"O, Laddie and Elsie both want to leave home," said I. Why cannot children be contented to stay where they belong, and with those who love them best?"

"For the same reason, my love, that we were not contented to stay in our homes, good as they were, but must needs go out and make one for ourselves. A pretty comfortable one, too," said he, glancing around, "and all our own. But come to tea now, little woman, and we will discuss this weighty matter by and by."

At the table I glanced from one young face to another and realized that my nestlings were indeed fledged and ready to take flight, but how could I let them go? But when, in our own room, I told Elnathan so, he only smiled and said "My dear, did you expect to keep them?"

soon.

"No, of course not, but I did not think they would go so And here is Laddie, foolish boy, not only going away from home, but already looking forward to a wife and a home of his own, when it will be a long time before he can support any one but himself. And I suppose in a few years some man will beguile Elsie into loving him and leaving us for him." "Do you know, dear heart, that Laddie is as old as I was when you left your home to bless and brighten mine? He has a far better prospect of a competence than I had at his age, and while I am glad that the wife and the home are to be a few years in the future, yet Laddie is steady and sensible, and if he were to marry a girl equally so, to-morrow, I should have no fears of his future. And as for Elsie, I certainly hope to live to see her in a home of her own, a happy wife and mother. My wife, we have given our children the best education and training our means would allow, and when the time comes we must trust them to their own feet to go alone. It is God's ordinance that they should make their own future and we can neither help nor hinder. And before you realize it the time will come for Margery to go also, for Mr. Crittenden, the drawing-master, stopped me to-night to say that she had a talent for design that might be of great use to her, and to urge that as soon as old enough she should be sent to an art school and receive further instruction, and if that seems to be her proper career, we have no right to say her nay."

"O!" I cried aghast, “I shall have none left but Rob, and even he is clamoring to be rid of his kilts and to go to school." And yet, dear love, you will let them all go."

And so, I suppose, I shall. Elnathan can look ahead and see what lies beyond for the children, but I, their mother, can only shiver with nameless fears.

"There are so many daily cares,

Which no one knows and no one shares,

Too small for me to tell,

Which even my husband cannot see,
Nor his dear love unlift from me,

Which mothers know so well."

We have reached, Elnathan and I, a point where we can pause and look about us. Though not old, we have attained an age where, already, when we visit the beautiful God's acre of our native town, the familiar names upon the headstones increase year by year; and as we walk about there we say to each other "Did you know he was gone?" or "I had forgotten she had been called,-so young, too," and then, as we look again, we see that it was not so young after all, but that it is only we who have forgotten how we are aging, and how the companions of our youth have aged also, or already passed away. Looking back, this autumn afternoon, through all these housekeeping years, how softened, yet how radiant becomes the picture with its mingled light and shadow. There were the days when the struggle to do so much with so little seemed useless to be kept up any longer. There were the days when sickness became a familiar visitant, when the

always passed us by. We have not grown rich; no mechanic with a family to support does that, but we have constituted a happy household of loving hearts. Our story is only that of thousands of other families, the heads of which fill our workshops and factories, and make up the bone and sinew of our cities and villages, while the wives and mothers toil just as hard to make the homes bright and comfortable. There is no reason why any young man and woman, blessed with health and employment, should not keep house comfortably on the wages usually paid to mechanics.

"All the world loves a lover," ana old married people, like Elnathan and I, have still enough sentiment left in our hearts to bless and welcome every young couple starting a home in our midst. But, my dears, before commencing your venture, be sure you love each other so devotedly that no pressure of poverty, no deprivation or self-denial, made necessary by your limited means, can ever make you grow cold or fault-finding toward each other, for nothing but the utmost trust and confidence in each other will carry you through. It will be a veritable bearing of each other's burdens. The housework will be hard, the going without things you need will be hard, the care of children will be exacting and wearing to the last degree; but all these may be borne, nay, more, may be met and overcome, for each other's sake. But, oh! the woful failures I have seen, the cases where the wife, young and undisciplined, chafed and fretted under the inevitable burdens that she had assumed, voluntarily it is true, but with no conception of their real gravity and magnitude, still wishing for the freedom and admiration of her girlhood days, feeling the care of children an intolerable burden; or the husband, equally undisciplined, entirely unfit to maintain the honor and dignity essential to the head of a household, seeing no reason why he should curb the expenses or habits he had indulged in before marriage. Then indifference has turned into recrimination, to be followed by separation, and two lives have been marred and ruined; fortunate, indeed, if there are no little ones to be quarreled over, or left to the mercy of relatives or strangers.

