HOME.-This word has a compara- | tively narrow signification in this country: it is not often used, and then to denote a "dwelling - place." The English attach a far deeper meaning to it. To them it means the place where the heart is the one place on earth where, above all others, the affections are centred father, mother, brother, sister, are all concentrated in that little word. To make our dwelling-place a HOME, it must be made attractive; it need not be fashionable-it must be neat; do not shut out the sunshine-it may fade the carpet, but it will preserve the health of the inmates, and give an air of cheerfulness all through the house. Don't be afraid of a little fun, lest a hearty laugh shake down some of the musty old cobwebs there. If you want to ruin your sons, let them think that all mirth and social enjoyment must be left on the threshold without, when they come home at night. When once a home is regarded as only a place to eat, drink, and sleep in, the work is begun that ends in gamblinghouses and reckless degradation. Young people must have fun and relaxation somewhere; if they do not find it at their own hearthstones, it will be sought at other and perhaps less profitable places. Therefore let the fire burn brightly at night, and make the homestead delightful with all those little arts that parents so perfectly understand. Don't repress the buoyant spirit of your children. Half an hour of merriment, round the lamp and firelight of a home, blots out the remembrance of many a care and annoyance during the day; and the best safeguard they can take with them into the

world is the unseen influence of a bright little domestic sanctum.

Encourage your children to bring their companions home with them occasionally-say once a month; allow them a cheerful room, well lighted and warmed. Encourage them in vocal and instrumental music, in parlor games and other innocent recreations. And although it is well to look in upon them sometimes to know them - do not remain, to be a restraint upon them, but let them enjoy themselves in their own way. The fact that you take an interest in them, and try to make them happy, will be sufficient to keep them from becoming too boisterous, and will teach them moderation and self-control.

Let cheerful conversation be encouraged, and the children invited to join in and ask questions. Children hunger perpetually for new ideas. They will learn with pleasure from the lips of parents what they deem drudgery to study in books; and even if they have the misfortune to be deprived of many educational advantages, they will grow up intelligent, if they enjoy in childhood the privilege of listening daily to the conversation of intelligent people. We sometimes see parents, who are the life of every company that they enter, dull, silent, and uninteresting at home among their children. If they have not mental activity and mental stores sufficient for both, let them first use what they have for their own households. A silent house is a dull place for young people, a place from which they will escape if they can. How much useful information, on the other hand, is often given

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in pleasant family conversation, and what unconscious, but excellent mental training in lively social argument, cultivate to the utmost all the graces of home conversation.

Instead of swallowing your food in sullen silence, or brooding over your business, or severely talking about others, let the conversation at the table be genial, kind, social, and cheering. Don't bring disagreeable things to the table in your conversation, any more than you would in your dishes. The more good company you have at your table the better. Hence the intelligence, refinement, and appropriate behavior of a family which is given to hospitality. Never feel that intelligent visitors can be anything but a blessing to you and yours. And in your own conversation, never lose sight of the fact that the first essential thing is truth the next, good sense- the third, good humor and the fourth, wit. Boys are more boisterous than girls; it is natural to them, and should not be unduly restrained, or it may crush out that fine manly spirit and elasticity which enables the man to surmount all difficulties.

"Ma, were you ever a boy?" said a bright-eyed little boy when reproved by his mother for too much sportiveness; "Were you ever a boy?"

This was a boy of the right stamp - having the ring of the true metal. Boys and girls should be brought up together as companions; in this way boys are more gentle, pure minded, and conscientious than those educated wholly with their own sex.

No girls brought up with boys are ever more vigorous in thought and action, less vain and frivolous, than when under the care of women alone. Boys and girls in schools together are more healthy and refined in all their associations than either sex alone.

In domestic happiness, the wife's influence is much better than her husband's; for the one, the first causemutual love and confidence-being granted, the whole comfort of the household depends upon trifles more

immediately under her jurisdiction. By her management of small sums, her husband's respectability and credit are created or destroyed. No fortune can stand the constant leakages of extravagance and mismanagement; and more is spent in trifles than women would easily believe, The one great expense, whatever it may be, is turned over and carefully reflected on ere incurred; the income is prepared to meet it; but it is pennies imperceptibly sliding away which do mischief, and this the wife alone can stop, for it does not come within a man's province. There is often an unsuspected trifle to be saved in every household.

It is not in economy alone that the wife's attention is so necessary, but in those niceties which make a well regulated house. An unfurnished cruetstand, a missing key, a buttonless shirt, a soiled tablecloth, a mustardpot with its old contents shaking hard and down about it, are really nothings; but each can raise angry words and cause discomfort, Depend upon it, there is a great deal of domestic happiness about a well-dressed muttonchop, or a tidy breakfast table. Men grow sated of beauty, tired of music; are often too wearied for conversation, however intellectual; but they can always appreciate a well-swept hearth and smiling comfort.

