appreciation, not a look of sympathy and encouragement from him, who never tired to sing her praises before they were married, who vowed that never a harsh word should remotely break on her ear, never a trouble should mar her happiness.  On the contrary, he has no end of faults to find, and she is doomed to listen to the same old harangue on economy and saving.  She has been saving and stinting until she can save and stint no more.  She has patched and mended and turned and altered until she could patch and mend and alter no more, and still the same complaints; the table costs too much, the dry goods store bills are too long, the seamstress comes into the house too often, the physician is consulted too much, and of such as these many more.  Not a word does he say about the expensive cigars he smokes, the wines he drinks; about his frequent visits to the sample-room, and about the liberality with which he treats his friends there; about the sumptuous dinners he takes at noon in the down-town restaurant, while wife and children content themselves at home with a frugal lunch; about the money he loses at the card table, or in his bets on the games and races and politics.  And of the children he takes but little notice.  He has not seen them all day long, and he is too tired to be bothered with them in the evening.  He must have his rest and quiet.  The mother worried with them all day long, she may worry with them in the evening, too.  It is enough for him to supply her with the means wherewith to care for their wants, further obligations he has none; these are a mother’s duties, but not a father’s.

They tell a story of a learned preacher who had isolated himself from his children on account of his dislike to their noise.  One day, while taking a walk, he was attracted by the beauty and wonderful intelligence of a little boy.  Inquiring of the nurse whose child it was, she answered, much astonished:  “Your own, reverend sir, your own.”  Judging from the attention that some fathers bestow on their children, I am inclined to believe that this learned preacher has many an imitator among his sex, for whom not even the inexcusable excuse of absorption in studies can be set up.  I have read of a business man, who one day thanked God that a commercial crisis had thrown him into bankruptcy.  He said it afforded him an opportunity to stay at home for awhile, and get acquainted with his own family, and that for the first time he learned to know the true worth of his wife, and that he found his children the sweetest and dearest creatures that ever lived, and not for all the business of the world would he again deprive himself of their sweet association.  Prior to his misfortune, or rather good fortune, his business had so absorbed him that he had altogether forgotten that there were sacred claims at home that demanded his interest and his service.