tual and moral improvement. It is
not a formal school of staid solemnity and rigid discipline, where
virtue is made a task and progress a sharp necessity, but a free and
easy exercise of all our spiritual limbs, in which obedience is a
pleasure, discipline a joy, improvement a self-wrought delight. All the
duties and labors of Home, when rightly understood, are so many means of
improvement. Even the trials of Home (for every Home must have its
trials, and severe ones, too) are so many rounds in the ladder of
spiritual progress, if we but make them so.

One idea concerning Home should be deeply impressed on our minds. Of all
places in the world, Home is the most delicate and sensitive. Its
springs of action are subtle and secret. Its chords move with a breath.
Its fires are kindled with a spark. Its flowers are bruised with the
least rudeness. The influence of our homes strikes so directly on our
hearts that they make sharp impressions. In our intercourse with the
world we are barricaded, and the arrows let fly at our hearts are warded
off; but not so with us at Home. Here our hearts wear no covering, no
armor. Every arrow strikes them; every cold wind blows full upon them;
every storm beats against them. What in the world we would pass by in
sport, in our Homes will wound us to the quick. Very little can we bear
at Home. Home is a sensitive place. If we would have it a true Home, we
must guard well our words and actions. We must be honest and kind,
constant and true, to the very extent of our capacity. All little
occasions of offense and misapprehension should be avoided. Little
things make up the web of our life at Home. Little things make us happy,
and little things make us miserable. A word, a hint, a look has power to
transport us with joy or sting us with anguish. If we would make our
Homes what they should be, we must attend faithfully to the little
things which make them so.

Our life abroad is but a reflex of what it is at Home. We make ourselves
in a great manner at Home. This is especially true of woman. The woman
who is rude, coarse, and vulgar at home, can not be expected to be
amiable, chaste, and refined in the world. Her Home habits will stick to
her. She can not shake them off. They are woven into the web of her
life. Her Home language will be first on her tongue. Her Home by-words
will come out to mortify her just when she wants most to hide them in
her heart. Her Home vulgarities will show their hideo