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Common Sense in the Home.

Were one to draw deductions from the fiction of the period, he would reach the conclusion that simple loyalty in home life and the absolute integrity of wedded love were things out of date and relegated to tradition. Few of the novelists of to-day content themselves with describing society as it really is; they draw their material from the exceptional infelicities and occasional blunders and wretched calamities of life rather than from the peaceful and gentle conditions which, heaven be praised, still prevail largely among civilized and Christian people.

Fiction to the contrary, the fact is in evidence, and can easily be proved, that the fidelity and happiness of true hearts builds up everywhere among us the fair edifice of ideally blessed life-home life, dignified, serene, interesting, hallowed. Daily our trains carry thousands of passengers whose background in life is the sweet and sheltered home. Fathers and sons go from the tranquil household to the world-the shop, the office, the market-in the morning, and return at evening to supper and the company of their families. The home happenings, the engagements, weddings, journeys, triumphs, trials, gains, losses, plans and ambitions make life's main interest for most men and women.

Therefore it is that the home enlists our sympathetic and cordial thought, when bride and groom, entering it, begin their course together. Probably it is a modest home, if, having only small means, the two have been brave enough to decide that they will live according to their income, and that they will ignore display and assist one another. A little apartment, a small house, close calculation, a willingness to serve one's self, a determination to incur no debts, and a basis of entire confidence underlying all, the new home is well started.

From the outset the home should be hospitable. Not to the extent of keeping open house, so far as meals and lodging are concerned, for a throng of kindred and friends; this is manifestly impracticable and should not be attempted, even if relatives are so thoughtless as to demand it. I have known the finances of a young couple seriously invaded by the effort they have made to entertain freely and frequently a large family connection, who fancied that they made up possible loss to John and Betty by sending them invitations at Thanksgiving and presents at Christmas. A little dinner or luncheon may be given inexpensively and daintily now and then, however, and John should be encouraged in the feeling that when he chooses he may bring home a friend without its occasioning to Betty more trouble or care than the setting on the always neatly appointed table another plate and cup. Company brightens wit and broadens conversation, and in their absorption in one another the youthful husband and wife do not wish to grow narrow.

One of the most important steps to be taken at first when the home is being established is the regulation of its money affairs. The income may be smaller or

larger, but the amount does not affect the fact that its administration must be according to an intelligent and mutually understood and approved system. Accounts must be kept. The wife should have her allowance for domestic purposes, and beyond this, even if very small, her personal allowance, so that she need not ever have to ask for her share of the family funds, nor do more than consult her husband, if she choose, as to the disposition of her money.

Husbands and wives are in a sense business partners, and often able to advise one another to advantage if the affairs of the firm are concealed from neither. That a man should love and respect his wife and discount her ability and judgment on matters involving the spending of money or the giving it in charity, shows that he has been very unfortunately reared.

Money is only one subject in which the new home needs to be careful when laying its foundations. Quite as important in every aspect is the decision which brings the new family into the integral life of a church. From the very beginning pew rent should be as much considered among the essentials as house rent, and the wedded pair have their place and their work in some congregation, where the pastor values the young married people of his parish as a most influential element in the success of his endeavors. Attendance on the weekly prayer meeting and the Lord's Day services will bring nothing but blessedness to the new home.

Grace before meals and a family altar will consecrate the pleasant household life and should by no means be neglected. Our modern rush and the intensity of the world's insistent pressure make regular family worship difficult for those who do not recognize its immense importance nor regard it as an obligation. Whatever the difficulties in the way, if regarded in the light of duty, family worship, either in the morning or the evening, can be maintained in the Christian home. Sweeter than honey and the honeycomb are the statutes of the Lord, if daily studied, regularly read and prayerfully followed by the two whom God hath joined together and to whom he has given the privileges and opportunities of a household of their own.

Home Life of Famous Men.

Among the records of wedded life and love scattered through literature, we find many beautiful testimonies to the faith and truth and sacredness of the married state. Some are brief, some are long; all are interesting to the thoughtful reader.

Among the most entertaining accounts of courtship and marriage is the one given in his published life, of the wedded state of that eccentric and gifted clergyman,

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THE HOME WHICH HONORS THE LORD'S DAY WILL BE HONORED BY THE PRESENCE

OF THE LORD.

