factories, if we listen we may hear the stern voice of the divine Teacher who said centuries ago, "Whosoever shall cause one of these little ones to offend, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the depths of the sea."

We have multiplied reasons for complacency as we watch our beautiful country, but until we prevent illegal child slavery, and until we make food adulteration obsolete, and insist on decent homes and clean houses for the children of want and poverty, we shall have something for which to blush.

Every home has a gauge in this peculiar trouble, and they who are at the top cannot escape blame unless they attempt to ameliorate the situation of those at the bottom. We do not so much need temporary relief distributions of bread and clothing, kindnesses that merely poultice aching wounds, as we need the sharp knife of the surgeon to get at the root of the matter. It will not do for those who love their country to suffer in it an absorption in the worship of gold. There was a time when few were very rich and few were very poor, and in this middle-class condition of comfort there was more of plain living and high thinking than obtains now.

Leaving this phase of American life, shall we turn to something pleasanter? How is it with us in our homes of culture and gentle traditions? Are we ready to give our children room for their individual development?

Two defects are noticeable in home management; here a mother is over-indulgent. In her anxiety that her children should be very happy and have every possible pleasure, she permits them to be indolent or selfish or fault-finding. A mother should neither be slave nor drudge. She will not be half so dearly loved, nor half so truly appreciated, if she make this mistake as she will be if her children from the first understand that they must be obedient and considerate. Another parent of a different disposition treats her children as though they were clay to be molded into any shape she pleases; making little account of temperament and individuality, she rules her brood with arbitrary firmness, so that there is little real enjoyment under her sway.

In the home there should be what is found as the crowning virtue of a free government, a certain amount of liberty. Children must have opportunity to become that for which they were intended when they were born.

Once in a while homes need to be patient. The children seem rather disappointing; they do not

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quickly discover their place or find their niche. They must be allowed time and room. household tyranny over the individual must be prohibited if there are to be days of progress and

contentment.

Perhaps this caution is especially needful in the line of conduct adopted towards grown-up children. There are fathers and mothers who never learn that their children are men and women. They expect from maturity, from adult daughters and sons the docility and the submission that they exacted from the nursery and the schoolroom. Unless they are resisted and their children assert their own right to their own lives, there ensue unhappiness and arrested development.