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itself; she entertains the guests, managing the more or less uncertain help; takes care of the children when they come and brings them up, and always aids her husband in the various crises of life to be at his best. She is most likely to keep his love if she have a fund, not merely of good temper, but of fun and good cheer. Men are a little disposed to be wet blankets at the best of times. Perhaps ages of action, of fighting with their enemies, of meeting obstacles, have made them readier than women to see the dark side and look at the dangers in the way. A man is seldom so mercurial that he rises quickly from a disappointment, and it is his almost spontaneous impulse to veto a proposition and predict failure for every new enterprise. Whether it be a journey or a change of residence or a new suit for Tommy or another school for Eleanor, the man instinctively says, "Let well enough alone." It appertains to the wife to be the pioneer, to overcome the tendency to cloudiness by her own indomitable courage, and to wave a defiant flag in the very face of misfortune.

I cannot put too much emphasis on the fact that the woman who is going to be a happy wife must pin her faith on something higher than this world.

An unspeakably sorrowful story ran a while ago through a popular magazine, a story assumed to be fairly representative of a section of society known, for want of a better name, as the Smart Set. It was a story that left in the mouth an acrid taste as if one had eaten apples of Sodom. The men were shallow, unscrupulous or brutal; the women vain, designing and stupid; the mothers were travesties on maternity, and the poor heroine trained in every social art, was finally beaten in her losing battle, and died miserably like the bird that dashes out its life against a beacon in a storm. Such a book does not describe American society, except in a pitiable minority, and such a story points but one moral, that there is neither safety nor dignity in the desert places outside Christianity and good morals.

As I think of our girls, I see before me earnest faces full of charm and vivacity.

I see wholesome, bright, blooming specimens of young womanhood, full of health, full of hope, full of purpose. They are high minded and large hearted, and among the best signs of the times is their turning more and more to the home life when they can, rather than to outside fields of work. Life's Eden rose for a girl blooms in the home. It blooms when she finds one whom she loves and

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whom she can accept as her comrade and friend, whom she can respect, esteem and trust, as well as adore. Adoration may be taken for granted on both sides at first, but it is not so beautiful in the early dawn as when it lasts through the vicissitudes of the years, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and grants them joy in the end. All the lovers are not young lovers. There are silverhaired people who have tested one another through storm and stress, and love one another more than they did on the wedding day.

A friend showed me one day an invitation she had received to a more than golden wedding. It was the wedding of a pair who had been married sixty years. In the upper left-hand corner of the card were the photographs of the youthful pair in the heyday of the twenties. The lad, buoyant, enthusiastic, eager, looking as if ready to start on the race; the girl, sweet, modest, womanly, with a world of faith and hope in her delicate face; both were beautiful then. In the lower left-hand corner were the pictures of the benignant old couple at eighty; the man resolute, determined, with strong lines in his face, softened by white hair, straightforward, a sincerity of gaze that was as fine as the look of youth had been; the matron, tender, gentle, winning, as charming in her age as

she had been in her love's bright morning. Between the two dates what a lifetime of love there had been for these comrades on the road who had brought up children and embraced grandchildren, and kept in their home the fragrance of the Eden rose the entire way.

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"What is so rare as a day in June?
Then if ever come perfect days,
Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And softly above it her warm ear lays."

UNE is become the favourite month of the year for weddings, though people are married every month in the calendar. But when the

roses are in bloom, and the sky is cloudless, and the air is soft and caressing, Nature furnishes the prettiest setting for a bride, and the hour seems auspicious for the starting of a new home. Happy is the bride on whom the sun shines" has passed into a proverb, and the sun is almost sure to shine on the bride of June.

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If then there is a wedding in the family, it is the consummation of a great many blissful and busy First there were the days when Alfred

hours.

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