picture, speaking of cheerfulness, rest, and comfort. Here, if you show your husband, from the first, that you are always interested in his outside labors and duties, he will gladly come to talk over the day’s doings; and it will not take long to teach him that a good, true wife is the best adviser he can have,--that his business knowledge and your womanly insight and tact, united, will solve dubious questions, and unravel troublesome tangles, quite as safely and far more pleasantly than any assistance and advice sought outside of _home_. And in after life, think you, will it not be pleasant to look back and trace much of your happiness to the fascinations and attractions you so skillfully gathered about the pleasant sitting-room, when you, as “young people,” took sweet counsel together, and laid the foundation for mutual confidence and true domestic peace? Had you secured the most elegant parlors, but left this room cold and barren, negligently kept, and destitute of any special attraction, do you think your prospects of happiness would have been as bright? Or can you feel that you would deserve that they should be? It is your work, young wife, to make the _home_. Your husband may provide and furnish the means, but it is for you to see that they are used for mutual happiness. Next to the sitting-room, the dining-room must be the most carefully arranged. Strange how few give heed to this! It is sometimes a low, dark, ill-constructed room, reached by stairs often unsafe by reason of darkness, and usually opening so abruptly to the kitchen that the appetite is destroyed the moment you enter by the fumes from cooking which have been gathering in the dining-room all the morning; and the pleasant intercourse which should enliven each meal is often sadly interrupted by overmuch talking from the adjacent kitchen. If there ever is dispute or misfortune there, it seems always destined to occur while you are at your table. Our city dining rooms are too frequently after this pattern. Here is some excuse; for we must expect, in one way or another, to be “cabined, cribbed, and confined” in the city; but in the free, bright country, there can seldom be any such excuse given, and yet the same heedlessness with regard to anything pleasant in the position of the dining-room is noticeable. Opening into a back yard or clothes-yard, or overlooking the barn-yard, with nothing attractive or cheerful,--this is thought good enough for a place to _feed in_. A very great mistake; for here we should meet, not to eat hastily, and rise up and go our ways, but there should be quite as much enjoyment in free and cheerful conversation at the table as can possibly be secured during the mere act of eating. A friend occasionally drops in; and when children are gathered about the board, their little winning ways and delightful prattle add wonderfully to the pleasure of the repast. Our American men, when actively engaged in business, as a large proportion