The reading habit is now pretty well established; not only the reading habit, but liking for useful reading; and useful reading leads to learning. Now comes WIDE AWAKE, vigorous, hearty, not to say heavy. No, it isn’t heavy, though full as it can be of practical help along the road to sober manhood and womanhood. Full as it can be! There is need of play as well as of work; and WIDE AWAKE has its mixture of work and rest and play. The work is all toward self-improvement; so is the rest; and so is the play. $2.40 a year. * * * * * Specimen copies of all the Lothrop magazines for fifteen cents; any one for five—in postage stamps. Address D. Lothrop Company, Boston. You little know what help there is in books for the average housewife. Take _Domestic Problems_, for instance, beginning with this hard question: “How may a woman enjoy the delights of culture and at the same time fulfil her duties to family and household?” The second chapter quotes from somebody else: “It can’t be done. I’ve tried it; but, as things now are, it can’t be done.” Mrs. Diaz looks below the surface. Want of preparation and culture, she says, is at the bottom of a woman’s failure, just as it is of a man’s. The proper training of children, for instance, can’t be done without some comprehension of children themselves, of what they ought to grow to, their stages, the means of their guidance, the laws of their health, and manners. But mothers get no hint of most of these things until they have to blunder through them. Why not? Isn’t the training of children woman’s mission? Yes, in print, but not in practice. What is her mission in practice? Cooking and sewing! Woman’s worst failure then is due to the stupid blunder of putting comparatively trivial things before the most important of all. The result is bad children and waste of a generation or two—all for putting cooking and sewing before the training of children. Now will any one venture to say that any particular mother, you for instance, has got to put cooking and sewing before the training of children? Any mother who really makes up her mind to put her children first can find out how to grow tolerable children at least. And that is what Mrs. Diaz means by preparation—a little knowledge beforehand—the little that leads to more. It _can_ be done; and _you_ can do it! Will you? It’s a matter of choice; and you are the chooser. Domestic Problems. By Mrs. A. M. Diaz. $1. D. Lothrop Company, Boston. We have touched on only one subject. The author treats of many. * * * * * Dr. Buckley the brilliant and versatile editor of the _Christian Advocate_ says in the preface of his book on northern Europe “I hope to impart to such as have never seen those countries as clear a view as can be obtained from reading” and “My chief reason for traveling in Russia was to study Nihilism and kindred subjects.”