A Domestic Problem

ages, and labelled ready for use. But it will be something gained to set her thinking on these subjects, to make her feel their importance, and to inform her in what books and by what writers they ha

e, without fostering self-conceit. How to encourage prudence and economy, and at the same time discourage parsimony. How to combine firmness with kindness. Implicit obedience a good basis to work on. How to enter into a child's life, and make it a happy one. How not to become a slave to a child's whims. The different amounts of indulgence and of assistance which different temperaments will bear. How shall liberality be inculcated, and extravagance denounced? On deceitfulness as taught by parents. On lying as taught by parents.

ements and statistics of story-paper and dime-novel publishers. The illustrated papers which can be bought and are bought by youth are crammed to overflowing with details of vice and barbarity. They have columns headed "A Melange of Murder," "Fillicide, or a Son killing a Father," "Lust and Blood," "Fiendish Assassination," "Particulars of the Hanging of John C. Kelly," "Carving a Darky," "An Interesting Divorce Case in Boston," "A Band of Juvenile Jack Sheppards." And the pictures match the reading,-a jealous lover shooting a half-naked girl; a father murdering his family; an inquisitive youth peering into a ladies' dressing-room. If the contents of these papers are bad for us to hear of, what must they be to the youth who read them? Dime novels are advertised in these same papers as being issued once a month, and supplied by all the news companies, "Sensational stories from the pens of gifted American novelists!" "The Sharpers' League," "Lyte, or the Suspected One," "The Pirate's Isle," "Darrell, the Outlaw," "The Night Hawks, containing Midnight Robbery, Plots dark and deep,"

iful and the refined in art, literature, manners, conversation. These considerations could be effectively introduced into a lecture or lectures "On the Building of Doves' Nests." Is it not "essential" that mothers should have the time, the facilities, and the knowledge nec

etting along" they often have recourse to deception; thus teaching deceitfulness. They are often unfair, punishing on one occasion what they smile at or wink at on another; thus teaching injustice. They lose self-control, and punish when in anger; thus setting examples of violence and bad temper. It is probable that a young wo

anges, lakes, and rivers; statistics, in figures, of the farthest isle beyond the farthest sea. They are lectured on the antediluvians, on the Milky Way, on the Siamese, Japanese, North Pole, on all the ologies; on the literature, modes of thought, and modes of life, of extinct races. They can converse in foreign tongues; they are familiar with dead languages, and with the superstitions, observances, and quarrels of certain races, barbarous or otherwise, who exist

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such knowledge to be altogether worthless; it would only suggest that woman wants the kind which will help her in her special department, more than she wants this kind. Said a lady in

eriously, is it not an astonishing fact, that though on the treatment of offspring depend their lives or their deaths, and their moral welfare or ruin, not one word on such treatment is ever given to those who will hereafter be parents? Is it not monstrous, that the fate of a new generation should be left to the chances of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy, joined with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers? To tens of thousands that are killed, add hundreds of thousands that survive with feeble constitutions, and millions that grow up with constitutions not so strong as they should be, and you will have some idea of the curse inflicted on their offspring by parents ignorant of the laws of life. With cruel carelessness they have neglected to learn any thing about these vital processes which they are unceasingly affecting by their commands and prohibitions; in utter ignorance of the simplest physiological laws, they have been, year by year, undermi

aid in a recent address, "The mother, of all others, is the one to foster and control the individuality of the child." It was "good mothers" which Napoleon needed in order to secure the welfare of France. "Such kind of women as are the mothers of great men," is a