(41)

THE REV. ROWLAND HILL

Many stories have been told of this good man's carelessness as a husband, but these, like his public allusions to his wife, "are utterly," says his biographer, "without foundation." He was only amused at most of the anecdotes related of him, and said, "I wonder at people's invention;" but when told it had been reported that he had made some remarks in public on Mrs. Hill's dress, he exclaimed with indignation, "It is an abominable untruth-derogatory to my character as a Christian and a gentleman; they would make me out a bear.”

He was married to Miss Tudway, his brother-in-law's sister, on the twentythird of May, 1773, at Marylebone Church, and his choice could not have fallen on a lady more calculated to promote the happiness he was permitted to enjoy, in a union of nearly sixty years' duration. He immediately went with his wife into Somersetshire. On the Trinity Sunday following he was ordained deacon to the parish of Kingston, at a stipend of forty pounds a year.

The following was the first letter to Miss Tudway, than which anything more old-fashioned can hardly be imagined:

"MY DEAR MADAM.-I am told by my dear sister that you are no stranger to a very important correspondence in which you are a person very intimately concerned. Suffer me, dear madam, with the utmost simplicity, to speak all my mind.

"And first, I think I can safely say with all my heart, as before the presence of God, that I love your person. Without this, on both sides the question, there can be no real happiness in such a connection as you know is upon the tapis. Permit me also to say that I am fully persuaded of the truest work of grace upon your soul; and though I know the sincerity of your mind makes you at times doubt of everything, yet your very doubts, to me, are the strongest evidence of the sincerity of your heart. Thus, as a man and a Christian, with your leave, would I be glad to make choice of you as my partner through life. But now, dear madam, let us, above all things, consult matters honestly before God as to your union with a poor worm in the character of a minister of Christ. will be explicit, as I mean above all things to be honest before God.

Here I

"The present plan of labor, to which it seems evident it has pleased God to call me, will frequently compel me to leave my home, wherever it may be, and to take up at times the life of an itinerant; and such a life as this you must expect will sometimes be attended, as to myself, with hardships and contempt. Were your kindness for my person, however it might be the language of love, to make you attempt to dissuade me from this, such discussion would not only be a burden upon my mind, but also, if not complied with, a grief to yourself. And now, dear madam, if such an union should take place, do you think you could make

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your mind perfectly easy in thus giving me up to the service of the Lord? Can you be contented to see me a despised pilgrim for my once despised Master, rejected for my labors; overpowered for my God? Should you be enabled to love me, on the one hand, and yet to give me up when called to it on the other, suffer me to frame to myself the happy idea of being possessed of such a companion in tribulation, and such a partaker of my joys, as will give me reason of thankfulness to the day of my death.

"Thus much you have of the dark side of the question, and I choose that you should know it, as I would not deceive you on any terms whatever; in other respects, as I am sure I love your person, I shall always think it my pleasing duty to make your life a happiness to itself.

The understanding, accordingly, with which Miss Tudway accepted the offer of Rowland Hill, while in the fervor of his youthful zeal, was never forgotten nor evaded by her, nor did she, "in a single instance, during the whole term of their union, suffer personal convenience or inclination to impede such movements as he considered it his duty to make." Gifted with a sound and discriminating judgment, she managed with peculiar tact the difficult task of controlling her husband's ardent nature, "without checking his usefulness or activity; and the weight of her influence was so nicely balanced that it restrained but did not repress, it wisely directed but did not dictate.”

The somewhat stilted and formal air in which gentlemen of a former day made love, has few better examples than in the candid letter of Rowland Hill, which evidently excited no displeasure on the part of its recipient. She treasured all his letters and this one was duly inscribed by her, as "the first.”

Everybody has heard of the tenderness of the great Dr. Johnson for the lady who became his wife. To modern ideas, the worship of his contemporaries for the good doctor is not a little perplexing, but it was sincere. We own a great regard for the independent young student who preferred to fight his way through the university unaided, and threw out of the window the pair of new shoes which had been left at his door, but the very quality of independence which compels our admiration may have helped to make the great scholar and lexicographer rather boorish in the drawing-room.

But he was an adoring husband.

When speaking of his wife to Mrs. Thrale, Dr. Johnson had nothing to complain of but her "particular reverence for cleanliness," which seems at times to have caused him a good deal of annoyance. This "pretty charmer," as he sometimes gallantly styled his wife, was, says Garrick, "very fat, with a bosom of more than ordinary protuberance; her swelled cheeks were of a florid red, produced by thick painting, and increased by the liberal use of cordials; glaring and

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