These things ought not to be. We, who have borne the burden and heat of the day, who have built up homes and trained up children, have a right to protest and advise. Nay, we have more, we have a duty to do. We should so encourage these young aspirants for matrimony and housekeeping, we should so show them by our being and doing the beauty of true living, that they will think there is nothing else worth striving and toiling for.

After all, we have only to work one day at a time. And while the long vista of years in which our children are growing up seems interminable, while it seems as if they would never be trained to what we wish them to be, yet one day's labor, one hour's loving guidance is all we need give at a time; and love makes it easy.

I have been greatly humbled and saddened, sometimes, when a young wife or mother, especially the last, has come to me and said "It is always pleasant here; tell me how you do it," or "Laddie is always good, and gentle, and obedient. How have you made him so?"

Then, indeed, I see my shortcomings and errors, the failures and mistakes I have made, and I can only say “My dear, there is no secret. It is only by giving yourself. And if you love your home and your child as I think you love them, or you would not be so anxious, you will naturally give yourself, and in doing that the rest will come. Nothing else will do it; not money, nor position, nor learning, will answer, but only that old, old story, as old as life itself, that

'Love shall still be lord of all.'"

THE END.

-H. Annette Poole.

Original in GoOD HOUSEKEEPING.

THE FASHIONS.

AUTUMN CONSIDERATION AND COMMENT. EW YORK, like a huge giant, stretches his huge limbs, and gradually arousing from midsummer sleep makes ready for action. Business has commenced much earlier this season than usual. Eventful days are these for fashion; days fraught with the most fantastical vagaries, new and most extravagant fancies, yet, with the consideration of her sex, Fashion is not inexorable in all respects, particularly in the art of combining fabrics of the past,-such as corduroy, camel's hair, cheviot, Chuddah cloth; whatever is shaggy or rough, and fortunate is the possessor of Astrakhan in the fur or in the wool imitation, for this revival is seen in some way on nearly all the wool fabrics and costumes, and whoever has been so fortunate as to ignore the dazzle of crazy silk patchwork and leave the wide skirted silk gowns of the long ago unmolested in the depths of packing trunk, may now dis inter them. If of dark material, the four or six wide breadths will be none too wide, but if of light, will make admirable foundations for charming draperies on evening toilettes to be mounted upon it, such as tinseled lace, soft surah silk, lace-trimmed, bands of silk, gimp, chenille, panels worked with jet, or with the new wood beads of rosewood, ash, chestnut, and other woods. The fashion revival of open waists has revived, also chemisettes and the old-fashioned stomacher; all manner of dainty and becoming fancies are introduced.

Naturally, for morning wear and plain street walking dress, there are fine white linen chemisettes with narrow cluster tucks and a little embroidery between each cluster, or a narrow band of insertion and a narrow collar turned over; these are fastened generally with gold or other studs. For other occasions, charming little kerchiefs are tucked in of silk, gauze, chenille dotted lace, crêpe de chene, plain or embroidered, the lightest silk and quantities of ribbon; not only bows, but laid on flat like panels, and the end left loose is pointed with the finish of bead or chenille tassels. The newest ribbons, for this and other uses, are the new plush, Astrakhan and wool ribbons. In place of chemisettes or vests, if preferred, plastrons are worn, covering the whole front of the waist, made of soft satin or silk embroidered; in fact, the variety, elegance, and profusion of embroidery upon these delicate vests and plastrons is beyond description in a limited space, but this is the fairy region into which all skillful fingers can penetrate, -the field of embroidery,-whether it be on heavy wool, the most transparent of crêpe or lace, or any other silk fabric. Gold and silver thread is introduced in all colors on all materials.

Velvet crowns, on the latest imported bonnets, are embroidered with silk and illuminated beads; these are duplicated on cloth crowns in exquisite needlework, and there are other crowns of odd pleated wool braid with a large carved wooden bead in each opening. These crowns are all sold separately for those who desire to make their own bonnets, which is really a very simple thing to do and no longer a profound mystery to the novice. A frame is simply to be plainly covered with cloth, velvet or plush. The crown can be purchased embroidered; if of plain cloth or velvet it may be dotted all over, crown included, with beads in a little diamond, dots, or tiny loops, or rows of the smallest flat buttons are seen fastened on cloth or velvet, but beads are used in the utmost profusion. The fur felts of a fashion passed away are again revived; these are trimmed with narrow fur or bands of

