bear on
the pupils. The private schools have been expensive, consequently it has
been very unusual for children to be sent to school before they were
_eight or nine_ years of age; I could not find a person who had ever known
of a child's being sent to school _under seven!_ The school sessions are
on the old plan of six hours per day,--from nine till twelve, and from one
till four; but no learning of lessons out of school has been allowed.
Within the last year a system of free public schools has been introduced,
"and the people are grumbling terribly about it," said my informant.
"Why?" I asked; "because they do not wish to have their children
educated?" "Oh, no," said he; "because they do not like to pay the taxes!"
"Alas!" I thought, "if it were only their silver which would be taxed!"

I must not be understood to argue from the health of the children of Nova
Scotia, as contrasted with the lack of health among our children, that it
is best to have no public schools; only that it is better to have no
public schools than to have such public schools as are now killing off our
children.

The registration system of Nova Scotia is as yet imperfectly carried out.
It is almost impossible to obtain exact returns from all parts of so
thinly settled a country. But such statistics as have been already
established give sufficient food for reflection in this connection. In
Massachusetts more than two-fifths of all the children born die before
they are twelve years old. In Nova Scotia the proportion is less than
one-third. In Nova Scotia one out of every fifty-six lives to be over
ninety years of age; and one-twelfth of the entire number of deaths is
between the ages of eighty and ninety. In Massachusetts one person out of
one hundred and nine lives to be over ninety.

In Massachusetts the mortality from diseases of the brain and nervous
system is eleven per cent. In Nova Scotia it is only eight per cent.

The Republic of the Family.

"He is lover and friend and son, all in one," said a friend, the other
day, telling me of a dear boy who, out of his first earnings, had just
sent to his mother a beautiful gift, costing much more than he could
really afford for such a purpose.

That mother is the wisest, sweetest, most triumphant mother I have ever
known. I am restrained by feelings of deepest reverence for her from
speaking, as I might speak, of the rare and tender methods by which her
motherhood has worked, patiently