The principal of a large and complicated public institution was complimented on maintaining such uniformity of cheerfulness amid such a diversity of cares. “I’ve made up my mind to be satisfied, when things are done half as well as I would have them,” was his answer, and the same philosophy would apply with cheering results to the domestic sphere. * * * * * [Sidenote: Individuality.] Every human being has some handle by which he may be lifted, some groove in which he was meant to run; and the great work of life, as far as our relations with each other are concerned, is to lift each one by his own proper handle, and run each one in his own proper groove. HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS. [Sidenote: Need of home attractions.] Parents may depend upon it that, if they do not make an attractive resort for their boys, Satan will. There are places enough, kept warm and light, and bright and merry, where boys can go whose mothers’ parlors are too fine for them to sit in. There are enough to be found to clap them on the back, and tell them stories that their mothers must not hear, and laugh when they compass with their little piping voices the dreadful litanies of sin and shame. * * * * * [Sidenote: Home education.] The word home has in it the elements of love, rest, permanency, and liberty; but besides these it has in it the idea of an education by which all that is purest within us is developed into nobler forms, fit for a higher life. The little child by the home fireside was taken on the Master’s knee when he would explain to his disciples the mysteries of the kingdom. * * * * * [Sidenote: The education of the parent.] Education is the highest object of home, but education in the widest sense—education of the parents no less than of the children. In a true home, the man and the woman receive, through their cares, their watchings, their hospitality, their charity, the last and highest finish that earth can put upon them. From that they must pass upward, for earth can teach them no more. * * * * * [Sidenote: Perfection in little things.] To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably. * * * * * [Sidenote: The cross.] Right on the threshold of all perfection lies the _cross_ to be taken up. No one can go over or around that cross in science or in art. Without labor and self-denial neither Raphael nor Michael Angelo nor Newton was made perfect. THE CHIMNEY CORNER. [Sidenote: A well-developed man.]