en we do not demand big and splendid
things of them.

That word demand troubles me a little. So many women demand--and
demand terribly! But what they demand is indulgence, sympathy,
interest--I think sometimes that they crave a man's utter absorption
in themselves much as a man craves strong drink. It is their form of
intoxication. Such demanding is not, of course, what I mean. Demand
nothing for yourself, beyond simple justice. Not love, for that flies
at the very sound of demand, and dies before nagging. But demand for
the man himself, call upon his nobler qualities, and don't let him
palm off on you his second-best. Many a man is loved and honored by
his business associates whose wife and children never catch a glimpse
of the finer side of him. Demand the exercise of these fine traits in
the home. Demand that he be a fine man in the eyes of his children as
in the eyes of his friends. Be sure that he will rise to the occasion
with a splendid sense of having, now, a home that is a home, of having
a wife who is wived to the man he likes best to be.

This bids fair to be--as I knew it would, if once I permitted myself
to write at all on the subject--not a paragraph, but a whole essay--or
perhaps, if I did not check myself, a whole volume! But after all,
what I want to say is merely that as no child can be born without
a father, so he cannot be properly trained without a father's daily
assistance. And that, since most fathers come to the task even more
untrained than the mothers, some training must be undertaken. By whom?
By the mother. It is, I solemnly believe, your duty to go ahead a
little on this part of the journey, find out what ought to be done,
and teach, coax, induce your husband to co-operate with you in these
things. No one knows better than you do that he is only a boy at heart
after all--perhaps the very dearest boy of them all. This boy you have
to help while yet the other children are little--but be sure that, as
you teach him, so, all the time, will he teach you. Every principle
laid down in this book, above all others the principle of _freedom_,
will apply to him. He will take the lessons a trifle more reluctantly
but more lastingly than the younger boys; and in a little while you
will be envied of all your women friends because of the competency,
the reliability, the contentment of your children's father.

THE UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE

When all is said and done, it remains true that the finest,