The rich air is sweet with the breath of Sep-
tember,

The sumach is staining the hedges with red;
Soft rests on the hill-slopes the light we remember,
The glory of days that so long ago fled,-
When, brown-cheeked and ruddy,
Blithe-hearted and free,

The summons to study

We answered with glee.

Listen, oh! listen once more to the swell
Of the masterful, merry Academy bell!

OU see," said my guest, waving her fan slowly back and forth, while a puzzled expression deepened on her charming face, "Daniel's traits are altogether

different from my traits. His family never do anything in a hurry, they need a ten-acre lot to turn around in. They are what you might call ponderous, though I beg pardon of all Daniel's

aunts and uncles for the adjective. It does sound a bit insulting. My people are quick, and hot tempered and loving, and sometimes make mistakes, but are never too proud to admit them. The children, Dan's and mine, resemble both of us, and Mabel strikes an average, but the others are such opposites that I do not know in the least how to manage them." She paused, and the fan, for a wonder, lay folded on her lap, with her thin, nervous hands tightly clasped over it. Evidently she did not know how to relax.

The soft September air freighted with the breath of late roses, and the perfume of the grapes that were beginning to ripen in the sun, floated in through the window, and I heard faintly from the distance the tinkle of a piano. I knew the sound. A little neighbour who hated music as much as some people love it, was drearily practicing her scales at the relentless measure of a monotonous one, two, three, four, and the ticking of her mother's watch.

"If," said my guest, musingly, "Lucile were my child I should send her outdoors to romp with her brothers instead of keeping her sitting like a prisoner at that horrid piano, when she hasn't the slightest notion of anything but discord, and when her fingers are like wooden pegs. There is an

Lucile's

other proof of what I am bothering over. mother is as obstinate as a mule. All the Fairweathers are. She is as yielding on the surface as a feather-bed, but underneath look out! for if you rap too hard you'll come thump against a stone wall. She's bound to make a musician of Lucile, but she'll fail in the end, because Lucile inherits her traits from the Marshall side, and they never yet did anything in the end that they didn't want to. It's all a muddle anyway. What would you advise as a good way to solve the problem?"

She had taken up her fan and was waving it as usual back and forth in a rhythmic motion more placid than her wont.

"Dear lady," I answered, "I have lived long enough to be willing to leave a great many puzzling things to nature. It is my opinion that back of our training and our trouble and our anxiety there are great forces that often take matters out of our hands. We talk about family traits and we lump them together in a single word, heredity, and then we talk about daily occurrences, important or trivial, and we call them environment. Notwithstanding the fuss we make, our children succeed in growing up respectably, and as a rule they do us credit. Each generation, so to speak, Dan's traits and yours, as you

makes a new deal.

say, have attained a happy average in Mabel, but they are more or less mixed and compounded in Mabel's brothers and sisters, and were I to criticise any of the brood unfairly I am pretty sure the little mother would ruffle her feathers and stand up valiantly in behalf of her offspring. Is it not so? When, to take a very common example, the teacher finds fault with one of your children, which of you is the more annoyed, you or Daniel?"

"Neither my husband nor myself," responded my visitor with dignity, "can bear to have teachers or other people find fault with the children when they haven't deserved it."

"Yes," I said, smiling, "on the common ground of adoring your children, Dan's slowness and your quickness meet and mingle." It is usually so in a family. The contrasting traits somehow coalesce and out of their union arise others that are equally vital and essential.

The best thing in family life is the opportunity afforded by common interest for the formation of what may be called a new situation, or possibly a new character that develops little by little without the consciousness of those most nearly concerned. Every one knows husbands and wives in middle life who have grown to resemble one another closely, although at first their countenances may

have been dissimilar. Living under one roof, by a process of unconscious imitation, their features have taken on a look that is hard to define, but which every one recognizes. The spiritual likeness molds both faces, and the family look is in both. Of course, there are exceptions, but people who love one another, who live many years under the same roof, and who have children to keep them young, look alike long before old age has whitened their hair and dimmed their eyes.

Do you remember Mrs. Tulliver's circle of kinsfolk, and the freedom with which Sister Glegg and Sister Pullet made their comments when they came to visit at the mill? No wonder good Mr. Tulliver at last reached the end of his patience and expressed his gratitude to heaven that there had never been an ill-tempered woman in his family. Sister Glegg really reached what might be called the limit of feminine perversity in her quarrelsome disposition and her determination to be pleased with nothing. Sister Pullet and Sister Dean were rather more endurable than she, although they, too, were not without a generous share of family conceit. As for Mrs. Tulliver, fair, plump, placid and dull-witted, she was a type that is something of a trial in double harness when matched with a clever and ambitious running mate.