HOME LIFE MADE BEAUTIFUL.

Home Life and Heart bife.

The New Home.

TENDER and sacred interest attaches itself to our thought of the new home, by which we mean the home first set up by a newly married husband and wife. It may be, in its way, of the order of a tent, simply a room or two in a boarding-house, or, better, because containing more true homeliness, a modest apartment on an obscure street. But be it what or where it may, this new

home is a starting point for influences and events which shall reach forward to eternity.

Whenever possible, the home should begin in housekeeping, the young married people assuming at once the state and the responsibilities of householders. In these days the wife has acquired some skill in domestic economy in her girlhood; it is the fashion for girls to be trained in the frugalities and made competent to the good management of the house, and skillful cooks not a few may be found among our college women. I have always held, however, that there is nothing so mysterious or so difficult about housekeeping that it need alarm the most inexperienced novitiate. Any moderately intelligent young woman ought to grasp the principles of housekeeping and put them into creditable practice in six weeks, especially if she have as a motive the pleasure and profit of the man she loves best out of the whole world. Once it may have been a more formidable task to keep house notably to the comfort and well-being of a family, but applied science and wonderful modern conveniences have smoothed the path for the feet of the bride, and she cannot, unless in a new country, encounter many obstacles to success.

To the new home let wife and husband bring entire confidence on the subject of finance. How much can we afford to spend? or, How little must we get along upon? are pertinent questions. It is cowardly to shirk the responsibilities of home-making because the exchequer is limited. Granted that one has a settled sum per week or month, however small, common sense and simple arithmetic will indicate how to apportion it. Rent, fuel, food, furnishing, these cost money, but

rent is foundational, and that, or whatever stands for it, must show the style in which the young people may live.

So far as the outside world is concerned, it will care very little whether the new home is a brown-stone front on an avenue or a flat over a shop. Our friends, if they are worthy the name, care for ourselves, not for our environment, and less than we sometimes think are any beyond our immediate kindred concerned about our external abode. I have seen the most brilliant throng in a brilliant circle of exclusive society people gathered in the tiny rooms of a bit of a house in a bit of an obscure court in the most unfashionable quarter of New York, but the young people whose home this was were of that fit and favored few at whose table a crust has the flavor of ambrosia. Build the new home on the self-respecting cornerstone of freedom not only from debt, but from worry lest debt should be incurred. Build it next on a strong and broad and deep anchorage in this stormy world,

that of perfect love and changeless trust.

Nothing but love will endure the stress and strain, the wear and tear of living. Love, true love, must pulsate in the atmosphere of the new home. In the very beginning let the altar of the Lord be set up, and in no circumstances suffer it to be neglected. A blessing asked at the table, family prayer, the habit of church-going, the habit of Sabbath-keeping -these go far to insure the lasting happiness of those who have entered into relations which are not for a day, nor for a year, but for all time. The new home will have its occasional flurries, for two people brought up under different family influences cannot settle at once into complete harmony. But the little breezes will blow away and the sun come out the brighter, if there be love, conscience and mutual respect on the part of the married pair.