“John’s” Mother,

CHAPTER XVII.

And Other Relations-in-Law,

CHAPTER XVIII.

A Timid Word for the Step-mother,

CHAPTER XIX.

Children as Helpers,

CHAPTER XX.

Children as Burden-bearers,

CHAPTER XXI.

Our Young Person,

CHAPTER XXII.

Our Boy,

CHAPTER XXIII.

That Spoiled Child,

CHAPTER XXIV.

Getting Along in Years,

CHAPTER XXV.

Truth-telling,

CHAPTER XXVI.

The Gospel of Conventionalities,

CHAPTER XXVII.

Familiar, or Intimate?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Our Stomachs,

CHAPTER XXIX.

Cheerfulness as a Christian Duty,

CHAPTER XXX.

The Family Invalid,

CHAPTER XXXI.

A Temperance Talk,

CHAPTER XXXII.

Family Music,

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Family Religion,

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A Parting Word for Boy,

CHAPTER XXXV.

Homely, But Important,

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Four-Feet-Upon-a-Fender,

INTRODUCTORY.

AN OPEN SECRET.

Some one asked me the other day, if I were not “weary of being so often put forward to talk of ‘How to Make Home Happy,’ a subject upon which nothing new could be said.”

My answer was then what it is now:  Were I to undertake to utter one-thousandth part that the importance of the theme demands, the contest would be between me and Time.  I should need “all the time there is.”

Henry Ward Beecher once prefaced a lecture delivered during the Civil War by saying:  “The Copperhead species chancing to abound in this locality, I have been requested to select as my subject this evening something that will not be likely to lead to the mention of Slavery.”

“I confess myself to be somewhat perplexed by this petition,” the orator went on to say, with the twinkle in his eye we all recollect—­“for I have yet to learn of any subject that could not easily lead me up to the discussion of a sin against God and man which I could not exaggerate were every letter a Mt.  Sinai—­I mean, American Slavery.”