In answer to my look of surprise the owner said, "Such a room as this Î had when I was a little country girl in my father's home on the farm. It was clean and white as a convent cell. I can seem to breathe here. The other rooms are made as modern taste and circumstances require them to be, but this is the place where I come to pray, and to rest and sleep."

This brings me to say that the very first essential for a girl's room is not decoration, but perfect purity and cleanliness. There should be absolutely nothing crowded into the corners of the closet or tucked away under the bed. Every girl should take some leisure hour and sift out of the room all the things that are not necessary to the daily life. Soiled bed linen is none the cleaner for being hidden under a lace counterpane or embroidered pillow-shams. Avoid, if possible, a carpet upon the sleeping-room; it gathers lint and dust. If the floor must be covered, let it be with mattings or with rugs.

THE DAUGHTER'S ROOM

It seldom happens that a girl has a charming room given her, with a liberal sum for furnishing it. Generally she has a chamber already furnished. How she longs to pull it to pieces, to cast out the carpet that has perhaps seen its best days on the parlor floor, to tear down the paper, whose colors "swear" at those in the curtains, to bundle off to an auction-room the furniture that is so ungraceful, and alas! so substantial, and to replace all these by pretty rugs, artistic paper and hangings, a little brass-and-iron bedstead, a quaint dressingtable and odd chairs and tables! Rarely, indeed, can a girl do this. But, perhaps she can manage her room little by little, and so gradually to bring it up to her ideal. If it is known that the daughter of the house is planning for this change other members of the family will be interested. The father will make her birthday gift a check or a crisp bill that will repaper the walls, or buy a rug for the floor, or put new curtains at the windows. When the mother does her spring and fall shopping she will be on the lookout for remnants that will serve as drapery for a table or a picture, or to cover a sofa cushion or a chair back. She will pick up a few pretty towels or a dainty bedspread for the little daughAnd when the big brother is buying Christmas gifts, if he knows. his sister's desires, he may speak a word to Santa Claus that will result in a new picture, or lamp, or a fine cast.-Christine Terhune Herrick.

ter's room.

THE DOMESTIC MAN

It is the man with many interests, with engrossing occupations, with plenty of people to fight, with a struggle to maintain against the world, who is the really domestic man, in the wife's sense, who enjoys home, who is tempted to make a friend of his wife, who relishes prattle, who feels in the small circle where nobody is above him and nobody unsympathetic with him, as if he were in a heaven of ease and reparation.

"BECAUSE OF GOD AND MY MOTHER"

"Once on a time," there was a boy who was very, very poor. He lived in a foreign country and his mother said to him one day that he must go into the great city and start in business. She took his coat and sewed between the lining and the outside forty golden dinars, which she had saved up for many years to start him in life. She told him to take care of robbers as he went across the desert; and as he was going out of the door she said, “ My boy, I have only two words for you- Fear God and never tell a lie.'

The boy started off, and toward evening he saw glittering in the distance the minarets of the great city, but between the city and himself he saw a cloud of dust. It came nearer; presently he saw that it was a band of robbers. One of the robbers left the rest and rode toward him, and said: “ Boy what have you got?" And the boy looked him in the face and said: "I have forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat." The robber laughed and wheeled round his horse and went away back. He would not believe the boy. Presently another robber came, and he said: "Boy, what have you got?" "Forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat." The robber said: "The boy is a fool," and wheeled his horse and rode away back. By and by the robber captain came, and he said: "Boy, what have you got?" "I have forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat." And the robber dismounted and put his hand over the boy's breast, felt something round, counted one, two, three, four, five, till he counted out the forty golden coins. He looked the boy in the face, and said: "Why did you tell me that?" The boy said: "Because of God and my mother." And the robber leaned on his spear and thought, and said, "Wait a moment." He mounted his horse, rode back to the rest of the robbers, and came back in about five minutes with his dress changed. This time he looked not like a robber, but like a merchant. He took the boy up on his horse and said: "My boy, I have long wanted to do something for my God and for my mother, and I have this moment renounced my robber's life. I am also a merchant. I have a large business house in the city. I want you to come and live with me, to teach me about your God; and you will be rich, and your mother some day will come and live with us."

