Mr. Lothrop’s summer home is in Concord, Mass.  His house, known to literary pilgrims of both continents as “The Wayside,” is a unique, many gabled old mansion, situated near the road at the base of a pine-covered hill, facing broad, level fields, and commanding a view of charming rural scenery.  Its dozen green acres are laid out in rustic paths; but with the exception of the removal of unsightly underbrush, the landscape is left in a wild and picturesque state.  Immediately in the rear of the house, however, A. Bronson Alcott, a former occupant, planned a series of terraces, and thereon is a system of trees.  The house was commenced in the seventeenth century and has been added to at different periods, and withal is quaint enough to satisfy the most exacting antiquarian.  At the back rise the more modern portions, and the tower, wherein was woven the most delightful of American romances, and about which cluster tender memories of the immortal Hawthorne.  The boughs of the whispering pines almost touch the lofty windows.

The interior of the dwelling is seemly.  It corresponds with the various eras of its construction.  The ancient low-posted rooms with their large open fire-places, in which the genial hickory crackles and glows as in the olden time, have furnishings and appointments in harmony.  The more modern apartments are charming, the whole combination making a most delightful country house.

Mr. Lothrop’s enjoyment of art and his critical appreciation is illustrated here as throughout his publications, his house being adorned with many exquisite and valuable original paintings from the studios of modern artists; and there is, too, a certain literary fitness that his home should be in this most classic spot, and that the mistress of this home should be a lady of distinguished rank in literature, and that the fair baby daughter of the house should wear for her own the name her mother has made beloved in thousands of American and English households.

[Illustration:  “The Wayside.”]

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New England Conservatory of Music.

[Illustration:  New England conservatory of music Franklin Square Boston]

By Mrs. M.J.  Davis.

One of the most important questions now occupying the minds of the world’s deepest and best thinkers, is the intellectual, physical, moral, and political position of woman.

Men are beginning to realize a fact that has been evident enough for ages:  that the current of civilization can never rise higher than the springs of motherhood.  Given the ignorant, debased mothers of the Turkish harem, and the inevitable result is a nation destitute of truth, honor or political position.  All the power of the Roman legions, all the wealth of the imperial empire, could not save the throne of the Cæsars when the Roman matron was shorn of her honor, and womanhood became only the slave or the