impress upon you, first, that
where the need is you should repay your parents care by helping them.
England is disgraced by the number of old people who are left to the care
of the parish by children who ought to be thankful to be allowed to
support them. Secondly, that it is your duty to make provision for the
future, so that the workhouse may not even enter into your calculations,
as a possible refuge in old age for you and yours. This can be done by
regular savings, even though very small, and by insuring your life. Post
office and other savings' banks, will help you in the former, and various
insurance offices offer special facilities by weekly and monthly payments
for the latter.

AMUSEMENTS.

Recreation is as necessary as work. What kind is to be sought after, and
what avoided? For health's sake, if for nothing else, boys should have
some kind of out-door amusements. A boy has an easy choice of good and
healthy recreation, and therefore has no excuse for taking up with bad
objects. Cricket, Rowing, Volunteering, and such-like, are healthy, and
easily obtainable recreations. Gambling, drinking, loitering, are not to
be thought of for a moment, they are the curse of the lazy and
weak-minded. Theatres are very good if you keep out of the cheap and
nasty ones. Music halls are much better avoided. I do not say that it
is necessarily wrong to go there, or that you are certain to come to harm
if you frequent them, but there is more chance of temptation, and an
inferior entertainment for your money. Well acted plays may open out
your mind, but the silliness of the music hall entertainment will only
react upon you. You can tell a music hall frequenter, not by the words
of his mouth so much as by the shuffle of his feet: his highest ambition
seems to be to dance the double shuffle, and perhaps sing a few verses of
some jingling rhyme. Out-door recreation is not so easily attainable, in
the winter, as the time at your disposal is so short. In-door amusements
must, to a great extent, take their place. The gymnasium is a good
institution; chess is a game worth learning, and very fascinating to some
minds; cards are good as long as gambling is avoided, and many other
games readily suggest themselves to one's mind.

Reading will be more to the liking of many. Read books which are worth
reading, not the penny trash which shops offer to the boys of England. I
should hope that the boys of England have s