I think for a woman to fail to make and keep a happy home, is to be a 'failure' in a truer sense than to have failed to catch a husband."-Frances Power Cobbe.

"We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry."-Vittoria Corombona.

HEN Mr. Wilberforce was a candidate for Hull, his sister, an amiable and witty young lady, offered a new dress to each of the wives of those freemen who voted for her brother. When saluted with "Miss Wilberforce for ever!" she pleasantly observed, "I thank you, gentlemen, but I cannot agree with you, for really I do not wish to be Miss Wilberforce for ever."

We do not blame Miss Wilberforce or any other young lady for not wishing to be a "Miss" for ever; but we desire to point out in this chapter that all is not done when the husband is gained.

"Even in the happiest choice whom fav'ring Heaven

Has equal love and easy fortune given;

Think not, the husband gained, that all is done,

The prize of happiness must still be won ;

And oft the careless find it to their cost:
The lover in the husband may be lost;
The graces might alone his heart allure;

They and the virtues meeting must secure.”

According to Dean Swift," the reason why so few marriages are happy is because young women spend their time in making nets, not in making cages." Certainly a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and girls are quite justified in trying in all ways, consistent with modesty and self-respect, to net husbands. Still, she is the really fine woman who can not merely net the affections of a husband during the honeymoon, but who can cage and keep them throughout a long married life. Only the other day, a man told me that after forty years of married life, he loved his wife almost better than the day they were married. We are not told that Alexander the Great, after conquering the world, kept his conquest very long, but this wife kept her conquest forty years. Woman in her time has been called upon to endure a great deal of definition. She had been described as, “A good idea— spoiled!" This may be true of one who can only make nets, but it certainly is not true of a cage-maker. Always do"Her air, her smile, her motions, tell

Of womanly completeness;

A music as of household songs

Is in her voice of sweetness.

Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
The careful ways of duty;

The hard stiff lines of life with her

Are flowing curves of beauty."

Men are often as easily caught as birds, but as difficult to keep. If the wife cannot make her home bright and happy, so that it shall be the cleanest, sweetest, cheerfullest place that her husband can find refuge in—a retreat from the toils and troubles of the outer world-then God help the poor man, for he is virtually homeless.

In the home more than anywhere else order is Heaven's first law. It is the duty of a wife to sweetly order her cage so that it may be clean, neat, and free from muddle. Method is the oil that makes the wheels of the domestic machine run easily. The mistress of a home who desires order, and the tranquillity that comes of order, must insist on the application of method to every branch and department of the household work. She must rise and breakfast early and give her orders early. Doing much before twelve o'clock gives her a command of the day.

66

A friend of Robert Hall, the famous preacher, once asked him regarding a lady of their acquaintance, "Will she make a good wife for me?" "Well," replied Hall, "I can hardly say-I never lived with her!" This is the real test of happiness in married life. It is one thing to see ladies on dress" occasions and when every effort is being made to please them; it is quite another thing to see them amidst the varied and often conflicting circumstances of household life. Men may talk in raptures of youth and beauty, wit and sprightliness; but after seven years of union, not one of them is to be compared to good family management which is seen at every meal, and felt every hour in the husband's purse. In the "Records of Later Life," Fanny Kemble (Mrs. Butler), shortly after

she had begun housekeeping with a staff of six servants, writes from America to a friend, "I have been reproaching myself, and reproving others, and heartily regretting that instead of Italian and music, I had not learned a little domestic economy, and how much bread, butter, flour, eggs, milk, sugar, and meat ought to be consumed per week by a family of eight persons." There is no reason why she should not have learned all this, and Italian and music as well.

Gradually it has come to be seen that practical cookery, which might be classed under the head of chemistry, is an excellent intellectual training, as it teaches the application in daily life of knowledge derived from a variety of sweet branches of study. From this point of view even sweet girl-graduates may take pride in being good cooks, while as regards women of the working classes hardly anything drives their husbands to drink so much as bad cookery and irregular meals.

Leigh Hunt used to say that "the most fascinating women are those that can most enrich the every-day moments of existence." If we are to believe Mrs. Carlyle, who lived next door to the Hunts at Chelsea, Mrs. Hunt did not do much in the way of domestic economy to "enrich the every-day moments of existence." "I told Mrs. Hunt, one day, I had been very busy painting." "What?" she asked, "is it a portrait ?" 66 Oh! no, I told her; something of more importance-a large wardrobe." She could not imagine, she said, "how I could have patience for such things.". And so, having no patience for them herself, what is the result? She is

every other day reduced to borrow my tumblers, my teacups; even a cupful of porridge, a few spoonfuls of tea, are begged of me, because "Missus has got company, and happens to be out of the article;' in plain unadorned English, because 'missus' is the most wretched of managers, and is often at the point of having not a copper in her purse. To see how they live and waste here, it is a wonder the whole city does not 'bankrape and go out o' sicht; '-flinging platefuls of what they are pleased denominate 'crusts' (that is, what I consider all the best of the bread) into the ashpits! I often say, with honest selfcongratulation, 'In Scotland we have no such thing as "crusts." On the whole, though the English ladies seem to have their wits more at their finger-ends, and have a great advantage over me in that respect, I never cease to be glad that I was born on the other side of the Tweed, and that those who are nearest and dearest to me are Scotch. . . . Mrs. Hunt I shall soon be quite terminated with, I foresee. She torments my life out with borrowing. She actually borrowed one of the brass fenders the other day, and I had difficulty in getting it out of her hands; irons, glasses, tea-cups, silver spoons are in constant requisition; and when one sends for them the whole number can never be found. Is it not a shame to manage so, with eight guineas a week to keep house on! It makes me very indignant to see all the waste that goes on around me, when I am needing so much care and calculation to make ends meet."

When Carlyle was working hard to support himself and his wife by literature at the lonely farmhouse which was