him responsible at first for small articles of clothing, neckties, shirt-collars, etc, and as soon as he shows himself trustworthy, for all his expenses except school bills.  The boy is expected to keep accounts, get nothing without first asking the price, and to bring his receipted bills at the end of the term to his father, and see that they tally with his foils; and, above all, always to pay in ready money—­unpaid bills being contemplated in the bald light of shop-lifting.  To this I would add, if possible, the habit of giving the Jewish tenth, so as to make giving a steady principle, and not a hap-hazard impulse.

Thirdly, it is a vital point to give your boys interesting pursuits.  There is great force in the rough old saying, “Never give the devil an empty chair to sit down upon, and you won’t be much troubled with his company.”  Vice is constantly only idleness which has turned bad,—­idleness being emphatically a thing that will not keep, but turns rotten.  It is not the great industrial centres of our population that are chiefly ravaged by vice; it is the fashionable watering-places, the fashionable quarters of large towns, where idle men congregate, in which it is a “pestilence that walketh in darkness,” and slays its thousands of young girls.  “Empty by filling,” has always been a favorite motto of mine.  How many a young man has been driven to betting, drinking, and the race-course from the want of something of interest to fill his unoccupied hours, because more wholesome tastes have never been developed in him!  Of course, tastes must be to a certain degree inborn, but I am quite sure that many a taste perishes, like a frost-bitten bud, full of the promise of blossom and fruit, because it has never been given the opportunity to develop.

Take a boy’s innate love of collecting.  Could you not develop it by the offer of a little prize for the best collection of dried flowers, of butterflies or insects, of birds’ eggs, even, in some cases, of geological specimens, but, in any case, with the scientific and common names attached; so forming a healthy taste for natural history, which may be a source of perpetual interest and profit in after-life?  Do not let your dislike of destroying life interfere; reverence for life can be as well, nay, better taught by insisting that only the necessary specimens should be given of each species, only one or two eggs taken from the nest, and the nest itself disturbed as little as possible.  Chemistry and electricity also appeal to a boy’s love of experimentizing and of making electrical contrivances, easily constructed of the commonest materials.  As to hand-work, the lack of which in ill-health has made so many a man a torment both to himself and others, there ought to be no difficulty with regard to that.  Carpentering, wood-carving, repousse-work in metal, bent-iron work, mosaic work, any of these, except possibly the last, may be set on foot with very little expense, besides drawing, modelling, etc.  Where there are