hem stories that
their mothers must not hear, and laugh when they compass with their
little piping voices the dreadful litanies of sin and shame. In middle
life, our poor Sophie, who as a girl was so gay and frolicsome, so full
of spirits, had dried and sharpened into a hard-visaged, angular
woman,--careful and troubled about many things, and forgetful that one
thing is needful. One of the boys had run away to sea; I believe he has
never been heard of. As to Tom, the oldest, he ran a career wild and
hard enough for a time, first at school and then in college, and there
came a time when he came home, in the full might of six feet two, and
almost broke his mother's heart with his assertions of his home rights
and privileges. Mothers who throw away the key of their children's
hearts in childhood sometimes have a sad retribution. As the children
never were considered when they were little and helpless, so they do not
consider when they are strong and powerful. Tom spread wide desolation
among the household gods, lounging on the sofas, spitting tobacco-juice
on the carpets, scattering books and engravings hither and thither, and
throwing all the family-traditions into wild disorder, as he would never
have done, had not all his childish remembrances of them been embittered
by the association of restraint and privation. He actually seemed to
hate any appearance of luxury or taste or order,--he was a perfect
Philistine.

As for my friend Bill, from being the pleasantest and most genial of
fellows, he became a morose, misanthropic man. Dr. Franklin has a
significant proverb,--"Silks and satins put out the kitchen-fire." Silks
and satins--meaning by them the luxuries of housekeeping--often put out
not only the parlor-fire, but that more sacred flame, the fire of
domestic love. It is the greatest possible misery to a man and to his
children to be _homeless_; and many a man has a splendid house, but no
home.

"Papa," said Jennie, "you ought to write and tell what are your ideas of
keeping a _home_."

"Girls, you have only to think how your mother has brought you up."

Nevertheless, I think, being so fortunate a husband, I might reduce my
wife's system to an analysis, and my next paper shall be,--

_What is a home, and how to keep it?_

* * * * *

THE CONVULSIONISTS OF ST. MEDARD

Of all the mental epidemics that have visited Europe, beyond question
the most remarkable, and in some of its