rain, and overcoming
strain and temptation by the power which love alone can give.

THE REWARD.

+Loyalty to the family preserves and perpetuates the home.+--Home is a
place where we can rest; where we can breathe freely; where we can have
perfect trust in one another; where we can be perfectly simple,
perfectly natural, perfectly frank; where we can be ourselves; where
peace and love are supreme. "This," says John Ruskin, "is the true
nature of home--it is the place of peace; the shelter, not only from all
injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not
this, it is not home; so far as the anxieties of the outer life
penetrate into it, and the unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the
outer world is allowed to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it
is then only a part of the outer world which you have roofed over and
lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a
temple of the hearth watched over by household gods, before whose faces
none may come but those whom they can receive with love,--so far as it
is this, and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and
light,--shade as of a rock in a weary land, and light as of a Pharos on
a stormy sea; so far it vindicates the name and fulfills the praise of
home."

THE TEMPTATION.

+The individual must drop his extreme individualism when he crosses the
threshold of the home.+--The years between youth and marriage are years
of comparative independence. The young man and woman learn in these
years to take their affairs into their own hands; to direct their own
course, to do what seems right in their own eyes, and take the
consequences of wisdom or folly upon their own shoulders. This period
of independence is a valuable discipline. It develops strength and
self-reliance; it compels the youth to face the stern realities of life,
and to measure himself against the world. It helps him to appreciate
what his parents have done for him in the past, and prepares him to
appreciate a home of his own when he comes to have one. The man and
woman who have never known what it is to make their own way in the world
can never be fully confident of their own powers, and are seldom able to
appreciate fully what is done for them.

Many an exacting husband and complaining wife would have had their
querulousness and ingratitude taken out of them once for all if they
could have had a year or two of single-handed conflict with