to cook, sweep or dust, in a silk or cloth dress, but should be appropriately equipped for such work. If the table glass and china are absolutely clean, well wiped and free from lint, they may be very plain and inexpensive. Though the food offered be very simple, if it is well cooked and served, one need have no hesitancy in inviting one's most aristocratic friend to share it, for true hospitality consists in something higher than the material offering, and a cordial and gracious welcome are grateful substitutes for rich entrées and cut glass. One need never be ashamed of any economy that is necessary, and it is an absurd weakness to try to appear richer than one is.

When girls and boys arrive at the age of discretion they should know their father's circumstances and the family expenses and should be ready to adapt themselves to both. No one can retain his or her self-respect, or is entitled to the respect of others, who lives, dresses or entertains beyond what he can reasonably afford, and the day of retribution, though sometimes delayed, arrives surely. If young people are given an allowance as liberal as the family's financial circumstances admit of they learn the value of money, the best means of using it, and acquire much better judgment in their purchases than when the parents can be called on ad libitum.

Every girl should learn some profession, trade, or art by which she can, if ill fortune overtake her, maintain herself independent of relatives and friends. If she possess special gifts or talent, these will indicate the direction of her cultivation, and though she may learn many things in moderation, she should acquire one thing in perfection. Everyone has some possibility or adaptability which if properly trained will secure her against want and temptation, for though fortune may be favorable to-day, she may frown to-morrow, and when one's resources are developed in prosperity one can meet adversity more calmly. A family does not live within its means that does not provide for sudden emergency, temporary loss of employment or for the death of the bread winner. A portion of the income should therefore be held as a reserve, or contingent fund. As Emerson says: "When the income by ever so little exceeds the outgo, we have the beginning of wealth." The greatest wealth is health, and no economy that is practiced at the expense of health or of a reasonable cultivation of the mind, can be accounted true economy. A stout roof, wholesome food, substantial and sufficient clothing, are all in the interest of thrift, and unwise economies are often the worst extravagancies.

XVI

CIVIC DUTIES

THE sober quiet sense of what a man owes to the community in which he is born, has been found specially hard to maintain, says Mr. Bryce, in modern times and in large countries. It is comparatively easy in small republics or in cities, but with a vast population, the individual is lost in the multitude. Mr. Bryce, however, exhorts us to remember the civic virtue, and tells how it may best be inculcated in the young. We must cultivate three habits, to strive to know what is best for one's country as a whole; to place when one knows it, the country's interest above party feeling or class feeling, or any other sectional passion or motive; to be willing to take trouble, personal and even tedious trouble, for the well-governing of every public community one belongs to, be it a township or parish, a ward or a city, or the nation as a whole. And the methods of forming these habits are two, which of course, cannot in practice be distinguished, but must go hand in hand,--the giving of knowledge regarding the institutions of the countryknowledge sufficient to enable the young citi

zen to comprehend the workings-elements which still dazzle imagination from the conflicts of fleets and armies of the past. Current history or elementary politics, Mr. Bryce thinks, would be easier to teach than history in the usual sense of the term.

The young, to the extent of their understanding, should not only be instructed in the political government of city, state and nation, but what is more important, they should be stimulated to an interest in public affairs and inspired with a sense of civic duty. As they mature, the young man's and young woman's interest will be proportioned to the interest which the parents and their associates in the home manifest in such affairs. In England, interest in public affairs and knowledge of political movements are much more general than with us; all well educated women are conversant with the political situation, its current opportunities, possibilities, and probabilities, and they enter into discussions of these subjects as freely as do the men. In this particular they are in advance of the average American woman; the intellectual life of the latter, while often profound, does not turn in the direction of politics or interest in public affairs, except occasionally to their philanthropic side. In some of the larger cities a few women are beginning to interest themselves actively in the

progress and improvement of those cities, and the results are eminently satisfactory. It requires no more time to participate in a conference about municipal improvements than to attend teas, receptions and card parties, and the benefit to the community is vastly greater. The woman who has children needing her presence or has other duties at home, should neglect them neither for her own pleasure nor for the profit of any municipality, however great her interest in it may be. Yet may not the many women who have no children, or whose families are grown, or they who prefer to spend their leisure hours in advancing the civic and social life that surrounds them to joining in the usual frivolities of fashionable life-may not these women be worse employed? It is not the opportunity which draws women from the domestic life but dissatisfaction with the close confinement, or a greater taste for outside pleasures; and yet desertion for the causes of frivolity is never censured as is desertion for intellectual purposes. If she does not take an active part, every woman should at least understand and interest herself in the civic life, in the material, social and moral progress of humanity, and know all of the vital movements of the country and of the world.

In many families there is an utter dearth of knowledge or concern of public affairs; the