iven by the service; while, as
to the good derived from the musical church under those circumstances, I
doubt much if it comes down from the Father Who gave us the Fifth
Commandment.

I should say, mistrust new lights which are a hindrance to old duties,
"For meek obedience too is Light." It is more likely that we should be
mistaken, than that a duty should cease to be binding. Let us take to
heart Cromwell's appeal to his Parliament, "I beseech you, my beloved
brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of Christ, to believe that you may
be mistaken."

The third difficulty is that girls often fail to see that home life is one
of the "Home Arts," which requires training and practice as much as music
does. How much of our home life is set to music? How much of it sets all
harmony and rhythm at defiance? A true woman is

"Like the keystone to an arch
That consummates all beauty:
She's like the music to a march
That sheds a joy on duty."

Do you make your father forget his bothers when he comes in from his
business? Do you give your mother a share in your interests? Does your
brother look forward to his time at home, instead of thinking it a bore?
No one has such power over your brothers as you have: you can do more than
any one to give them high ideals: how many a brother, who has fallen to
the stable-yard level of company, might have been held up if his sister
had used her wits and tact to make herself as agreeable to him as she does
to other people!

Sometimes it is not selfishness which makes home life a failure, but the
not having

"among least things,
An undersense of greatest."

A girl tries to live nobly at home and fails: she is not enough wanted,
her mother is not blind, and does not want to be deposed from
housekeeping; her father is not paralytic, and only wants her to play to
him in the evening; life seems choked by tiny interruptions, such as doing
the flowers, or writing notes, and she sinks into a placid or unplacid
drudge--the aspirations with which she left school have died out.

Need this be? If she went into a sisterhood or a hospital, the tiny
details would all be glorified by the halo which surrounds a vocation; it
would all be part of a saintly life. Why is home not felt to be a
vocation? Why cannot a girl welcome some tiresome commission or fidgeting
rule of her mother's, as much as if it were imposed by some Mother
Superior? Ought not the trifling duties to