Astrakhan. The trimmings on the winter bonnets are the reverse of grace. The tall bows are lined with a stiff net to keep them upright; these consist of six or eight, and are held together by a band; across these is placed the brilliant head or wing or plumes of some bird of the tropics. For a hat, several quill feathers are used. The fashionable wool ribbon in frisé is satin on the under side. In order that the dainty neck garniture may not be hidden, and for several other good reasons, bonnet strings have passed away and in their place is "a throat bow." The bonnet is tied fast with very narrow strings unseen. To this is fastened a flat, large bow, rather pointed, like the Midas' ears of the summer, the pointed part pinned to the side of the bonnet to keep it in place. These are decidedly an improvement on the regular bonnet strings, less expensive and less trouble. The narrow strings, in some instances, are fastened on the outside of the bonnet with an ornamental gilt, steel, or other pin. Blue is used on brown, poppy red on sea-green, sunflower or marigold-yellow on black when becoming to the complexion. One of Virot's Paris turbans, of exquisitely fine wood-brown cloth, has a brim of Astrakhan fur. The trimming consists of broad ribbon, striped moss-green, brown and Roman red, made in three elongated bows fastened with an antique ornament of oxidized silver.

Carriage and other dress bonnets are exceedingly ornate of the richest plum and moss-green, velvet embroidered in the glowing cashmere colors. The Devonshire has a flaring front, tall crown, and is massed with graceful ostrich plumes; a little capote of dark gray plush has a dainty crown of gray crape worked all over with scintillating shades of gray beads, large cut gray beads surround the front, a cluster of superb rich crimson roses is set just above the front, near the crown, and there are broad gray satin strings attached. Extravagance of embellishment and irregularity of outline are more welcomed than discouraged, the object with the class termed "Society "-meaning the millionaires-and less than a million, is not encouraged-is not so much to cultivate artistic grace as to call attention to their own perfections of person, and a certain oddity of costume which they call chic, but is really not, that assists the ways and means, thence the present extravagance in costume.

The latest magnificence of fabric is the metal cloth, really cloth of silver and of gold; to describe properly one needs to refer to the days of Richard the Second, when the tailors devised and served "such ungodly fancies," like an elongated kaleidoscope stiff with needlework of gold, powdered with pearls, and in those days the family arms were emblazoned on skirt, sleeve or mantle. Established in the private sanctum of some of our enormous establishments, I look at the samples in the Paris books with the appreciation extended to fine pictures. As a work of art these fabrics are marvellous. The Velour Byzantine is one smooth and glittering cloth of gold on the wrong side; on the right side, of surpassing beauty, large mediaval figures in gold are brought out in strong relief on white satin, reproduced with such fidelity it seems to be the result of the painters' art instead of the cunning artisan. This is seen in silver: A magnificent faille is covered with moiré hieroglyphic design,-meaning the moiré is in watered rings one within another; again, there are heavy satins closely following old Gobelin tapestry antedating the Renaissance. Some other designs on these superb fabrics are enormous lilies of dazzling silver, shaded with silk, with long, curving, thick stems drooping on faille woven with gold thread on white ground. A cloth of gold moiré antique explains the common expression of "standing alone," producing as grand an effect as might the sheeny panoply of the Maid of Orleans. A Hugo violet ground of satin with quaint figures of glinting gold, is like the tender purple of a wintry sunset with ripples

Original in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING.

THE BRENTON

FAMILY PROBLEM

THE BRUNTONS' FAMILY PROBLEM AGAIN. CONSIDERED AND DISCUSSED ANEW.

HERE was much discussion with the Bruntons' friends over their Family Problem. Some of the friends declared that such a programme as the Bruntons' had carried out was quite too expensive. But Mrs. Brunton, at the end of the season, was able to laugh them to scorn. Indeed, she declared that, at the beginning, she was afraid she was making money upon it. After the first week all the young men had brought the money they had saved on their Restaurant bills, and Angelina and Aspasia brought theirs, and the University girls. At first, refusing her daughters' payment, she had accepted that of the young men, buying a new chandelier for the parlor. But as time went on, she found herself accumulating money so fast that she "stopped payment," as she phrased it. She had no idea of making money in keeping house, and was willing to show her accounts. Mrs. Brunton never could have displayed such courage if she had not been supported by Aunt Cecilia, who was strong on accounts and who could bring statistics to prove her points. A certain sum of money had been allowed her from Mr. Brunton to be used within a certain period, estimated upon what he could afford, and what, from former experience he concluded that the food and living of a family of sixteen, with servants, ought to cost, and Aunt Cecilia's problem had been to bring the family expenses within this prescribed sum and she had succeeded. There was some scepticism among the young men of the family. They did not have much faith in womens' accounts. Very likely Aunt Cecilia thought she had paid all the regular bills, but doubtless an unexpected milkman would yet turn up, with a bill forgotten when they changed the milkman. Mrs. Brunton stoutly declared that they had not changed their milkman, and had their milk all along from the Trotters, who had bought their old farm-house and were going on with it, and the milk-bill had been paid monthly.

