JULY 40 
Womftn's Work. 
CONDUCTED BY EMILY L. TAPLIN. 
BE KIND TO THE LOVED ONES. 
Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young, 
Who loved thee so fondly ns he? 
He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue. 
And joined in thy innocent glee. 
Be kind to thy father, for now he Is old. 
His locks Intermingled with gray, 
His footsteps are feeble, once fearless and bold— 
Thy father Is passing away. 
Be kind to thy mother: for. lo! on her brow 
May traces of sorrow lie seen; 
Oh, well tnay'st rhou cherish and comfort her now. 
For loving uud kind hath shebeen. 
Remember thy mother; for thee she will pray 
As long ns t loti givelh her breath; 
With accents of kindness then cheer her lone way, 
E’en to the dark valley of death. 
Be kind to thy brother; his heart will have dearth 
If the smile of thy love be withdrawn; 
The flowers of feeling will lade at their birth 
If the dew of utVoction bo gone, 
Be kind to thy brother wherever you are; 
The love of a brother should be 
An ornament purer and richer by far 
Than pearls from the dept h of the sea. 
Be kind to thy sister; not many may know 
The depth of true sisterly love; 
The wealth of the ocean lies fut horns below 
The surface that sparkles above, 
Thy kindness shall bring to thee many sweet hours, 
With hlessiugs thy pathway to crown; 
Affection shall weave thee a garland of flowers. 
More precious than wealth or renown. 
— Unknown Exchange. 
OF INTEREST TO WOMEN. 
Gauze fans painted in water colors, are 
very dainty and etherial. This work, though 
requiring much care and skill, is now engros¬ 
sing many amateur artists. 
The most popular beaufet scarfs are of 
cream or drab linen mornie cloth, outlined in 
washing silk. Conventional flower designs 
are usually chosen. 
A very pretty blotter is made in the shape 
of a pans)'. Four pieces of blotting paper are 
cut in this shape each four inches across; the 
top piece is painted in water colors to resem¬ 
ble the flower. The paper is then tied togeth¬ 
er with lavender ribbon. 
The erstwhile aristocratic pug-dog now has 
his atreviated nose put out of joint by the 
setter, the latter being chosen companion of 
the fashionable damsel on the promenade. 
The girl accompanying tbe dog must wear a 
tailor-made gown and an aspect of British 
athleticism, according to the fiat of fashion. 
For those possessing little hair the best 
mode of dressing is to comb it all up to the 
top of the head, [lulling it loose in the nape of 
the neck: fasten it at tbe top with a plain 
comb put in slantwise; then divide into two 
strands and coil into a loose knot on each side. 
Short hair lor women, unless an absolute 
necessity, is now considered bad style. In 
London many fashionable women now wear 
their hair low, in "basket plaits.” For this 
mode the hair is made into fine braids and 
then flatly coiled in t he nape of the neck, after 
the model of a braided rag mat. It looks as 
if glued onto the head aud is anything but 
graceful. 
The Living Church says that in the fann¬ 
ing districts is developed the healthy blood 
of the people. Let the strong-armed, clear¬ 
brained farmers understand this: that to the 
industry, frugality and contentment of our 
rural homes we must look for the influences 
that promise peace and power. And let the 
young men and maidens, who are blessed with 
the quiet and healthy surroundings of country 
life, resist the temptations to swell the ranks 
of the discontented or unemployed in the 
noisy ami dusty town, It should be noted 
also, in this connection, that the contrast 1 be¬ 
tween the conditions of employe aud em¬ 
ployer are far greater in the city than the 
country. The “hired man” in the country 
works by the side of his employer, has the 
same fare and much the same privileges. He 
is not made envious at every turn by the 
sight of luxuries he cannot share. But the 
toiler in the streets sees luxury on every band; 
he sees men grow rich without apparent 
effort, and is unhappy, not because his reason¬ 
able wants are not satisfied, but because ho 
sees that he is falling behind in the race. 
Tell me, Is the garden rose 
A fairer flower of nobler worth 
Than hedgerow pink or bluet frail. 
Which lack the rose's garden birth? 
Then why should maids of rustic birth 
Give place before the city dame, 
If garden rose and bedgrow pink 
In worth aud beauty rank the same? 
FLOWERS IN THE SCHOOL-HOUSE. 
