charge of them. However hard the sons may have to apply themselves to business, daughters need not give themselves to anything which requires earnest and persevering application. Light and ornamental trifles may occupy their attention, but nothing of substantial and permanent utility. Trashy and ephemeral novels they may read and weep over, but standard works of literature require too much thought for them. very sad to contemplate the useless life which some of the young women of our own day are not only permitted but indeed expected to live, and the expedients that are resorted to to kill time. It is a question of the most serious import what many of them have to show as the result of their education and of their life when they attain to twenty, twenty-five, or thirty years of age. If called away at such periods and the real worth of their existence appraised, the result, in a vast number of instances, would be found to be infinitesimally small. To bring up a girl to a life of inaction, to regard work as a hardship and a degradation, to think that she has nothing to do with life but to seek her ease and her pleasure; to educate her in the belief that the less her hands know how to do, and her brain to think, and contrive and reflect, the more she is towards the top of womanhood; to bring up a girl to any or all of this is a cruel wrong and a great sin. It is an untold injury done to herself, it is a great wrong to those who may be connected with her, and it is a most serious wrong to society at large. For any woman, whatever her position in life, to be prevented by any cause from the right and diligent employment of the faculties with which God has gifted her, is to dwarf and stunt her nature, to debar her from the happiness to be

found in useful ministry and noble achievement. It is to deprive those related to her of the benefit they would receive from her influence and love and labour, when these have been developed and cultured to their highest worth; it is to deprive society of the contribution which her life, when nobly trained and consecrated, would yield to the common weal.

Let those who are placed above the necessity of toil yet feel its worth and learn its pleasantness. If in the course of life they, like thousands of others, should be brought to poverty by vicissitude and loss, the knowledge and power they have acquired will lessen the hardship and afford a means of relief from the disaster. Should prosperity continue to the end; the enjoyment and usefulness of life will be unspeakably enhanced. Let those whose position entails upon them the necessity of daily toil, neither be ashamed of it nor regard their lot with discontent. It has its advantages as well as its disadvantages, and on the whole the advantages preponderate. Necessity is a stern but not unkind taskmaster. Next to the gospel there is nothing so beneficial to our world as the necessity for work. It is a preservative from many a snare, it is a preventive of much folly, it is a balm for many a wound, and it is the source of continued enjoyment. Mothers and teachers who have the instruction of young women should instil by example and by precept the love of work and the advantage of constant employment; they should teach them always to have something to do which is worth doing. It is theirs to lead them to form habits of daily, regular, and conscientious industry, which will continue and brighten the whole of life, and be the cause of untold good and happiness.

Woman should be taught to care for and manage her home. Woman's chief vocation and sphere are at home. There she finds not her exclusive but her first and paramount duties. In creating and filling and adorning home she has her most appropriate and congenial place. In order rightly to care for her home she must be taught to love it. On this account, amongst others, if it is thought desirable that girls should go to a boarding school, it is not well that they should be sent early. Time should be given in their early years for the quiet homefeeling and home-love to grow and mature in their hearts. And when school days are over, there should not be such an incessant round of visiting and of pleasure that they will be almost more from home than at home. Depend upon it woman must feel that there is no place like home, else she will never make others feel it. She certainly must find her happiness there, if husband, brothers, or children are to do so. Her heart must be there if she is to make home what it should be. And this is a matter of education; not the education of books or lectures or precepts, but the education of finding from early and delightful experience that "there is no place like home." The Apostle Paul directs that the aged women should teach the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, and keepers at home." The best and surest way of teaching these things is to let the children grow up in the constant observance of them.

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But it is not enough that a woman loves her home, she must know how to manage it. She will not feel in it and towards it as she ought unless she does. Love without knowledge may with the very best intentions produce discomfort and unhappi

ness. Experience and skill and tact are necessary in order to the conduct of a well-ordered home. She who presides over it must look well to the ways of her household, and must know how things ought to be, and the best way to do them. Waste as well as extravagance has to be guarded against, dirt as well as disorder has to be battled with, quietude as well as regularity has to be secured, cheerfulness as well as peace must reign. Health as well as temper largely depends upon the kind and preparation of food and clothing. To secure and maintain all this the household arrangements must be well adjusted; flexibility as well as fixedness obtain; a thousand little things daily attended to. The hand must be ready to supply deficiency and remedy confusion; the wants and claims and peculiarities of the various inmates studied and met; the wishes of the husband, so far as possible, carried out; the nurture of children properly provided for; the rule of servants firmly but reasonably and kindly maintained; all due consideration shown to them, all due respect exacted from them. Now it is impossible that all this knowledge and skill and tact should be possessed by one who has had no training and experience of a well-ordered home. The possession of these are not gifts but acquisitions. They do not come by intuition, but they are gained by practice. Some women are more apt than others, but none can learn without many efforts, not a few blunders and failures, and continued and patient industry. The lack of this culture has led to the attempt at some schools to supply it, but all will agree that home duties are best learnt at home. That young wife is greatly to be pitied, and her mother has much reason to be ashamed, who goes to preside

over a home of her own, not having gained experimental knowledge of the arrangements necessary in a home, and of the management of servants. She goes to find constant causes of disquiet, where she had expected only happiness. She is at the mercy of servants whom she cannot possibly do without, but whom she does not know what to do with. She has the daily mortification of seeing things go wrong, without having the knowledge and power to make them go right. The amount of domestic unhappiness arising from this cause can scarcely be exaggerated. It is incumbent upon mothers to save their daughters, by right training in household duties, from the mortification, misery, and trouble of such a position.

Some young women there are who, from circumstances beyond their control, often from motives most praiseworthy, find it necessary to seek employment in a situation away from home. Such persons, so far from being looked down upon on this account, are, because of it, worthy of the more esteem and honour. They should, however, be on their guard lest they allow this to prevent their gaining knowledge and experience of home duties. In some way or other, as opportunity may serve, they should contrive to gain the knowledge requisite, else some day they may have the mortification and disappointment of finding they are more at home in the workroom and at business than they are at their own fireside, and in domestic duties.

Homes are often invaded by sickness, disease, and death. There are no homes where these do not come. The nursing of invalids belongs, and rightly belongs, to mothers, wives, and sisters. When properly trained, none can smooth the pillow,