It all happened by seeking first the kingdom of God all these things were "added unto " him.-Drummond.

THE SECRET OF A BEAUTIFUL LIFE

There lived once a young girl whose perfect grace of character was the

wonder of those who knew her.

no one was ever allowed to open.

She wore on her neck a gold locket which
One day, in a moment of unusual confidence,

one of her companions was allowed to touch its spring and learn its secret. She "Whom having not seen, I love." That was the

saw written these words secret of her beautiful life.

LEE'S LETTER TO HIS DAUGHTER

The following letter was written by General Lee to one of his daughters during the Petersburg campaign. It is peculiarly interesting, inasmuch as it shows how a busy soldier, in stress and peril of war, and weighted down with grave responsibilities, was thoughtful in small matters of his dear ones at home. The poverty and hardships of the sad times only furnish the background upon which a beautiful tenderness shines out the more brightly

"My precious Life:

"I received this morning, by your brother, your note, and am very glad to hear your mother is better. I sent out immediately to try and find some lemons, but could only procure two-sent to me by a kind lady, Mrs. Kirkland, in Petersburg. These were gathered from her own trees; there are none to be purchased. I found one in my valise, dried up, which I also send, as it may be of some value: I also put up some early apples, which you can roast for your mother, and one pear. This is all the fruit I can get.

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'You must go to market every morning and see if you cannot find some fresh fruit for her. There are no lemons to be had here. Tell her lemonade is not so palatable or digestible as buttermilk. Try to get some for her-with ice it is delicious, and very nutritious. I hope she will continue to improve, and be soon well and leave that heated city. It must be roasting now. Tell her I I wish I could be with her

can only think of her and pray for her recovery. to nurse her and care for her. I want to see you all very much, but cannot now see the day when we shall be together once more. I think of you, long for you, pray for you: it is all I can do. Think sometimes of your devoted father, R. E. LEE."

TIDY HABITS

Have your sleeping-room, if possible, to yourself. The habit of putting two sisters into the same bed is now followed only in cases of necessity on account of lack of room. Have no hangings over your bed. Let nothing interfere with the pure light of heaven.

If you have three times the underclothing that you can use during a season, select from it enough to meet the ordinary changes. Keep also at hand one set that may be needed for more special occasions.

If the habit of keeping garments in perfect order is acquired, the beauty of that order goes all through the after life. Have enough, not too much; no overcrowded drawers, or closets with six garments on one nail; no crammed boxes or stuffy, crowded corners; no dirt, or darkness or disorder.

Here is a hint as to the way the true decoration should begin. Have one place in your bedroom, one little table or shelf, for your Bible and your books of devotion. Keep there, in a tiny vase or cup, a flower or a cluster of flowers -violets to-day, buttercups to-morrow, a daisy of the field in its season, by and by a morning glory, or a bunch of roses.-Mary Lowe Dickinson.

EARLY AMERICAN HOMES

In our pioneer homes, social intercouse was less formal, more hearty, more valued, than at present. Friendships were warmer and deeper. Relationship, by blood or by marriage, was more profoundly regarded. Men were not ashamed to own that they loved their cousins better than their neighbors, and their neighbors better than the rest of mankind. To spend a month in the dead of winter in a visit to the dear old homestead, and in interchanges of affectionate greetings with brothers and sisters, married and settled at distances of twenty to fifty miles apart, was not deemed an absolute waste of time. The woods were alive with game, and nearly every boy and man between fifteen and sixty years of

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age was a hunter. The rivers fairly swarmed with fish. Almost every farmer's house was a hive, wherein the great wheel" and the "little wheel "-the former kept in motion by the hands and feet of all the daughters, ten years old and upward, the latter plied by their not less industrious mother-hummed and whirled from morning till night. In the back room, the loom responded day by day to the movements of the busy shuttle, whereby the fleeces of the farmer's flock and the flax of his field were converted into homely cloth, sufficient for the annual wear of the family, and often with something over, to exchange at the neighboring merchant's for his groceries and wares.

A few bushels of corn, a few sheep, a fattened steer, with perhaps a few sawlogs or loads of hoop-poles, made up the annual surplus of the husbandman's