the furnace and stove in winter, and connected | shade near the house, but not so as to shut out with every room, securing perfect ventilation, without care and in spite of false notions, in all seasons, and by day and night. Fire-places in every room but two give these sources of comfort and health.

There have been various attempts made to form communities on various modifications of the Fourierite plan, which brings individuals of all ages, tastes, and habits into one family, with no parents or superior or bishop to control. Such are, and ever must be, failures.

also to be her intelligent and sympathizing help- | with its simple and natural duties, where two, er when children come. united in love, or sometimes the widowed one While it should be the aim to render woman's alone, has an independent home and a small profession so honorable that persons of the high-flock all under her own control, with none but est position and culture will seek it, as men seek God and her own conscience to rule. their most honored professions, there must still be the class of servants, to carry out a style of living and expenditure both lawful and useful, where large fortunes abound. For this class the aim should be to secure their thorough preparation and to increase their advantages. Should both aims be achieved, then a woman who prefers a style of living demanding servants, will be so trained herself as not to be dependent on hirelings at the sacrifice of self-respect. On the other hand, a woman who chooses another style of living, so as to work herself and train her children to work, can do so without fear of losing any social advantages. Or, in case more helpers are needed, she can secure highly cultivated and refined friends to share all her family enjoyments, instead of depending on a class inferior in cultivation and less qualified to form the habits and tastes of her children.

But it is not the married alone who are privileged to become ministers in the home church of Jesus Christ. A woman without children, and with means of her own, could provide such a house as this, and take one child and a wellqualified governess to aid in training it.. Then, after success inspires confidence, a second child might be adopted till the extent of her means and benevolence is reached.

There are multitudes of benevolent women, whose cultivated energies are now spent in a round of selfish indulgence, who would wake up to a new life if they thus met woman's highest calling as Heaven-appointed ministers of Christ, to train his neglected little ones for that kingdom of self-denying labor and love of which he is the model and head.

Thousands and thousands of orphans are now deprived of a father's home and support. Thousands of women, widowed in the dearest hopes of this life, are seeking for consolation in the only

true avenues.

A great emergency in our nation has occurred, in which thousands of women are forever

cut off from any homes of their own by marriage.

Of these many are women of wealth and influence among Protestants, who in hospitals and battle-fields have been learning the highest lessons of self-sacrificing benevolence. Such will not return home to be idle, but will press toward those avenues that offer the most aid and sympathy; and if it is not provided by Protestants they will seek it in the Catholic fold.

So the boarding-school system, which takes children from parental love and close watch of the family state, giving them to strangers amidst new and multiplied temptations, this is, and ever must be, a failure.

The true Protestant system, yet to be developed and tried by women of wealth and benevolence, is the one here suggested; based not on the conventual, nor on the Fourierite, nor on the boarding-school systems, but on the Heavendevised plan of the family state.

One aim of this article is to attract the notice of conscientious persons commencing the family state with means sufficient for a much more expensive establishment.

Many such really believe themselves the followers of Christ who have seldom practiced that economy which denies self to increase the advantages of the poor, especially in deciding on the style of living they adopt. Most wealthy persons provide houses, equipage, servants, and expenditures that demand most of their income, while the waste in their kitchens alone would, by careful economy, such as we see in France, feed another whole family.

When houses are built on Christian and democratic principles, and young girls in every condition of life are trained to a wise economy, thousands of young men, who can not afford to marry young ladies trained in the common boarding-school fashion, will find the chief impediment removed; and thus healthful and happy homes will multiply with our increasing wealth and culture.

FRANKLIN'S TAN.

Ached to tell for years.

AM now at liberty to tell a story I have

My mother prepared me for college, and at sixteen I was ready for Yale. Our arrangements were all completed, and my father had satisfied himself that they were the best that could be made, when he received a letter from a friend, who took that means of announcing his failure in business. The failure involved my father in ruin-he had signed paper for Franklin to an amount that was startling to think of. In giving and in using confidence they had acted like two crazy men.

Catholic convents provide their inmates with a comfortable home and opportunities of benevolence toward neglected children, the sick, and the poor. But they are burdened with a round of observances and rules involving the sacrifice of reason and conscience, and of personal independence. For complete submission to the Superior is the first duty. Moreover, this is not the family state designed by God, that letter was received.

