" When to do it?" Every day of our lives we have some duties to perform to our Creator, our fellow-creatures, and ourselves. Happily, these various duties are so united and interwoven, that even in performing any one with heart and soul, we are also performing the others. We rise in the morning, and surely we have some cause to thank our Maker if the night, so fraught with sorrow and suffering to many,

has been passed by us in peace and safety; if another day is added to our lives; if our dear friends and relatives still surround us. With such thoughts in our hearts, we cannot but humbly and heartily thank God for these benefits and all others, and implore a continuance of them. These should be the first actions of the day. Then, if we have seen in our previous life errors which we would fain correct, if in the future we foresee difficulties to be overcome in which we need the counsel of one wiser than ourselves, where shall we find a solution of all doubts, counsel infinitely wise in all circumstances, save in the book which has been given us to be “a light to our feet and a lamp to our path.” With this view, we shall read a portion of the Bible every morning, not as a mere task, but that we may really find warning, counsel, and instruction in its pages. This will give us a sort of practical interest in what we read. Besides, it is singular how often, even in reading a certain portion regularly through, we find some verse peculiarly adapted to dispel some doubt, or direct in some difficulty at that moment weighing upon us, It is an excellent plan, and one recommended by the advice and practice of many admirable persons, to select a single verse in the morning as a sort of motto for the day, and to endeavour to carry out in every action of that day's life the precept it may contain. No one who has not faithfully tried this plan can appreciate the influences it has on the conduct. For instance, a young girl may read in the morning, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” She resolves as far as possible to act on this command. Her mamma, after breakfast, expresses a wish that she should undertake some duty not perhaps very agreeable to herself She feels inclined to substitute a pleasanter occupation; but she recals her motto, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it," and she is encouraged to persevere. By-and-by, perhaps, she finds herself falling into a fit of idleness, a musing on she knows not what, without aim or object; and she is beginning to relax in her exertions, when again she checks herself by thinking, “Well! this is not doing with my might.”

We might picture to ourselves the good effect of many similar texts, such as

" A soft answer turneth away wrath ;” and we might see how its adoption by one member of the family group would tend to the happiness of all; but we all can supply, from our own memory, instances of misery resulting from the want of “the soft answer.” I have given a hint for you to carry out, assured that you will find it one great means of self-improvement. For do not imagine that the strict following out of the text for that one day will be wholly without its effect in your after life. A tendency to indolence once subdued, a hasty answer suppressed, a temptation overcome, will make the next trial far less painful. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte, either in good or evil.

Whilst dressing in the morning, it will be wise to consider what your duties and occupations for the day will be; in what manner you can assist your mother in her domestic affairs, if such comes within your province; what demands there are upon your time, for business, improvement, or pleasure. The education your parents have given you has cost them much money, and perhaps they have made many sacrifices to afford you the advantages you have had : it is your duty to improve these advantages to the utmost, and a portion of every day ought to be sacredly devoted to keeping up your knowledge of languages and other accomplishments commenced in the schoolroom. Your family duties, of whatever kind, should claim another; needlework, exercise, society, charity,—all these will probably form some part of your day's duties; and whatever they may be, each should, as far as possible, have its own particular hour. Of course, the juniors of a family neither can nor ought to dictate hours in to do this we must discipline alike the head, the heart, and the mind, so that whatever our destiny, we may be found equal to it, and may be at once able and willing to “do our duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call us.”