h other, they would grasp at the
slightest chance of a conversation. Sometimes it almost seems as if
complaints and antagonism were better than such stagnant quiet. But there
need not be complaint and antagonism; there is no home so poor, so remote
from affairs, that each day does not bring and set ready, for family
welcome and discussion, beautiful sights and sounds, occasions for
helpfulness and gratitude, questions for decision, hopes, fears, regrets!
The elements of human life are the same for ever; any one heart holds in
itself the whole, can give all things to another, can bear all things for
another; but no giving, no bearing, no, not even if it is the giving up of
a life, if it is done without free, full, loving interchange of speech, is
half the blessing it might be.

Many a wife goes down to her grave a dulled and dispirited woman simply
because her good and faithful husband has lived by her side without
talking to her! There have been days when one word of praise, or one word
even of simple good cheer, would have girded her up with new strength. She
did not know, very likely, what she needed, or that she needed any thing;
but she drooped.

Many a child grows up a hard, unimpressionable, unloving man or woman
simply from the uncheered silence in which the first ten years of life
were passed. Very few fathers and mothers, even those who are fluent,
perhaps, in society, habitually _talk_ with their children.

It is certain that this is one of the worst shortcomings of our homes.
Perhaps no other single change would do so much to make them happier, and,
therefore, to make our communities better, as for men and women to learn
to speak.

Private Tyrants.

We recognize tyranny when it wears a crown and sits on an hereditary
throne. We sympathize with nations that overthrow the thrones, and in our
secret hearts we almost canonize individuals who slay the tyrants. From
the days of Ehud and Eglon down to those of Charlotte Corday and Marat,
the world has dealt tenderly with their names whose hands have been red
with the blood of oppressors. On moral grounds it would be hard to justify
this sentiment, murder being murder all the same, however great gain it
may be to this world to have the murdered man put out of it; but that
there is such a sentiment, instinctive and strong in the human soul, there
is no denying. It is so instinctive and so strong that, if we watch
ourselves closely, we shall find it givi