"God wishes us to have sunlight in our homes. He would have in them a tender play of laughter and humour, a pleasant interchange of light and colour and warmth, in word and mirth, which makes the brightness perfect, and is as much the work of the sunlight in the house, as the delightful gaiety of nature is the doing of the sun."--_Stopford Brooke._ It is a comparatively easy thing to preserve a cheerful appearance when away from home, or even to present a brave front to meet the great emergencies of life. And yet the most genial-hearted of diners-out may be a domestic bully in the privacy of his own household; and the hero who has faced a battery without shrinking may be unable to take a cup of lukewarm coffee from his wife's hands without a grumble. The real happiness of a home depends upon a determination to lay no undue stress upon little matters, and a resolve to hold one's own irritability in constant check. For it is the sum of trivial affairs that make up the day's account, and it is the-- "Cares that _petty shadows_ cast, By which our lives are chiefly proved." True home sunshine, if it consistently brighten the features of one member in a family, is pretty sure to be reflected from the faces of the rest. "I thought," said a father, the other day, "as I sat in the railway carriage on my way home, of my impatience with the members of my family, and I felt ashamed. As soon as they are out of my sight I see clearly where my mistakes are; but when they are around me I forget my good resolutions." It is quite true that the dear ones at home are more to us than Kings and Queens, than House of Lords or House of Commons, than the mightiest and noblest in the world. And yet we often treat them worse than we treat strangers. With others, whom we meet in business or in society, we are half unconsciously on our guard. Hasty words are repressed, and frowns are banished. But the dear ones at home usually have the pleasure or the pain of seeing us precisely as we are in the mood of the moment. To their sorrow we "make no strangers" of them. If our nerves are overstrung, or our tempers tried, so far from endeavouring to conceal the fact we make them feel it. The hero in great crises may be moved by the pressure of small annoyances to throw a boot at his _valet de chambre_, or to snarl at his wife. Individually these faults of temper may be small, but so are the locusts that collectively conceal the sun. "Only perfection can bear with imperfection." The better a man becomes the more allowance will he make for the shortcomings of others.