ond his strength; denies himself
needed rest and recreation; grows prematurely old, cuts himself off from
intercourse with his fellow-men in order to secure for his family a
position or a fortune: the woman who works early and late; forgets her
music, and forsakes her favorite books; gives up friends and society;
grows anxious and careworn in order to give her sons and daughters a
better start in life than she had, are making a fatal mistake. In the
effort to provide their children with material things and intellectual
advantages they are depriving them of what even to the children is of
far more consequence--healthy, happy, cheerful, interesting,
enthusiastic parents. To their children as well as to themselves parents
owe it to be the brightest, cheeriest, heartiest, wisest, completest
persons that they are capable of being. Children also when they have
reached maturity, although they owe to their parents a reverent regard
for all reasonable desires and wishes, ought not to sacrifice
opportunities for gaining a desired education or an advantageous start
in business, merely to gratify a capricious whim or groundless
foreboding of an arbitrary and unreasoning parent. Devotion to the
family does not imply withdrawal from the world outside. The larger and
fuller one's relations to the world without, the deeper and richer ought
to be one's contribution to the family of which he is a member.

THE PENALTY.

+To have no one for whom we supremely care, and no one who cares much
for us; to have no place where we can shield ourselves from outward
opposition and inward despair; to have no larger life in which we can
merge the littleness of our solitary selves; to touch other lives only
on the surface, and to take no one to our heart;--this is the sad estate
of the man or woman who refuses to enter with whole-souled devotion into
union with another in the building of a family and a home.+--The sense
that this loneliness is chosen in fidelity to duty makes it endurable
for multitudes of noble men and women. But for the man or woman who
chooses such a life in proud self-sufficiency, for the sake of fancied
freedom and independence, it is hard to conceive what consolation can be
found. Thomas Carlyle, speaking of the joys of living in close union
with those who love us, and whom we love, says: "It is beautiful; it is
human! Man lives not otherwise, nor can live contented, anywhere or
anywhen. Isolation is the sum-total of wretchedn