the skill of gladiators used to amuse, but the combatants make themselves very miserable. Far better to be incapable of making a repartee if we only use the power to wound the feelings of the one whom we have vowed to love. There is an art of putting things that should be studied by married people. How many quarrels would be avoided if we could always say with courtesy and tact any unpleasant thing that may have to be said! It is related of a good-humoured celebrity that when a man once stood before him and his friend at the theatre, completely shutting out all view of the stage, instead of asking him to sit down, or in any way giving offence, he simply said, "I beg your pardon, sir; but when you see or hear anything particularly interesting on the stage, will you please let us know, as we are entirely dependent on your kindness?" That was sufficient. With a smile and an apology that only the art of putting things could have extracted, the gentleman took his seat. There is a story of a separation which took place simply because a gracious announcement had been couched by a husband in ungracious terms. "My dear, here is a little present I have brought to make you good tempered." "Sir," was the indignant reply, "do you dare to say that it is necessary to bribe me into being good tempered? Why, I am always good tempered; it is your violent temper, sir!" And so the quarrel went on to the bitter end.

It is a very difficult thing to find fault well. We all have to find fault at times, in reference to servants, children, husband, or wife; but in a great number of cases the operation loses half its effect, or has no effect at all, per

haps a downright bad effect, because of the way in which it is done. Above all things remember this caution, never to find fault when out of temper. Again, there is a time not to find fault, and in the right perception of when that time is lies no small part of the art. The reproof which has most sympathy in it will be most effectual. It understands and allows for infirmity. It was this sympathy that prompted Dr. Arnold to take such pains in studying the characters of his pupils, so that he might best adapt correction to each particular case.

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The very worst time for a husband and wife to have a few words" is dinner-time, because, if we have a good dinner, our attention should be bestowed on what we are eating. He who bores us at dinner robs us of pleasure and injures our health, a fact which the alderman realized when he exclaimed to a stupid interrogator, "With your confounded questions, sir, you've made me swallow a piece of green fat without tasting it." Many a poor wife has to swallow her dinner without tasting it because her considerate husband chooses this time to find fault with herself, the children, the servants, and with everything except himself. The beef is too much done, the vegetables too little, everything is cold. "I think you might look after something! Oh! that is no excuse," and so on, to the great disturbance of his own and his wife's digestion. God sends food, but the devil sends the few cross words that prevent it from doing us any good. We should have at least three laughs during dinner, and every one is bound to contribute a share of agreeable table-talk, good-humour, and cheerfulness.

"In politics," said Cavour, "nothing is so absurd as rancour." In the same way we may say that nothing is so absurd in matrimony as sullen silence. Reynolds in his "Life and Times" tells of a free-and-easy actor who passed three festive days at the seat of the Marquis and Marchioness of without any invitation, convinced (as proved to be the case) that, my lord and my lady not being on speaking terms, each would suppose the other had asked him. A soft answer turns away wrath, and when a wife or a husband is irritated there is nothing like letting a subject drop. Then silence is indeed golden. But the silence persisted in-as by the lady in the old comedy, who, in reply to her husband's "For heaven's sake, my dear, do tell me what you mean," obstinately keeps her lips closed -is an instrument of deadly torture. "A wise man by his words maketh himself beloved." To this might be added that on certain occasions a fool by his obstinate silence maketh himself hated.

"According to Milton, 'Eve kept silence in Eden to hear her husband talk,'” said a gentleman to a lady friend; and then added, in a melancholy tone, "Alas! there have been no Eves since." "Because," quickly retorted the lady, "there have been no husbands worth listening to." Certainly there are too few men who exert themselves to be as agreeable to their wives (their best friends), as they are to the comparative strangers or secret enemies whom they meet at clubs and other places of resort. And yet

if it is true that " to be agreeable in our family circle is not only a positive duty but an absolute morality," then every husband and wife should say on their wedding day

"To balls and routs for fame let others roam,
Be mine the happier lot to please at home."

In one of the letters of Robertson, of Brighton, he tells of a lady who related to him "the delight, the tears of gratitude which she had witnessed in a poor girl to whom, in passing, I gave a kind look on going out of church on Sunday. What a lesson! How cheaply happiness can be given! What opportunities we miss of doing an angel's work! I remember doing it, full of sad feelings, passing on, and thinking no more about it; and it gave an hour's sunshine to a human life, and lightened the load of life to a human heart for a time!" If even a look can do so

much, who shall estimate the

power of kind or unkind

words in making married life happy or miserable? In the home circle more than anywhere else—

"Words are mighty, words are living:
Serpents with their venomous stings,
Or bright angels, crowding round us,
With heaven's light upon their wings :
Every word has its own spirit,

True or false that never dies;
Every word man's lips have uttered
Echoes in God's skies."

"When souls, that should agree to will the same,
To have one common object for their wishes,
Look different ways, regardless of each other,
Think what a train of wretchedness ensues! "

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AID a husband to his angry wife: Look at
Carlo and Kitty asleep on the rug; I wish men
lived half as agreeably with their wives."

"Stop!" said the lady. "Tie them together, and see how they will agree!" If men and women when tied together sometimes agree very badly what is the reason? Because instead of pulling together each of them wishes to have his or her own way. But when they do pull together what greater thing is there for them than "to feel that they are joined for life, to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in the silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?"

What is meant by pulling together may be explained by