their children good because they love them, and good comes to them from the effort Plato said, many centuries ago: "The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time; not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your own principles in practice," and a later writer says, "It seems crystal-clear at the outset that you cannot govern a child if you have never learned to govern yourself." Dr. Harris says, "The lowest classes of society are the lowest, not because there is any organized conspiracy to keep them down, but because they are lacking in directive power," and Mrs. Kate Wiggin says, "The jails, the prisons, the reformatories, are filled with men who are there because they were weak, more than because they were evil. If the right discipline in home and school had been given them, they would never have become the charge of the nation." Here is suggested the responsibility that rests upon parents and teachers, but in view of the fact that there are many who essay to teach and train children who are themselves untaught and untrained, Dr Channing wisely says, "The hope of the world lies in the fact that parents cannot make of their children what they will." We do not understand from this that he underestimated the opportunities, power, or duties that peculiarly belong to parents, but we believe that he detected an obstacle to the perfect development of many children in the fact that they suffer from neglect or unwise methods of training, and he deemed it well that those unwise methods sometimes failed. There is a sad truth in the words of one of the characters of Charles Dickens, who, looking back over the wreck of a life and tracing her misfortunes unerringly to their source, wretched home-life, said to her mother, "Your childhood was much like mine, I suppose; so much worse for both of us." a There is a limit to the responsibility of parents. They are not responsible for the loss that comes to them and through them to their children because they failed to receive in youth wise counsel and judicious training; they are not entirely responsible for all that their children become, for those children have their agency, their will, which rightfully asserts its prerogatives and which God recognizes and teaches us to recognize. Parents are responsible for the manner in which they dispose of opportunities to remedy the defects in themselves; they are responsible for the manner in which they make use of opportunities to acquaint themselves with the needs of childhood; they are responsible for the use they make of the knowledge they have, for the efforts they may make or fail to make to bring their children under proper influences. Pestalozzi says that he considers attention to early physical and intellectual education as "merely lading to a higher aim, to qualify the human being for the free and full use of all the faculties implanted by the Creator, and to direct all these faculties toward the perfection of the whole being of man, that he may be enabled to act in his peculiar station as an instrument of that All-wise and Almighty power that has called him into life." "Every human being," said he, "has a claim to a judicious development of his faculties by those to whom the care of his infancy is confided," and he adds that what is demanded of mothers, whom he regards as the principal agents in the work of development, is a thinking love. "It is recorded," said he again, “that God opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and showed him a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let down to every descendant of Adam; it is offered to thy child. But he must be taught to climb it. And let him not attempt it by the cold calculations of the head, or the mere impulse of the heart; but let all these powers combine, and the noble enterprise will be crowned with success. These powers are already bestowed on him, but to thee it is given to assist in calling them forth." Parents, then, are responsible for the effort made to supply this demand not only upon their love but upon their intelligence. THE STORM. A saffron cloud scuds swift a-down the west. From distant meads where drowsy mists hang low A dewy breeze springs up whose faint breaths blow As fitful prophecies of strange unrest; From out the stilly wood long shadows go Like armed warriors plumed and dapple dressed. In huddling groups the bleating sheep race by To gain the welcome refuge of their pen; Wind-ripples o'er a golden sea of grain Sport with the dusky spirits of the sky; A hush, the purr of falling leaves, and then We hear the rushing tumult of the rain. -JEAN LA RUE BURNETT say thousands) possesses. She would face a snowstorm without flinching or swerving if she knew her destination required her to do so. It The value of such a trait can only be appreciated by those who have lived upon our vast treeless, trackless plains. seems to be the nature of all animals to turn and go before a storm of sleet or snow, and when one is found that will deliberately move against them without being forced to do so, it must be because of will and intelligence. Aye, more, it must be because of a certain amount of reasoning which tells them that the inconvenience so suffered will be rewarded. Mr. Reed was an early settler or pioneer of Northwestern Iowa. East, west, north, and south, stretched from his homestead