comfort to the innocent child to tell all its troubles to mother, and do you lend a willing ear. For know you, that as soon as they cease to tell you all these things, they have chosen other confidants, and therein lies the danger. O mother! this is the rock on which your son may be wrecked at last. I charge you to set a watch upon it. Be jealous of the first sign that he is not opening all his heart to you.-Anonymous.

MY MOTHER'S HANDS

Such beautiful, beautiful hands!

They're neither white nor small;
And you, I know, would scarcely think
That they are fair at all.

I've looked on hands whose form and hue
A sculptor's dream might be;
Yet are those aged, wrinkled hands
Most beautiful to me.

Such beautiful, beautiful hands!

Though heart were weary and sad,
Those patient hands kept toiling on,
That the children might be glad.
I always weep, as looking back
To childhood's distant day,

I think how those hands rested not
When mine were at their play.

Such beautiful, beautiful hands!
They're growing feeble now,
For time and pain have left their mark
On hands, and heart, and brow.

Alas! alas! the nearing time,

And the sad, sad day to me,

When 'neath the daisies, out of sight,
These hands will folded be.

But oh, beyond this shadow-land,
Where all is bright and fair,

I know full well these dear old hands

Will palms of victory bear;

Where crystal streams through endless years

Flow over golden sands,

And where the old grow young again,

I'll clasp my mother's hands.

HOME IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Mrs McKinley made no concealment of her pride in her distinguished husband. Their marriage was a love-match, and they were always "sweethearts." After the President was shot, his first thought was for her.

"Cortelyou," he

THE LATE PRESIDENT AND MRS. MC KINLEY IN THE WHITE HOUSE

said to his faithful secretary, "be careful how you tell Mrs. McKinley." When she first came to his bedside after the attack, he smiled into her face and said, "This isn't the hardest fight we've had, dear." The words indicate the depth of tenderness so noticeable always by those who saw the two together.

Two little daughters, Ida and Kate, died when young, and the sorrowing

mother loved all children for their sakes.

The poorest woman with a baby was sure of attention from the Mistress of the White House.

It was one of Mrs. McKinley's delights to watch the children in the timehonored custom of rolling eggs on the White House grounds on Easter Monday. The White House conservatories were made to contribute to the delight of her child-friends, as well as of others, and the choicest blossoms were sent regularly to be placed on the little graves at Canton. The carnations transplanted from "Mother McKinley's" garden at Canton to the greenhouse at Washington were treasured as the source of the President's favorite flower. Of Housekeeping," in the usual sense of the word, the Mistress of the White House has little to do-for times are changed since thrifty Abigail Adams hung the week's wash in the great East Room. But so much of the building has been claimed for purposes of state, that the room needed for family use is sadly limited, and the necessity of making some other provision for properly housing our Presidents is increasingly apparent. Mrs. McKinley's favorite resting-place was in the hall of the wing leading to the conservatory. In the afternoon, she often drove with the President, and whenever the busy head of the nation could make it at all possible, he was sure to spend the evening with her she with her dainty crocheting of worsted slippers and he reading his papers or talking to Cabinet members, or Senators, or other public officials and friends who might drop in. Especially fond of music, Mrs. McKinley always welcomed the visits of her nieces, for their musical gifts as well as for their sunny presence that brightened the official mansion.

In spite of her delicate health, Mrs. McKinley never allowed her illness to close the doors of the White House to social life, either private or official, and her welcoming smile made sunshine on the darkest day.

FAMILY PRAYERS

What has become of family prayers? What has become of the old-fashioned home where they all gathered about a common centre.

When evening's calm pleasures were nigh,
When the candles were lit in the parlor
And the stars in the calm azure sky?

when the big Bible was brought out and the family were called together, children and servants as well, and the gray-haired father read to them, and all knelt and prayed, and rose up and sang together? How many homes do we find now with altars in them? How many fathers and mothers kneeling in prayer with their children around them? Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations should begin at home. After the day's work is done, men and women, bound by ties of blood or relationship, should pause for a moment and take counsel and rest together and the refreshment of loving companionship and the stimulus of mutual sympathy.

DON'T SNUB YOUR LITTLE BROTHER

If you want a selfish reason-here is one that comes Don't snub your little brother, because he is going to be your big

I'll tell you why. right home.

brother by and by.

Just as sure as legs grow too long for knickerbockers, this lad-who doesn't care a pin how he looks or who sees him tumbled and soiled-is coming to a day when the crease in his trousers and the height of his collar will be as vital to him as it is to you to have the feather in your hat topple the stylish way.

He is twelve; you, his sister, are fifteen. He likes to hang around you; sure to stay when you want to talk girl things that you don't see why a boy should care to hear. You send him off, up stairs and down, for things he knows you don't want, but he is back again in the very midst of your good time, and stays because he knows you wish he was in Ballyhack-wherever that may be. You are going with the other girls, and maybe with the other boys a trifle older than brother, and of course brother wants to go along. You don't want him, and are not over delicate about letting him see it. He takes himself off with the lads, and wouldn't for the world let you know he cared. But brother isn't stupid; on the contrary, he is just as sensitive and proud on the inside as any one of you girls. Why shouldn't he be? The same mother that rocked and comforted and coddled you cradled him also on her heart. He may whistle and make a racket to show that he doesn't care, but he will not forget. Some day, and not far off, you may find it your turn to be snubbed. At fifteen, when he is twelve, you are head and shoulders above him and he is just a little botheration of a boy. Three or four years further on you are an inch or two taller than you are now, but he is a foot or two higher and far more than head and shoulders above you.

Now you would like very much to have him love to be near you and be your escort. But he doesn't care now to come back to the place from which you drove him out when he was a little, careless, snub-nosed fellow, who hadn't much of anything to love but his mother and yourself.

If this experience, dear girls, is yours-I would, if I were you, begin at once and love the dear big fellow back to the place where once more he loved me. You can do it, hard as it seems-and who knows from what hard things in life his love for you may save him?

And those of us who still keep in our homes and by our firesides the rough, untidy, don't-care sort of little chap, who tears his clothes faster than we can mend them, and keeps us in terror lest he hurt himself or others, should remember that we may do what we will with these dear troublesome scraps of humanity so long as we bear in mind that they are never to be snubbed.

A little four-year-old did not obey when her mother first called her. So her mother spoke rather sharply. Then she came in and said: "Mamma, I've been very kind to you to-day, and I don't want you to speak so large to me."

Cultivate music in your family. Begin when the child is not yet three years old. The songs and hymns your childhood sang, bring them all back to your memory, and teach them to your little ones; mix them all together to meet the varying moods that in after life come over us so mysteriously at times. Many a time, in the whirl of business, in the sunshine and gayety of the avenue, amid the splendor of the drive in the park, some little thing wakes up the memories of early youth-the old mill, the cool spring, the shady tree by the little schoolhouse-and the next instant we almost see again the ruddy cheeks, the smiling faces, the merry eyes of schoolmates, some of whom are gray-headed now, while most have passed from amid earth's weary noises. And, anon, "the song my mother sang" springs unbidden to the lips, and soothes and sweetens all these memories. At other times, amid the crushing mishaps of business, a merry ditty of the olden time breaks in upon the ugly train of thought, and throws the mind into another channel; light breaks from behind the cloud in the sky, and new courage is given us. The honest man goes gladly to his work; and, when the day's labor is done, his tools are laid aside and he is on his way home, where wife and child and the tidy table and cheery fireside await him, how can he but have music in his heart to break forth so often into the