Old housekeepers will think these hints quite needless, but letters daily received show them to be very much needed by the young, with whom in a short time we intend to have another quiet talk, from which the old folks may retire. LXXXV. AS THY DAY SO SHALL THY STRENGTH BE. FROM those who seek counsel or consolation we receive many letters which we would gladly excuse ourselves from answering, by the plea that such topics come not under our supervision. But we cannot feel that words for “The Household” mean only information about the washing, cooking, and house-cleaning,--simply those things which belong to the temporal state and bodily comfort. We are compelled to attach a broader meaning to that word _household_. All the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears, all the perplexities and anxieties which the _mother_, even more than the _mistress_, must accept when she assumes her position as the head of the home circle, cluster around the word and rise before her each hour of the day, if she conscientiously tries to do her duty. Not alone the health and bodily comfort of those who compose her kingdom, but their life-long usefulness and eternal happiness, are committed to her watchful care, and may be wrecked by one false step, one unguarded act, one ill-tempered word or unjust suspicion. Ah, to attempt to trace her responsibility through all the life that lies before her is overwhelming if she has not learned to feel that “as her day so shall her strength be”! At times the mother’s life is full of brightness and joyousness; again, she sinks to the depths of despondency, or trembles with wild forebodings as her multiplying duties rise up before her, and she realizes how many conflicting characters and dispositions are depending on her for guidance. Nowhere does she feel this so keenly as in the care of her children. The consciousness of ignorance or inability to judge correctly, to act judiciously, so as to meet the wants of each child and be just to all, oppresses her. If all were alike, so that one code of laws, one well-digested line of action, would be as appropriate to the whole as to each individual case, the responsibility of rearing a family would be far less oppressive.