n the world, I am perfectly ready to economize.
I can do very well without expensive clothing or fashionable furniture,
and am willing that we should be looked on as very plain sort of people
in all such matters; but in all that relates to the cultivation of the
mind, and the improvement of the hearts of my children, I am willing to
go to the extent of my ability. Whatever will give my children a better
knowledge of, or deeper interest in, the Bible, or enable them to spend
a Sabbath profitably and without weariness, stands first on my list
among things to be purchased. I have spent in this way one third as much
as the furnishing of my house costs me." On looking over the shelves of
the Sabbath library, I perceived that my friend had been at no small
pains in the selection. It comprised all the popular standard works for
the illustration of the Bible, together with the best of the modern
religious publications adapted to the capacity of young children. Two
large drawers below were filled with maps and scriptural engravings,
some of them of a very superior character.

"We have been collecting these things gradually ever since we have been
at housekeeping," said my friend; "the children take an interest in this
library, as something more particularly belonging to them, and some of
the books are donations from their little earnings."

"Yes," said Willie, "I bought Helen's Pilgrimage with my egg money, and
Susan bought the Life of David, and little Robert is going to buy one,
too, next new year."

"But," said I, "would not the Sunday school library answer all the
purpose of this?"

"The Sabbath school library is an admirable thing," said my friend; "but
this does more fully and perfectly what that was intended to do. It
makes a sort of central attraction at home on the Sabbath, and makes the
acquisition of religious knowledge and the proper observance of the
Sabbath a sort of family enterprise. You know," he added, smiling, "that
people always feel interested for an object in which they have invested
money."

The sound of the first Sabbath school bell put an end to this
conversation. The children promptly made themselves ready, and as their
father was the superintendent of the school, and their mother one of the
teachers, it was quite a family party.

One part of every Sabbath at my friend's was spent by one or both
parents with the children, in a sort of review of the week. The
attention of the little ones was direc