A woman may love her husband devotedly--may sacrifice fortune, friends, family, country for him she may have the genius of a Sappho, the enchanted beauties of an Armida; but, melancholy fact, if with these she fails to make his home comfortable, his heart will inevitably escape her, And women live so entirely in the affections, that without love their existence is void. Better submit, then, to household tasks, however repugnant they may be to your tastes, than doom yourself to a loveless home. Women of the higher order of mind will not run their risk; they know that their feminine, their domestic, are their first duties.

A good appetite is essential to a

good digestion, but a snow-white tablecloth is a great promoter of a good appetite. -No one can eat in comfort if any member of the family appears at the table in slatterly dress; with unkempt hair; showing a breadth of black under the finger-nails; with a hawking and a spitting and a blowing of the nose, and their tremendous associations.

But the spotless napkin, the most splendid roast, and faultless concomitants all, what do these amount to, if sadness is written on the face of the wife; if an angry scowl gleams from the corrugated brow of a morose husband, or a dissatisfied look comes from a child's eye, and the meal is partaken of in ominous silence? Away with such unloveliness! there is no sunshine in such a household, and the members of that family, if they grow up at all, will become the refrigerators, the bane of every company into which they may be thrown in after life.

Rather let the family table be the place of glad reunions; as much looked forward to as the promised coming of a cherished friend; let courtesies more than courtly be ever cultivated; let smiles wreath every face; let calm satisfaction sit on every countenance; let light hearts, and cheery words, and obliging acts, and watchful attentions be the order of the day; these are the promoters of a healthy digestion; and these are they which largely help to make happy homes, and good hearts, and generous natures.

The home being thus a happy place, one of the requirements of health is established, and here let us say that the one great requirement upon which all others rest, is common sense,-this is the great safeguard to health, and the best physician; it teaches us to protect ourselves from all quackery, and to accept and practice the laws of health. "Prevention is better than cure."

QUACKERY.-According to Johnson, a Quack is "a boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand; one who proclaims his own medical ability in public places; or an artful tricking practitioner in physic." And this

gives us a sufficiently clear definition of the art practised by such a pretender to medical knowledge. The advertising Quack of bygone times was a travelling mountebank, who, from a stage in some public place, vaunted the hidden virtues of his nostrums, and his own power to cure all diseases to which flesh is heir. Nostrum vendors of the present day do not so present themselves to a credulous public; as a rule, they keep behind the curtain, and flood the columns of the newspapers, and all other mediums of advertisement, with their mendacious statements of wonderful cures effected by their invaluable remedies. Never, perhaps, was Quackery so rampant and ubiquitous as in this so-called enlightened 19th century; it would almost seem as if people wished to be duped, so eagerly do they clutch at each new panacea introduced with a great flourish of puffery, and a cloud of lying witnesses in the shape of forged testimonials. So great is the consumption of “patent medicines," whose government stamp appears like a certification of marvellous efficacy-whose high price is almost looked upon as an evidence of occult virtue. Quackery is sometimes confounded with Empiricism; but there is this difference between them- the former either adopts a concealed mode of treatment, or pretends to be possessed of a remedy applicable to every form of disease, and every individual case; the latter is founded upon the principle that, as certain medicines are known to have cured certain diseases, it will be right and safe at all times, and under all circumstances, to administer those remedies, whenever the diseases, against which they have been successfully employed, appear again.

An empiric must be an instructed man, a Quack need not; he may be, and often is, utterly ignorant of the nature and real operation of his much-vaunted remedy, composed, as he would have the public believe, of rare and costly ingredients, and of

universal efficacy. Nothing but unblushing effrontery is here required, and a carelessness of consequences that would be ludicrous were it not highly criminal,

Dr. Letheby, in concluding a series of valuable articles on the mischievous effects of Quack Medicines, writes thus on Quack advertisements: -- " If any of our readers have ever been the victims of Quackery, we venture to say that it was through the medium of a cunningly-devised advertisement; for this is at all times the great decoy of the Quack, He knows its power, for he can count its results by thou sands; and he spares no pains to use it with advantage. He studies it as he would a science; and he pays as much attention to the skilful practice of it as many do to the exercise of a noble art. Indeed, the cunning and ingenuity of the quack are ever on the alert to find new means of developing the resources of the all-pow= erful puff. At one time it comes forth in the shape of a learned lecturer, who, at the request and earnest solicitation of many friends to humanity, has condescended to enlighten the world, by giving a course of six leetures on the entire principles of his system,' In the details of this course, everything is alluded to that can by any possibility excite the morbid feelings of those to whom the lectures are addressed; there are, for example, skeletons, drunkards' stomachs, diseased hearts, consumptive lungs, and other things of a like character; and not unfrequently, a hint is given that there is some probability of a sort of sparring-match between the lecturer and a real doctor, who has been in vited to attend. This artifice has the effect of bringing together a large audience, and of producing to the lecturer very happy results,

"At another time, the puff appears in the form of an ingenious account of a new medicine, and of all the diseases which it will infallibly cure, These are generally enumerated in nearly the same order the category

beginning with flatulency, and ending with thoughts of self-destruction,

"To this is, generally, added a stereotyped account of the nature and effects of the medicine on the blood and humors. Morison is particularly apt at this: indeed he may be called the founder of the humorous puff.