Among the many refining influences which 
a thoughtful teacher may bring to hear on 
her scholars, there is nothing more potent than 
a taste for flowers. The same taste that will 
give a touch of refinement to the poorest 
cottage throws a much-needed grace over 
a bare school-room. And the children will 
soon begin to take pride in their teacher’s 
floricultural efforts, whether it takes the form 
of winter window plants or outdoor summer 
gardening. As a general thing, the builders 
of a country school-house seem to pitch their 
tent on the most barren and sterile spot in the 
neighborhood, so outdoor gardening is well- 
uigh an impossibility. So the gardener must 
make the most of a sunny window. The 
plants may bn Contributions from parents 
who possess them; usually the children are 
very proud to supply “Teacher” with what 
she wants, if it is in their power. Simple 
plants of easy culture may he chosen; the 
ever-popular Wandering Jew is alwayspretfcy, 
and is not easily discouraged. Oxalis is an¬ 
other nice thing, while Scarlet Geraniums are 
always neat, and tbnfty, and turn their smil¬ 
ing faces to their grower through every 
change of season. 
It is not merely for their intrinsic prettiness 
that we value flowers in the school-room: they 
will attract aud retain the interest of the 
scholars in a marked degree. If the teacher 
possesses an intelligent knowledge of plants, 
she can give most entertaining object lessons 
on this theme. We do not mean the analytic 
botany so many graduates possess—that is 
merely the bleached skeleton of the subject. 
To engage the attention of children, one should 
know plants intimately, aud enjoy their con¬ 
fidence—study after the system enjoined by 
Mr. Squeers; “When a boy knows b-o-tet-i-n- 
n-e-y means a knowledge of plants, he just 
goes out aud knows ’em.” By a sort of anec¬ 
dotal knowledge of botany and floriculture, a 
teacher can both interest and instruct. And 
the refining influence of dainty blossoms can¬ 
not be over-estimated. It may not turn rough 
boys into Chesterfields all at once, but it will 
be a change in their material Jives, and it will 
help to satisfy that craving for beauty which 
is the natural dower of every girl. 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF OPEN FIRES. 
“Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat tbe clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door; 
While the red logs before us beat. 
The frost line back with tropic heat. 
And evpr when a louder blast 
Shook door and window aa It passed, 
The merrier up H« roaring draught 
The great t hroat of the chimney laughed.” 
Those lines of Whittier’s are our text, and 
we now proceed to the body of our homily. 
Where, we ask, do you now see that glorious 
amplitude of chimney, that generous breadth 
of ingle, the poet paints?—and echo alone an¬ 
swers—Where? You read of them in stories 
descriptive of some charming rural hamlet in 
the New England hills, such as no one ever 
saw yet, save the writers of the aforesaid 
stories. No, those delightful relics of our an¬ 
cestors have given way to the more civilized 
but uuromantic coal stove,—“that red-hot 
friend of American civilization,” as some one 
pathetically calls it; an ungainly black mon¬ 
ster, rejoicing in some horrible inappropriate 
name, such as Morning Glory, or Dewdrop, or 
Star of the West. 
Query; Are coal stoves a greater sign of 
advancing civilization than open fires? For 
in this age, one is nothing without being 
aesthetic or scientific, and viewing it from the 
first point, one can scarcely idealize into a har¬ 
mony or symphony a “new patent action 
damper automatic regulator self-feeding par- 
lo? base burner,” as the grimy stove man 
describes our latest acquisition, even when its 
beauty (and it* cost) is enhanced by certain 
aggressive ornament*, resembling nickel coffin 
plates, and an ostentatious nickel-plated bul¬ 
wark, supposed, by students to be evolved 
from the primitive fender. 
Viewed from the Gradgrind point, the coal 
stove is merely an iron box, more or less com¬ 
plicated in form, which heats so many cubic 
feet of ah', and gives out so many more cubic 
feet of poisonous gases. As it communicates 
directly with the chimney, it affords no means 
of ventilation to the room, whereas the open 
fire, by means of the generous draught does 
really purify the air. 
For all time, ever siuce the caccethes scri- 
bendi came into fashion, t.hc open fire has 
been a source of inspiration for scribblers. In 
every wintry idyl the heroine sits before the 
grate, or the wide hearth, with huge logs 
lying on the andirons, building bright castles 
in Spain, dreamy pictures demolished by the 
falling of a few coals. Or we read of the 
merry group around the hearth at. Halloween 
burning nuts, aud roasting apples, and going 
through all the incantations suitable to the 
season. But who ever heard of keeping Hal¬ 
loween around a modern coal stove? Why 
the very nuts and apples and melted lead 
would rise up to protest against it. I think 
open fires have a strong moral effect which is 
decidedly lacking in stoves. Did you ever 
heur of a mean griping penurious man, who 
had a wide, generous hearth ? No, if he had 
one he bricked it up, so it would hold a mere 
slice of fire, like old Scrooge, in the Christmas 
Carol, and the first, thing Scrooge did when he 
reformed and morally thawed out was to build 
a rousing fire on the hearth. Generosity and 
huge open fires always go together. 
