890 SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VIII. 



from each other points we have ourselves missed, and our own thoughts 

 are many times definitely and permanently our own, than if unexpressed. 

 You have seen the memory game, where a tray containing a miscel- 

 laneous assortment of articles is passed rapidly around and then each 

 names as many of the articles as he has seen that he can remember. Why 

 not apply this principal to our reading? How surprising it is at first to 

 find how little we can express of what the eye passed over. 



Each can do a great amount of self training in this way, and learn to 

 read with greater comprehension. We would not convey the idea in this 

 that the home should be turned into a school room, or a palce of primness, 

 and restraint and repression, but on the contrary it should be the place of 

 the most complete freedom, sympathj'' and relaxation. Joy and comfort 

 should preside at the fire-side; fun, music, games and laughter be wel- 

 come visitants. That the mother was not without discernment who, when 

 asked, how to keep boys home at nights, replied "Have a bright light, 

 a bright room, and everything tasty and warm." 



Evenings devoted to pop corn, candy pulls, blind man's bluff and 

 frolics are evenings of profit too, for joy is an assett in any home, and 

 care free childhood with its cravings for mirth and affection fully met, 

 makes an entry which in the end never appears on the wrong side of 

 life's ledger. 



I have known homes where the burden of debts pressed upon the hearts 

 of all, — often exagerated, — where, unconsciously the hard times talk of the 

 elders prevailed to the extent that the sensitive growing children shared 

 in the depression, and felt crushed by a burden they scarcely understood. 

 To bring unnecessary gloom, whatever the cause, into the home life, is 

 robbing our best loved of their birth right. I have known homes, too, 

 when the meeting around the family board was an ordeal rather than a 

 pleasure. Where "gluminess" prevailed, and where a natural laugh or 

 remark from a child would meet with a scowl or repression. Deliver us 

 from this phase of family life. Dyspepsia waits on such, and the children 

 flee from such an atmosphere at the earliest opportunity. 



More and more as the world grows older and wiser, we learn that it 

 Is by the keeping of heart and mind and energies, enthusiastically and 

 happily employed along the lines that are w6rth while, we shut out the 

 appetite and the inclination for the unworthy and undesirable. Homes 

 where the conversation tends to right thinking, to the love of nature ana 

 the observing of her work, to helpfullness and kindness, and to noble 

 ideals wil not be hot-beds of gossip, of unkind thought, of coursness and 

 vulgarity. 



After all, whatever the eccessories for improvement, or along whatevei 

 lines social development is carried on, whether it is the old-fashioned 

 neighborly gatherings for fun, frolic and visiting, or the more cultured 

 efforts of the lyceum, the magazine club or the reading circle, all good, 

 if entered into heartily, and we come back in the end to the conclusion 

 that the best thing we cando with home life is just to make it "homey." 

 It seems to me I cannot close this paper better than with lines from 

 that exquisite picture of the real home spirit in Burns' simple but im- 

 mortal poem : 



