employment, it might be well to remember that there is no calling so high nor so influential as that of Christian motherhood.-Rev. F. C. Iglehart. THE BOYS "The boys are coming home to-morrow!" Thumling volumes gold and blue; Tracking earth the passage through. These and other kindred trials Fancied we with woful sigh: "Those boy, those horrid boys, to-morrow! * Though changed we see them, you and I.-Anonymous. A TRUE HOME Whenever a true wife comes, this home is always around her. The stars only may be over her head, the glowworm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot; but home is yet wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far around her, better than ceiled with cedar, or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, for those who else were homeless.-Ruskin. |