We can scarcely return to the fires of the 
middle ages—a hearth larger than the parlor 
in a city house, and a chimney wide enough 
and sloping enough to drive n coach and four 
up, the fire replenished with a whole tree at a 
time. Grandgriud tells us that in so many— 
so very many years our American continent 
will be entirely denuded of trees, at the pres¬ 
ent rate of consumption, but in spite of that 
terrible possibility—somewhat robbed of its 
terrors by its extreme vagueness, we long 
for a fire of fragrant cedar or crackling hick¬ 
ory with a mighty back log, as the New Eng¬ 
lander’s call it, supporting the whole glowing 
superstructure of fiery coals. 
We have all read of the humble but pictur¬ 
esque cottage, with its wide hearth, and shin¬ 
ing andirons, while seated before the glowing 
tire is a trim and rosy damsel, busily knitting, 
or oftener, I am afraid, making patchwork 
quilts of fearful and wonderful design, and 
gorgeous brilliancy. Now that humble cot 
contains a stifling coal stove, and I fear the 
rosy-cheeked damsel is not altogether innocent 
of kindling the fire with the convenient l>ut 
uncertain kerosene can. O tempores I O 
mores! 
What was the ideal of comfort is now con¬ 
demned as inconvenient and awkward, and 
like its contemporaries, the spinning-wheel 
and the stage coach, is only found cither on 
the confines of civilization, or in the possess¬ 
ion of the rich or curious. The recent revival 
of all old fashions seems to have brought open 
fires more into favor, but their palmy days 
are past, anil we shall no more return to the 
glorious fires of our ancestors, than to a belief 
in witchcraft or the Philosopher’s Stone. 
GOLDEN GRAINS. 
Suffering for the right is cleansing; as 
the waves of a stormy sea wash the bold rocks, 
so the storms of the soul wash out the stains of 
self.... 
Our troubles are like sharp edged tools, safe 
enough, and practically beneficial, but dan¬ 
gerous if handled too closely, anti heedlessly. 
Every trial has in it a lesson of wisdom if we 
only learn it aright..... 
Biographies are useful because, If truthful¬ 
ly written, they serve to show us that joys and 
sorrows are blended in every life. 
So live that thou shalt make the ground 
thou walkest- over the house where thou dwell- 
est, a sacred shrine for the children who shall 
outlive thee... 
Be sure you understand the import of the 
commands you make, ami that your child 
understands them, before you exact obedience. 
Be not selfish in your requirements, hut con¬ 
sider whether they are really for the best good 
of the child... 
If you can do little else for a wicked world, 
pray! it is a great tiling to pray aright. He 
who does so has a hold of the lever that can 
move the universe. 
An exchange says the Rev. Phillips Brooks 
declined to accept the office of Assistant 
Bishop of Pennsylvania because Boston is so 
much nearer Heaven than Philadelphia. Dr. 
Brooks is an Evangelical churchman, and 
isn’t it more reasonable to suppose that he de¬ 
clined the honor because he thought Boston 
in greater need of his ministrations than the 
“ City of Brotherly Love?”. 
• 
From pity for others springs ardent, cour¬ 
ageous benevolence; from pity of ourselves 
feeble, cowardly sentimentality. 
English Methodism is beginning to protest 
with great earnestness against the three years’ 
limit of its pastorate, and a prominent Ijou- 
dou journal says it is successfully emptying 
the largest chapels in city and country, and 
condemns it as being no longer necessary, and 
totally un-Wesleyan. 
As riches and favor forsake a man wo fiud 
him to be a fool, but nobody could find it out 
in his prosperity,..... 
Life is too short to nurse one’s misery. 
Hurry across the lowlands, that we may lin¬ 
ger louger on the mountain tops.. 
Hard speech between those who have loved 
is hidden in the memory, like the sight of 
greatness anti benuty sunk in vice and rags. 
At a recent, dinner party the subject of eter¬ 
nal life and future punishment came up for a 
long discussion, in which Mark Twain, who 
was present, took no part. A lady near him 
turned suddenly toward him and exclaimed, 
“Why do you not say anything? 1 want your 
opinion.” Twain replied gravely, “Madam, 
you must excuse me; I am silent of necessity. 