Erastus and Eustace, however, still continued their jeers at a woman's account book. They admired the new housekeep ing plan, and would under no circumstances have it altered, but they hated "petty economies," as they called them. "Why not spend a lot upon their meals? What did one earn money for, except for a living? And how could they live without food?"

Erastus argued that surely he ought to be allowed to put the savings of his wine bills into the family fund, on every principle. He was surprised how he now never needed his champagne that he used to call for with his dinners at Young's; now he was so interested in the agreeable family talk at the Bruntons' dinner table he never thought of it. Indeed, this talk not only gave him entertainment, but he saw he must hold his own head clear by abstaining from wine, in order to keep up with it. It was a change of excitements, and he surely preferred that of the present arrangement.

Mr. Brunton came to the rescue of the committee, in the attack upon its finances. He had left the room, during the latter part of the conversation, and came back with his hands full of papers, some of them very yellow.

He then referred to his parcel of yellow papers. It seemed he had his old accounts of family expenses for many years, which he had kept carefully, and he was able to declare with confidence to his many friends, that this past season had been the most economical of all similar periods in the household. Of course this comparison had been made with due consideration and calculation of the numbers composing the family, which had always been large in the hospitable Brunton home. The time of greatest expense had been when he had attempted to carry on a large farm, besides his other concerns. "I ought to have stuck to my factories," he went on. "I supposed that the farm would help the family expenses. In a certain way it did; there was less outlay for certain necessaries. But the farm was expensive. I had other things to occupy my time and interests. I bought plenty of machines and labor-saving novelties, and thought the farm ought to pay, but it needed a head-I mean a brain-to carry it on, and mine was busy with other things. I could not carry on two sets of things satisfactorily, one had to yield to the other. If I had given my mind to it, I might have made more out of that farm than Trotter is now doing. It was not an economical thing."

"Economy!" "Economical!" Hector burst in. "I have been trying for a chance to beg you all to use plain English words which will make the thing much more simple-"

Hector was interrupted by a universal laughter, at his coming out with his latest hobby. Hector was apt to be silent because he had such singular "manias" with regard to conversation. At one time he insisted upon the family's talking French entirely, at another, he urged Russian upon them. For a while he had taken up a Johnsonian mode of expression, using long words of Latin origin. Just now he had gone to the other extreme and insisted that pure English only, should be used, and rejected, or flung out, as he would have said, any words that showed they were of foreign origin.

"I have been waiting a chance to speak," he said, "to beg of you to drop your 'foreign terms' and use straight English; you would see that 'economy' is the same thing as 'careful housekeeping.' It is only a fixed up Greek word from two words that mean oikos, a house, and vomos, a law, a rule.' Your 'economy' means merely 'rule in the house,' and you must have both."

"Thank you, Hector," said Aunt Cecilia, "that is what our committee has been trying for, and what your father has said makes it all more clear. A household needs a head, just as his farm did. 'The rule of the house;' that is the important thing. You can't 'keep house' by shirking the trouble. You must give your mind to it every day, and the 'giving their minds' to it is the entertaining part of it, if only housekeepers would think so. It is of no use to try to make out a list of food, for instance, for the successive days, beforehand, in the hope of escaping work. It only makes the meals uninteresting when they come on, week after week, regularly, and even the housekeeper loses her interest in them. Our aim has been to make the meals interesting, and we have begun by being interested in them ourselves."

"I know it," said Aspasia, "it is quite an excitement to have a sudden illumination of something delightful for lunch, or the day's dessert,-if only somebody is on hand to appreciate it. And now we have established our reputation, and always do have a 'full board,' I know of no greater joy than to have our little ideas appreciated."

applause, and you do give it for our meals, but there are less

conspicuous details of the household where the housekeeper -'the economizer '--never gets her due praise. The care of the tablecloths, and towels and napkins, the little niceties that make home comfortable,—all these are unnoticed. Any failure is commented upon, perhaps, with sarcasm, but who is there to praise?"

"I beg pardon," said Erastus, but that is one of the reasons that makes me cling to the Brunton family, as long as I can be borne, instead of going to Chambers' with my friend Noddy, as he begs me. It is the exquisite neatness of this household that makes one of its great charms."

But you see we had to extract this compliment from you," said Aspasia.

