Moral instruction is difficult. A thousand little things tend to neutralize it and there is an almost universal spirit of opposition to moral teaching, on the part of youth. And yet it is easy to give moral lessons in an indirect way that shall arouse no opposition and that shall be effective for lifetime. _Journeys_ is full of what for lack of a better name we call character-building literature. Some of it is adapted to boys and girls of a very tender age and more of it to the older children. _The Cubes of Truth_ (Volume VI, page 406), by Oliver Wendell Holmes, is a beautiful little essay that expresses a great truth in a way to impress it indelibly upon the memory of every person who reads it. So clear is the language, so clever the idea that the selection is read with absorbing interest, and so impressive is the lesson that no real attention need be called to it. In reading it the beauty of the language and the quaintness of the figure are the real subjects of discussion, but all the time the great lesson is making its subtle appeal. Cardinal Newman's _Definition of a Gentleman_ (Volume IV, page 170) is more obviously a didactic selection, but here again the definition is given so clearly and so forcibly that no possible offense can be taken and the weight of the statements will produce their effect without much comment. In this connection it should be necessary merely to call attention to the chapter on character-building, to be found in this volume. In preparing that chapter the writer had in mind children of all ages and both sexes, but it will be an easy matter for you to select the things which you know will appeal to your son. In fact, you will find in every chapter of this volume something to help you in making your way into the thoughts and the hearts of your family, and we know that as the years pass away and manhood comes to your boys they will look back upon the hours spent in reading with you as the most momentous of their lives. Do you want your son to say in his manhood, "I look upon Mr. A or Mr. B as the person who most influenced my life"? Do you want him to say, "I might have been a cultured man with a wide range of interests if my father had given to me a little of the time he spent at his club"? Do you want your boy to think that he was a wanderer from home, because he could not find in that home the manly sympathy that his soul craved? In many a family there is no trouble in keeping the boys off the streets. There is no place half so attractive as the home and for them no inclination to seek among others the fun and intellectual stimulus they crave as they crave their food.