1 have friends In both places”. 
Mr. Powdkrlv is very conservative. In the 
circular just issued he is very severe on strikes, 
boycotts, riots, anarchists, and intemperance. 
CONDUCTED BY MRS. AGNES E. M. CARMAN. 
HOUSE-KEEPING IN CALIFORNIA.—X. 
MARY-WAGER FISHER. 
After dinner until half-past seven was the 
laddie’s hour, when Anaximander read aloud 
for him his daily portion of “solid” reading, 
as the boy was in the habit of calling it. From 
November to March this reading embraced 
Huxley’s Physiography, Geikie’s Elements of 
Physical Geography, Lubbock’s Ants, Bees 
aud Wasps, and the first volume of Prescott’s 
Conquest of Mexico —with all of which the 
child was greatly entertained—these books 
being quite within the mental range of a 
bright child of eight years of age, whose taste 
for reading has not been vitiated by (Sunday 
School literature—which is all good enough 
morally, but vicious, intellectually. A vol¬ 
ume from which he read aloud to me every 
afternoon was Parfcon’s Captains of Industry 
—reading it twice through—a capital book for 
boys. While the evening reading was going 
on, I sat by and did the “darning and mend¬ 
ing”—which increased in volume as the new 
clothes with which We had started from home 
began to show serious marks of wear. One 
morning I found a friend ripping apart a 
gown. “I wonder how it happened,” she ex¬ 
claimed, “that women are forever turning 
gowns upside down a ml 1 tackside before. Who 
ever heard of a man turning his trousers?” 
“I have—at least l have seen trousers legs cut 
off aud turned front side back—but I suppose 
some womandid it.,”I replied, “The great draw- 
back to us creatures, is our economy—in small 
things. Wa waste our time and our energies 
in patching aud darning, and in trying to 
make one dollar go ns far as ten. I do, 1 know, 
aiid I have to spur myself up to a great moral 
hight in order to he able to part with an old 
gown or an old pair of gloves,” 1 was delight¬ 
ed the other day to fiud that at last there was 
a demand for old tin cans. A Chinaman 
came to the house, offering quite liberally for 
all the empty tin cans. They seem to have 
discovered that new tops can be put on, aud 
the cans rc-used, which will depopulate the 
back yards and dumping grounds. It forms 
also a new source of pin-money to women. 
Henceforth we will not only turn our gowns 
and darn our stockings, hut carefully hoard 
tin cans! It is almost equal to a new avenue 
of employment. 
“I think,” confined, this young lady, “that I 
am not a normal woman, It seems to me every 
woman ought to like house-keeping; house 
work and the careful management required in 
a family. But 1 don't. I like study, and 1 be¬ 
grudge every moment I have to give to such 
things, How is it with you?” If I am cogi¬ 
tating, or have a matter in my mind which I 
am turning over for thorough inspection, I 
enjoy doing housework and love dearly to 
sew. Having my hands occupied facilitates 
my mental activity. But when I am through 
with my thinking, I begrudge every moment 
I am obliged to give to manual labor, or to 
doing auythiug that 1 did equally well 20 
years ago. if I hail to earn my living at man¬ 
ual labor, I would prefer housework ton great 
many other tilings—to sewing, to serving as 
clerk, shop girl, or even school teaching. 
There is nothing degrading In housework—it 
furnishes variety, and it is an occupation in 
which one can make advancement. The ob¬ 
jections commonly urged against doing house¬ 
work by American girls are the sheerest non¬ 
sense. They simply allow one of the most 
profitable and agreeable Occupations to be 
takeu from them anti absorbed by the scum of 
foreign lands. A thoroughly capable and effi¬ 
cient American girl, who is well trained, knows 
how to cook excellently, how to mauage her 
work and keep tidy; can command from five 
to six dollars a week, with room, board and 
washing, in rich families, providing she is en¬ 
tirely responsible and t rustworthy. It is very 
difficult to obtain such service, and a servant 
of that character never need fear that 
she will fail to lie respected and valued by her 
employers. But as for all women liking 
housework, because they are women, seems to 
me absurd. W e have the same auoestry as 
have men, and it. is but natural that we inherit 
the same tendencies, I think more women 
would contribute to the arts and sciences, if 
the feeling ami trauing were not so general, 
SRi^Uaufattis gUrnttaiog. 
When Baby was sick, we gave her Castorla, 
When she was a Child, she cried for Castorla, 
When she became Miss, she clung to Castorla, 
When she had Children, she gave them Castorla. 
