grimy hands he thought it would be sacrilege to soil that neat boddice, and leave his dirty finger marks on such a cleanly waist, so he skulked into the back kitchen, and soon the sound of a pump handle moving quickly up and down, succeeded by the splashing of water and the swilling and scrubbing of soap-suds was heard, and in ten minutes time the good man of the house appeared with a face so highly polished by the friction of the jack-towel, that he scarcely knew himself when he came to look in the glass, and then sat down to dinner with a keener relish for the simple fare, than he had felt for many a month and year, for, next to hunger, cleanliness is decidedly the best sauce. Do everything you can to make your husband's home more easy than the pothouse. Now, at a public house, you never see a lot of clothes steaming in a wash-tub or flapping outside the bar-window, and yet the landlady is generally clean and tidy in her own person, and the barmaid uncommonly spruce. Washing must be carried on somewhere in connection with the beershop, and yet is concealed from view; now this shews that it is possible to do the same thing elsewhere, and a little management and despatch whilst your good man is at his daily work might prevent his having to wade up to the knees in soap suds to get to the table, or spreading yellow soap over his toast, under the impression that it is "fresh grass butter." Then, too, you might get the young children put to bed, and the older ones decently washed and combed (supposing that your quiver is thus full of them) before he comes in, so that he may not be deafened with the squalling of the one and sickened with the squalor of the others. And if you adopt these means, you will If you soon find he will like home better than the taproom. make the fireside snugger than the snuggery, he will choose it instead of running away; and, though the baby is out of sight, and cribbed and cradled upstairs, you will often be asked to bring it down, or the heavy boots will go gently up the ladder, while the rough head is bent over the cot to watch the infant slumber, or to kiss its cheek.

This is homely sort of talking, I know, but it is meant to be so, and I want it to reach home. Oh that it could reach to every home in Manchester that needs such purifying influence! My sisters, you wield a great influence over us men; be persuaded to use it well. You are deep enough and contriving enough in your snares and traps to catch a husband; just shew an equal amount of contrivance in your efforts to make him happy in his married life. There's no occasion to put you up to plans for doing this, if you have but the will, you may be trusted to find a far more effectual and clever way than any way I can suggest, and in your efforts to make your earthly home a happy one, and to surround your family with comforts here below-never forget that there is another home to which you have to go, when all the comforts and discomforts of this world are past. Cleanliness and Godliness, according to the old proverb, are twin sisters and go hand in hand. Let it be so in your case; let the clean hearth be the emblem of the clean heart, and when soap and water have done their best, let the great purifier-prayer-have its free and perfect work, and so for you to live it shall be Christ, and for you to die it shall be gain. There are coming generations depending on your example and your precepts. O let that example be such that the flowers on your grave shall be watered with children's tears, and tended with children's hands; and let that precept tell so much of righteousness and honesty, and love, and God, and Christ, that when the passing stranger hears the son or daughter whom you leave behind, say from a thankful heart "Our Father," the answer to the question where they learned the prayer, shall be "My mother taught me."

HAVE to speak to-day, not to children, but to grown-up parents about children. Last Sunday my remarks were, for the most part, addressed to the workman's wife, and it will probably turn out that in talking about children, the greater part of what we say will have to be addressed to mothers. For it is from the mother that the little creature derives all its first lessons and impressions, and it is these first impressions which last the longest, and give their form to the ideas and feeling of the later life. Philanthropists and educationists talk a good deal about the ignorance of the working-classes, and noble schemes are set on foot to teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic. It has sometimes struck me that the latter branch of tuition might with propriety be left out, for arithmetic in its simpler stages seems to come natural to the working-man, and he contrives to get as far as multiplication without a master. The command at the first was "increase and multiply," and assuredly we cannot walk through the streets at any hour of the day without seeing that the injunction is most efficiently obeyed by our toiling population. Through all the changes and privations of social and commercial life-at half-time and at fulltime-no matter how the cotton-market varies, the baby-market

is always firm.

And whatever may be the hue-and-cry about other things, there is very little variation in that about the babies -for "the cry is still they come." And there is very little variation in the cry after they have come, for that matter; the early squall of humanity is pitched in pretty much the same key-note all the world over; and, I dare say, we shall have a specimen in this room before we get away, to prove that the infantile lungs are still in good order.

I do not think I am at all in a position to give to mothers any very sound advice about the personal management of children. I believe Dr. Bull has published a very admirable work upon the subject, and to that volume I would very respectfully refer all inquirers upon that point. There are, indeed, just one or two points in which some mothers, to my notions, make a mistake concerning their little ones, but it will look very presumptuous to mention them, for, not being a mother myself, at present, I am not supposed to know anything about the subject. But my humanity has often been very much horrified at seeing a couple of poor heavy-headed, thin-necked little children put side by side in one of those modern instruments of torture called a perambulator. They are instruments of torture both to the child and to the passenger, breaking the neck of the former, and the legs of the latter. There used to be a standing advertisement in the papers, of the same class as that everlasting categorical insertion, "Do you bruise your oats yet?" and that stiff injunction about "When you ask for Glenfield's patent starch, to see that you get it," commencing with the inquiry, "Do you double up your perambulators?" It occurs to me that a mamma who patronises those machines might have inserted a reply; "No, but my perambulator doubles up my children;" for there is nothing more abject and miserable in appearance than a poor child's lolling head protruding from one of these respectable wheelbarrows, and almost jerking off as the nursemaid trundles the machine over the favourite corn of some corpulent town