Ruin is a little word to write, but a great load to walk under. It is not a pleasant recollection, still I would not lose my remembrance of what passed under our roof the night on which

I can see my father as he sat there in the li- | wish to live, but I shall die if I go back. God brary of the old-fashioned stone-house we had has said the days of the man who honors his fataken for the summer. The letter was ad- ther and mother shall be long in the land. I do dressed to him at Tappan, and had been wait- not deserve to be a martyr, nor to make martyrs ing for him all day, while he was hard at work of you." in his city office. It was written by Mr. Franklin himself. It said that he had made a great experiment in business, and had failed, and that he was a bankrupt. He made no effort to gloss over or abate the fact, but stated it in so many round words. There it was-he was ruined. He didn't intend to stay ruined, however. He was going to begin again-he hoped never to rest until he had recovered what was lost; and, principal and interest, the debt of honor owing to his dear friend Hageman should be paid. My father, he said, was almost his only creditor; and though it distracted him to think of the injury he might have inflicted upon him, still he should live by his determination to right all this mischief and evil.

His side of the business seemed brave and honorable enough. As to our side, if friendship failed to serve us a great turn now, it would fail of a glorious opportunity.

I carried that point. And so I am not learned. School-boys in these days would find it easy enough to trip me up; but God knew what was best, and He made us all see it. He has given me a full cup, pressed down, and running over. I have missed brilliant success, barely possible perhaps, but nearly probable to every youth that lives; and, comparing my own quiet fortunes with some more splendid and honorable in the world's view, I am quietly content.

But this is not the story I have desired to tell for years.

I had been in business with my father for some time, and we had found a great deal of up-hill work to do-little, indeed, besides; were living, in fact, as you might say, from hand to mouth, but with a near prospect of a better state of things-we always kept that prospect in view --when, one day, we were astonished by a letter from Jacob Franklin, inclosing a check for the amount of his debt, together with the interest, which also dated from the time of his failure! Never was money so unlooked-for; never could it have been more welcome. We re

My mother was the first to say, when my father had been surprised into letting us know the contents of the letter, "Jacob will do all he promises." And that was a heroic speech for her to make, for Franklin was my father's friend, not hers. I mean by that he was hers only by adop-ceived it as from God. Adversity had not tion, though he might naturally enough have been hers by election also. There was sufficient confidence and sympathy between them for that. I can see yet the look my father gave her when he said, "Yes, Harriet; that is true. He will do all he promises if he only lives."

greatly harmed us; what would prosperity do? I say adversity had not greatly harmed us, and by that I mean it had not soured my father's heart, though his hair had grown gray and his countenance very grave in the stern fight he had kept up with poverty for ten long years. It had not daunted my mother's faith; but it had been able to write some lines on her face which told of solemn struggles and of hardwon victories.

I never gave them any peace till the ocean rolled between us, after Franklin's letter came. Rest and change of scene and of life would make them young again, the doctor told them and me. So it was accomplished, and that experience was to all of us the nearest exemplification of miracle we shall ever be likely to know. After they had sailed, that same week, I pack

"He will live," said my mother. She had that way of speaking. She had the clearest, most decided convictions of any person I ever met. She held by Providence, and believed in Destiny. I used to consider her promises, which certainly were not intended for oracular utterances, as words of authority, to be received with simple faith-action, of course, to be in accordance. She had the power of seeing through things as we see stars through the auroral cloud. Later in the evening I perceived my parents were looking at me in a way that made me get up and leave the room. I went out of that he-ed my portmanteau and set out on a pilgrimage. roic atmosphere like a coward; for I saw, well I had all along regarded Jacob Franklin as someenough, that their chief thought in their trouble thing less than honorable, if any thing less than concerned me. I said to myself, when I walked base. Now I wanted to express to him gratiout into the garden, "I never will go to Yale. tude for more than the restitution he had made I will learn business, and stand by father. After for justifying the faith my father had always I graduated I should have to get a profession-preserved in him. if I were older I could pay my way-but who would hire me as a tutor? Four or five years from now I might hope to support myself, if I should go to college-not before. No, no."

But those "angels in the house" decreed otherwise. I was obliged to yield. I yielded for three months. Then I went back home. When I got there I found why I had returned. There was no hiding the fact that they were in a hot furnace of afflictions. I said to them, "I

I was never more surprised in my life than by my drive through the crooked street of Little Carrington. Franklin's reputation and his letter had led me to suppose that his works would justify and repay the visit of a stranger, and as such I presented myself at the gate of his factory-yard. But such an odd jumble of sheds and mean wooden buildings as were congregated within the stakes and fences which inclosed his works! I was so surprised at the