into footgear too short, with the result that corns and bunions produce untold misery. I knew a bride, who squeezed her feet on her wedding day into shoes so absurdly small that she never afterward was able to get them on. How she managed in the first instance was a marvel. I have seen women who were shocked at Chinese foot-binding, and thought it barbarous, yet they compressed their feet into boots which were so uncomfortable that they could not walk with grace, but merely hobbled about like cripples. Fashionable girls today are so silly as to put on slippers with high heels, set like pivots, almost in the middle of the sole, and the sum total of the whole wretched business is that hundreds of women go about enduring agonies worthy of the Inquisition. Whatever the children say, you, as their mother, are right in insisting that they shall wear shoes that fit comfortably and that are a trifle too long. Not loose shoes, though. They are as bad as tight ones."

"The shoes cost a small fortune," said the mother, wearily. "That is true enough," I said, "yet it is better to spend money on shoes than on almost any other part of children's dress. Growing boys and girls need stout, serviceable clothes, warranted to wear, but they do not require very many changes. There is no wit in elaboration of any kind on their garments. Cheap stuffs do well enough for them. Tell the dear home people who send you trunks full of things for your bonny flock, now and then, to give you money that you may be helped out on the shoe question, and say that you will gladly do without some of the other things they lavishly send."

I have been thinking about it since that day, and have reached the conclusion that the secret of appearing well dressed is to have hands and feet properly equipped. A nice glove and a nice shoe give a woman a well-dressed look, even if the rest of her attire be very plain. As for hands, they are servants of the body, just as feet are. From

the hour we begin to walk alone, hands and feet are servants of the brain, quickly obeying its behest. It is a sign that a little child has a good brain if it is naturally deft and sure in the use of its hands. A weak, shambling gait is most lamentable in man or woman and is a token of indecision of character.

Speaking of hands, the most beautiful hands in the world are those that most generously and ungrudgingly toil for others. Who does not love to remember the mother's hands, that in the old farmhouse were unremitting in their care, that made, and mended, and saved, and planned, that kneaded bread, and tucked the bedclothes around the children at night, and were always working, not for mother's self, but for mother's dear ones? Heaven bless the mother', hands that we remember.

I sometimes think that we are not quite fair to our feet. They carry us all our days. Longfellow's poem comes to mind.

Oh little feet, that such long years,

Must wander on through toil and tears.

Think of the laboring feet that go forth morning after morning to factories and shops; millions of feet treading the way to business in the morning, and joyfully treading it back to the home at night.

Think of the children's feet, pattering here and there through the house, little feet that make such music, as the children run to and fro, and think then of the slowly moving feet of old age, feet that must go more and more slowly until they cease any more to journey up and down the ways of the world.

Then, going back, let us be fair to our own faithful feet. Let us be content to stand upon them, and not to lean upon somebody else. Let us treat them as well as we can, dress them as comfortably as we can, and never suffer from them any torture which is of our own devising.

IN

ESSENTIALS IN HOME LIFE

N home life contentment is an essential to daily comfort. One discontented person in the house creates an atmosphere fatal to tranquillity. Cut the coat according to the cloth, live within the income, and have a margin. If there is no certain income, and a constant struggle with small means insufficient for the needs of the family must be waged, it may be in that case hard to be contented. Here the remedy is resignation. Let the tired and tempted one lean with all possible weight on the promises of God. We have the word of the Scriptures for it that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." When discouraged and overburdened repeat this little verse:

When obstacles and trials seem

Like prison walls to be,

I do the little I can do,

And leave the rest to Thee.

Or else be comforted with the sweet thought in another

hymn:

I know not the way I am going,

But well do I know my Guide.

With a childlike faith I take the hand
Of the mighty Friend at my side.

Strive for contentment and never permit circumstances to crush you, deprive you of health and of good cheer. It is always better farther on. It's the long lane that has no turning. “God's in his heaven, all's right with the world." This means not only with the big world outside

the door, but with the little world within the home and the world of the individual soul.

Another essential for success in home life is common sense. There are people endowed with every quality that is desirable except this. In consequence, they give wrong impressions of themselves and others. They blunder and make mistakes and get into false positions. The effect upon their daily life is disastrous. When the housekeeper omits salt from the food she is cooking, the addition of that condiment when the food is on the table is not entirely satisfactory. Salt should be added in the process of cooking. Common sense is like salt; it adds the right flavor. Also it shows people the true perspective.

Allied to common sense very closely is tact. This is sometimes confused with insincerity. The two qualities are not related to one another. Tact simply means touch, and the tactful person feels with others in quick sympathy, and is not apt to hurt a friend by saying or doing the wrong thing. We should be tactful in our management of children. The tactful mother never needlessly provokes an issue, and if she has the loving ingenuity with which she should be gifted, her little ones will obey her without conflict and fuss. Some mothers make one think of a builder who would leave the scaffolding in plain sight after completing the house. Their discipline is forever in evidence, and they are so fearful that their children will fail to do them credit that they are on the watch for misdemeanors, when, instead, they ought to be on the watch for good conduct deserving praise.

A third and very important essential in successful home life is an even temper. If it be possible to teach a fiery thoroughbred to understand the meaning of the rein, it should be possible, too, for each of us to hold tempera

ment in check, and subdue the tendency to anger and injustice. I tempered and aggressive wives and husbands, fathers and mothers, transform home into a penitential abode where nothing flourishes except ill weeds, and flowers do not thrive.

To drop metaphor and speak in literal terms, an essential of home happiness is amiability, and this should be diffused through the entire family. As for children, their tendency to quarrel and dispute, if it exists, should be firmly repressed.

There is an old church in New Jersey which, during the Revolutionary War, was the scene of a well-contested fight between the Americans and the British. The former were entrenched in the building and fired from the windows. The latter were well provided with weapons and made a stubborn offensive attack. At a certain crisis in the battle the guns of the besieged needed packing, and the parson, stanch soldier that he was in the church militant, led his people in tearing the leaves from the hymnbooks, saying boldly, "Give 'em Watts, boys! Give 'em Watts!" In quite another sense, when Satan's skirmishers venture into the precincts of the nursery, the wise mother may give her children Watts, or perhaps not Isaac Watts, but Jane Taylor, who must have lived about the same period.

When the grandmothers were little children, they were not only taught their prayers, but were told to

Let dogs delight to bark and bite,

For 'tis their nature to;

Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For God hath made them so.
But, children, you should never let
Your angry passions rise;

Your little hands were never made

To tear each other's eyes.