an almost unbroken prairie. Now and then at remote distances others, like himself, had commenced to open up homesteads, a scratch on the face of the mighty plain, a small ed, corn crib, ; these you beyond. I winter ofnt suffering. ood fortune ran across the mighty the rare aniguide themsaved human hanksgiving. ot been any 3 had been pened when early frost came, but the Reeds seemed to feel they had ample cause for thanksgiving, and though a time of feasting and rejoicing to them, they always remembered with full hearts the source from which all blessings flow. And now Mr. Reed must needs go to the distant town thirty-five miles over a prairie road and hardly a house in sight. The weather was mild for November, and as Mrs. Reed handed in an extra comfortable just as Mr R. gathered up the reins to start, she remarked: "It looks now as though we might have an open winter." "O, we shall; no doubt of it," was his reply, "I only hope it won't open 'till I get back." How this family of father, mother, three sons, and a daughter were drawn together by the bonds of affection! The deafness of the father cutting off in part his intercourse with his scattered neighbors only seemed to make him dearer to his own household. And so they watched him go as they had many times before, expecting that at evening after three days had passed, they would all be straining their eyes away to the southeast where, on Avery's hill, nearly four miles away they had often seen a solitary wagon appear for a moment, outlined against the sky beyond and, coming nearer, it would be swallowed up in the ravines through which the road ran. And what joy that slow moving, far distant wagon created. Never a doubt but that it was he, and he had been gone so long. And he would bring some news to break the monotony of their prairie life, some echo from the busy world to the eastward, and then there would always be something unexpected, something they had had away back East, some half forgotten delicacy or some eastern apples or hickory nuts. Such simple things were prized, not for their value, but they had known them East and missed them here. On the occasion of which I write Mr. Reed's mission was quite an important one. He carried many products of the farm as well as a goodly bundle of furs, the results of his son's trapping. He would bring back yarns for winter socks and mittens, groceries to last nearly all winter, schoolbooks for the boys, a pair of boots for Milton, the eldest, and a pair of "taps" on his own, a few presents that must be kept till Christmas, and then if there was any money left a few apples or such luxuries. as the market afforded. He had a pleasant trip down, stopping for the night at Mr. Latham's, ten miles from town. The next day he would drive in, make his exchanges and get back and stop again at Mr. L's and in the morning start for home. When he arrived in town, however, he found such ready sale for his produce that it was early disposed of; the purchase of his goods went rapidly forward, and his funds dwindled with corresponding rapidity till he found himself counting his cash to see if it could be made to cover all his wants. It should be remembered that the Reeds were far from rich. Mr. Reed had wore a soldier overcoat into the town and rather a threadbare one at that. His cap had seen three hard winters, and his hands were gloveless. It happened therefore that as he passed the tempting array of gloves and mittens looking so warm and comfortable, he was sorely tempted to squander some of his money for those luxuries. He ran a stub of a lead pencil down over the carefully prepared list, but could not find a single item he dared to erase; then when the clerk was putting up the nutmegs he footed up the column and found he had enough left to get him a pair of warm mittens and right then "the iron entered the soul," for if he bought them he would have to pass right by a barrel of beautiful red apples, and the splendid atlas he had intended to buy as a grand surprise for studious Charley would have to be left on the shelf. He could not do it; he turned resolutely away from the tempting handwear saying to himself as he did so, "Mother can knit me some that will do and I will face them with a calfskin bootleg," and with a glow of satisfaction he saw the coveted book wrapped up and a half bushel of apples carefully sacked for the journey. He arrived at Mr. Latham's fully two hours before he had expected. When he had left home there was a little snow on the ground. It was now nearly gone; the weather seemed warm, almost balmy, but he had been watching the horizon uneasily, and as Mr. Latham came out and laid hold of one of the traces to unhitch the team, Mr. Reed said, “John, I am going home! We are going to have a storm and a bad one." Just throw in my sack of oats and I think I can get home by ten o'clock to-night. It was About an The team was yet fresh and started toward home very willingly. Mr. Reed watched the blue sky anxiously. very clear. It was too clear. hour before sundown a change came. The sun did not shine so bright, the sky was not so blue, the sunlight faded rapidly, a kind of darkness crept up from all around the horizon, a semi-twilight came on, not a breath stirred the dead grass and gum weeds by the roadside. The stillness grew oppressive; the air had grown cold; then something showed |