Here the University girls begged to add their assent to the statement of Erastus. They never had noticed any failure, or had occasion to comment upon it. They were sorry to say they had spilled ink themselves on a choice tablecloth, that Miss Aspasia must have regretted, as she had worked it herself in Holbein stitch, but she never alluded to the disaster. "A disaster of no consequence," murmured Aspasia, "it came out with oxalic acid easily—”

"Another nonsense of words," exclaimed Hector with disgust. "Disaster!' 'Oxalic.' Instead of disaster, why not speak of the evil stars that had blasted your linen? How much more full of meaning! and why talk of oxalic acid? Even the Greek word owes its name to the juice of the woodsorrel which is called 'oxalis,' from a word meaning nothing more or less than sour wine. Here you get the poetry of it." "I beg pardon," said Aspasia, "but claret would have stained my napkin more than the ink. I went to the chemist, and he gave me oxalic acid."

"You might at least have asked for 'salts of lemon," answered Hector. "Salt is from the good Old English sealt, and it is found in all languages,-salz in German, sel in French, and so on."

"And lemon is Persian," suggested Erastus.

"Because the fruit is Persian," answered Hector, and would have gone on further, but there came an interruption from Mrs. Brunton, who had long been silent.

"Josiah," she exclaimed to her husband, "you must be mistaken about your accounts, you know at the farm we had all the milk we could use, from our own cows, and we fattened our own pigs."

"That is true," said Mr. Brunton, “but our cows and our pigs cost us too much, and our milk and our bacon were more expensive than they are now."

Mrs. Brunton, however, persisted. She did not like to have any shadows flung upon those halcyon days of the farm.

"You don't take into account," she went on, "what we had to give away. I don't mean merely to the tramps that came along, and the grinding organs and the bears, and we did give them all they wanted in dinners, or a night in the barn, perhaps, but we had our families that we sent things in to, and now Aspasia don't like to have me give a bit of bread at the door, even if I should ever hear of anybody's coming, and she has instructed Roger to turn them away, or give them a note to the Associated Charities-"

"That is it," exclaimed Eustace. "My dear Aunt Cecilia, you must regret that."

"I will allow," continued Mrs. Brunton, "that we ought not to encourage the tramps, but we used to provide for one or two families,-good respectable families, the Raffertys, for instance."

Another shout again interrupted Mrs. Brunton.

"The Raffertys, indeed! Not only the Raffertys," exclaimed Eustace, "but the Raffertys' pigs. And we have none of these, I suppose, in Boston, but is it not an advantage to have no Raffertys?

"I suppose, Aspasia's 'Raffertys,' whoever they are," said Erastus, "are taught to earn their own dinners."

"That is what she thinks," said Mrs. Brunton in a tone so dejected that it excited the mirth of the family afresh, “but I'm sure I don't know if they have any dinners."

The friends who had caused this discussion were now ready to ask for Aspasia's defence, but it was time for them to go, and they suggested she should "write a paper" on the subject of the "Rafferty" dinners, and whether they could be made interesting.

"I really don't see," said one of their neighbors, "how you can adapt your rules to people who can't get any dinners." Aspasia declared she had no time to prepare the "paper" so beloved by Bostonians, but she would be glad to talk by the hour on the subject, if they would come to hear her.

"Our 'rules,' as you call them, are quite as satisfactory for 'the Raffertys and that class," she said, “and, indeed, the Raffertys have come up to Boston themselves, and I can report directly of them."

So the party adjourned to meet again to hear how Aspasia managed with the Raffertys and others of their kind. -Lucretia P. Hale.

Compiled for GOOD HOUSEKEEPING.

IT IS WELL TO REMEMBER

That old friends are best.
That the tongue is not steel yet it cuts.

That the purest water uns from the hardest rock.
That cheerfulness is the bright weather of the heart.
That sleep is the best stimulant, a nervine safe for all to take.
That it is better to be able to say No, than to be able to read Latin.
That cold air is not necessarily pure nor warm air necessarily
impure.

That a cheerful face is nearly as good for an invalid as healthy weather.

That there are men whose friends are more to be pitied than their enemies.

That advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give, but hard enough to take.

That wealth may bring luxuries but that luxuries do not always bring happiness.

That grand temples are built of small stones and great lives made up of trifling events.

That nature is a rag merchant who works up every shred and art and end into new creations.

That an open mind, an open hand and an open heart would

That it is not enough to keep the poor in mind; give them something to make them keep you in mind.

That men often preach from the house-tops while the devil is crawling in to the basement window.

That life's real heroes and heroines are those who bear their own burdens bravely and give a helping hand to those around them. That hasty words often rankle in the wound which injury gives, and that soft words assuage it, for giving cures, and forgetting takes away the scar.