If you were about to begin the construction of a dwelling house, what questions would most likely be uppermost in your mind? If this house were intended for your own use, you would doubtless consider among other important matters those of comfort, convenience of arrangement, attractiveness of appearance, strength, and durableness. The great variety of dwellings to be seen on every hand is outwardly expressive of the great variety of ideals in the minds of the people who construct them. No matter what means there may be available for the purpose, it may be said that he who builds a house thereby illustrates in concrete form his inner character. With practically the same quality of materials, one man will construct a house apparently with the thought that its chief purpose is to be looked at. Much work and expense will be put upon outer show and embellishment, while in its inner arrangements it may be exceedingly cramped and thoughtlessly put together. Another will erect his building with a thought of placing it on the market. Cheap workmanship, weak and faulty joinings, and the like, will be concealed by some thin covering meant to last until a profitable sale has been made and some innocent purchaser caught with a mere shell of a house in his possession. Occasionally, however, there is found a man whose plans conform to such ideals as those first named. WHAT IS A GOOD LIFE? As with the construction of a house, so it is in some measure with the building of a character. Some lives apparently are constructed to look at; that is, with the thought that outer adornment and a mere appearance of worth and beauty constitute the essential qualities. Other lives are, in a sense, made to sell. Not infrequently parents are found developing their boys and girls as if the chief purpose were to place them somewhere or other in the best possible money market. A life is worth only as much as it will bring in dollars and cents, is apparently the predominating thought of such persons. And then, occasionally, a life is built to _live in_; that is, with the idea that intrinsic worth constitutes the essential nature of the ideal character. But what _is_ a good life? And why is not this precisely the question for all parents to ask themselves at the time they begin the development of the lives of their own boys and girls? Assuming a fairly sound physical and mental inheritance on the part of the child and the given environment as the raw materials of construction, what ideals should parents have uppermost in mind before undertaking the tremendously important and interesting duties of constructing worthy manhood and womanhood out of the inherent natures of their children?