"The simplicity of this style is so exceedingly popular, that almost every new claimant for the honors and profits of quackery adopts it.

"Then, again, there is the testimonial puff, which has always been very successful as a decoy; and it wants but little management beyond that of keeping it up. Indeed, there are men who live by writing these puffs and selling them at so much per dozen. The styles of the various classes are always the same; and they may be subdivided into the debauchee puff, the humanity puff, the sedentary puff, and the professional puff,

"The puff professional is always in the familiar style,

"Another sort of puff is that in which the advertiser abuses Quackery, and disclaims all connection with the unprincipled parties who thus impose on the credulity of their victims,

"Last of all comes the most vicious and abominable of all species of advertised quackery that which is to be found in the by-places of every considerable town. The announce= ments to which we refer profess to be an account of the practice of some duly qualified medical man, who will undertake to cure disease with certainty, with secrecy, and at a small charge. Many an unwary victim has been lured to the den of these impostors by their specious announcements, and after having been almost ruined in health and in pocket, has found himself for years afterwards the subject of the grossest extortion. That secret which the advertiser professed to keep, is a source of revenue to him, and we need not say how it is abused, We would warn the unwary from such dangers, as we would from the plague; and no language is severe

enough to condemn the practices to which we refer.

"In conclusion, it must be manifest to our readers that the tricks of Quackery are at all times no other than the tricks of imposture. The idea of curing disease or of benefiting mankind has no place in the mind of the Quack; and even if it had, it is associated with too much ignorance to be of use. The one single object which he has in view is that of getting money by deception, and he cares not how it is accomplished, or at what cost it may be to the life and health of the community."

FOOD. To be healthy we must eat wholesome food, which, to be digested and absorbed into the system, must be well masticated (or chewed), and not swallowed in a hurry, but slowly, in order that a full flow of saliva may take place, and the food become well moistened with it before it passes into the stomach. This will prevent the necessity of drinking much at meals, which is an unwholesome habit, and especially if much cold water is indulged in while eating, for this will check the flow of gastric juice, and indigestion will follow. This same result will occur if too much food is eaten, which is apt to be the case when one eats in a hurry. Cheerfulness is a great help to digestion. Some kinds of food contain more nutrition than others, and are more easily digested (the tables giving the amount of nutriment, and the time required to digest the several articles of food, will be found in another part of this book), but, as a rule, food which is best enjoyed is best digested.

EXERCISE is also necessary to health; an idle man will rust out sooner than an industrious one will wear out. The laboring man generally gets exercise enough, and in his case we will merely suggest that when one set of muscles have been kept in work all day, it will rest him more to call into use for half an hour those muscles which have been unused, than it would to sit or lie still for that time. Persons of sedentary

occupations should have some regular plan of exercise: riding horsebackplaying ball-billiards-calisthenics are all good, but perhaps the best is walking; it brings the whole body into motion, and can be indulged in by all classes, rich and poor, though, to be beneficial, it should be pleasurable, and, to this end, a good, intelligent companion is desirable.

In selecting methods of exercise, every individual should be guided by his own individual tastes. It is better to change frequently from one exercise to another. It is well even to consult our whims and our varying moods. Above all things, we should strive to prevent our exercise from becoming a dry, hard, mechanical routine. The heart should go with the muscles.

SLEEP.-There is no absolute standard for the amount of sleep required; seven or eight hours is generally necessary-some require more, others less. To regulate the amount of sleep, it is a good plan to get up as soon as you wake; do not sleep in the daytime; and do not go to bed before your usual time. Continue this, and in a few days Nature will accommodate herself to the case, and you will not wake until she has taken the amount she demands. Old people need more sleep than the middle aged-nine or ten hours not being too much for them. Growing children also require more sleep, and it is wise not to waken them in the morning if they do not of themselves wake early enough: let them go to bed earlier the next night. It is an old saying that "one hour's sleep before midnight is worth two hours after." It is none the less true now, and every year adds to its force.

VENTILATION.-The sleeping room should be large and well ventilated. We spend more hours in it than in any other room; it should, therefore, be the most cheerful; and yet how often is it considered that any room will do to sleep in. If the room is small, the door should be left open, or lower the window half an inch from the top. A room where the sun cannot