se our
deeper feelings. In sickness, in bereavement, in separation, the daily
prayer at home has a sacred and healing power. Then we remember the
scattered and wandering ones; and the scattered and wandering think
tenderly of that hour when they know they are remembered. I know, when
I was a young girl, I was often thoughtless and careless about family
prayers; but now that my father and mother are gone forever, there is
nothing I recall more often. I remember the great old Family Bible,
the hymn-book, the chair where father used to sit. I see him as he
looked bending over that Bible more than in any other way; and
expressions and sentences in his prayers which fell unheeded on my
ears in those days have often come back to me like comforting angels.
We are not aware of the influence things are having on us till we have
left them far behind in years. When we have summered and wintered
them, and look back on them from changed times and other days, we find
that they were making their mark upon us, though we knew it not."

"I have often admired," said I, "the stateliness and regularity of
family worship in good old families in England,--the servants, guests,
and children all assembled,--the reading of the Scriptures and the
daily prayers by the master or mistress of the family, ending with the
united repetition of the Lord's Prayer by all."

"No such assemblage is possible in our country," said Bob. "Our
servants are for the most part Roman Catholics, and forbidden by their
religion to join with us in acts of worship."

"The greater the pity," said I. "It is a pity that all Christians who
can conscientiously repeat the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer
together should for any reason be forbidden to do so. It would do more
to harmonize our families, and promote good feeling between masters
and servants, to meet once a day on the religious ground common to
both, than many sermons on reciprocal duties."

"But, while the case is so," said Marianne, "we can't help it. Our
servants cannot unite with us; our daily prayers are something
forbidden to them."

"We cannot in this country," said I, "give to family prayer that
solemn stateliness which it has in a country where religion is a civil
institution, and masters and servants, as a matter of course, belong
to one church. Our prayers must resemble more a private interview with
a father than a solemn act of homage to a king. They must be more
intimate and domestic. The ho