As the children never were considered when they were little and helpless, so they do not consider when they are strong and powerful.  Tom spread wide desolation among the household gods, lounging on the sofas, spitting tobacco-juice on the carpets, scattering books and engravings hither and thither, and throwing all the family-traditions into wild disorder, as he would never have done, had not all his childish remembrances of them been embittered by the association of restraint and privation.  He actually seemed to hate any appearance of luxury or taste or order,—­he was a perfect Philistine.

As for my friend Bill, from being the pleasantest and most genial of fellows, he became a morose, misanthropic man.  Dr. Franklin has a significant proverb,—­“Silks and satins put out the kitchen-fire.”  Silks and satins—­meaning by them the luxuries of housekeeping—­often put out not only the parlor-fire, but that more sacred flame, the fire of domestic love.  It is the greatest possible misery to a man and to his children to be homeless; and many a man has a splendid house, but no home.

“Papa,” said Jennie, “you ought to write and tell what are your ideas of keeping a home.”

“Girls, you have only to think how your mother has brought you up.”

Nevertheless, I think, being so fortunate a husband, I might reduce my wife’s system to an analysis, and my next paper shall be,—­

What is a home, and how to keep it?

* * * * *

THE CONVULSIONISTS OF ST. MEDARD

Of all the mental epidemics that have visited Europe, beyond question the most remarkable, and in some of its features the most inexplicable, is that which prevailed in Paris some hundred and thirty years ago, among what were called the Convulsionists of St. Medard.

The celebrated Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, during his life the opponent and enemy of the Jesuits, whom he caused to be excluded from the theological schools of Louvain, left behind him, at his death, a treatise, posthumously published in 1640, entitled, “Augustinus,” in which he professed to set forth the true opinions of St. Augustine on those century-long disputed questions of Grace, Free-Will, and Predestination.  Taking ground against the Molinists, he contended for the doctrine of Predestination antecedent and absolute, a gift purely gratuitous, of God’s free grace, independent of any virtue or merit in the recipient soul.  This doctrine, set forth in five propositions, was condemned, in the middle of the seventeenth century, by Popes Innocent X. and Alexander VII.; and against it, when revived by Father Quesnel in the beginning of the eighteenth century, there was fulminated, in 1713, by Pope Clement XI., the famous Bull Unigenitus.