Henry Ward Beecher says that he never knew a bad family to come from a home where there was an abundance of books and papers. Our Ontario farmers do not provide enough and sufficiently varied reading matter for their families. Most of them take a weekly paper, an agricultural paper, and generally some religious paper, the organ of the denomination to which they belong. These are all well enough so far as they go, but pictures are perhaps the quickest, best, and most agreeable way of imparting instruction. All our farmers could easily spare annually the cost of enough journals to make home daily attractive, so that the new papers to come each day forward would be looked for and something sought. The London _Graphic_ or London _Illustrated News_ would keep us posted pleasantly on matters at home, and, in fact, they would follow England all over the world, and improve the family taste at the same time. From New York a paper should certainly be taken, for we must, of course, follow our cousins just south of us, with their seventy-five millions of people. The New York semi-weekly _Tribune_ would keep us thoroughly up with the times, and there will be nothing in it that one need be ashamed to read before his daughters, which is a great recommendation in this day of trashy literature. By all means add _Harper’s Weekly Illustrated_, and _Frank Leslie’s_ as well, for they do not require much time to read--the pictures show for themselves; and then there is the _Century Magazine_, which is perhaps the most popular to-day. As to merit, I only wish we in Canada could afford to produce anything nearly as good. Its illustrations will shame any English magazine, and I would certainly add _Harper’s Magazine_ as well. For the little folks, by all means the _St. Nicholas Magazine_, beautifully illustrated, and with stories down to the mental calibre of the little ones. Of course, I would not forget our own productions, and would take a few of them in addition to those now taken. Now, I know a good many will look upon this as too much to read, will say it costs too much, etc. They can all be taken for less than $50 per year, and if once they begin to come to the family, the boys will soon stay at home nights rather than go prowling around the country or seeking society in the towns and villages. Excitement people must have, and your city people get their excitement by conversing with one another, the theatre, lectures, etc. But if our country people would take the periodicals I have outlined, in conjunction with their social gatherings at churches and in neighbors’ houses, they would have a constant fund of excitement and pleasure at home. Each mail would be looked forward to with eagerness, and the quiet evenings at home would be most pleasurably and profitably spent.