Let every young woman take this point of view and consider what she is now doing, even while yet only a girl, to make it possible for her children that are to be, to have large lives, useful to the whole community. In olden time the family numbered fifteen to twenty children. Then, indeed, there were things happening in the farm home! Then was there companionship under the roof tree! The evenings were merry about the fireside--and, by the way, there was a literal as well as a spiritual fireside for the children to be merry about! Then, too, there was hospitality, the Thanksgiving dinner, the Christmas home-coming for all the cousins! In those days life was worth living and there was no country life problem. We must look forward to larger families. The next row of fathers and mothers must live for this, plan for it, trust for it, and educate themselves for it; for only thus will the farmstead be at once a place where rafters shall ring with jollity, and the complex life offer dramas enough to be interesting. In this way we shall save the country. The story of the home life of the Beecher family, a typical large family of old New England days, touches a high-water mark of vivid home life. There was a perfect furor of intellectual excitement going through the house all the time. Every topic of public interest was brought to the home circle. Books were read aloud continually. Excitement of all kinds was going on in the evenings, discussions of all sorts at the table. The children were not invited, they were required, to argue. If they did not do it cleverly the father would confound them with ridicule, or he would say: "Now present this argument and you will be able to down me." And then he would tell them just how to manage the point in order to show up the fallacy and gain the right conclusion. So the wise father trained their minds in a sort of play. People have talked a great deal about the value to a child of a noble mother; let a word or two be said for the value of the father in the training of the home. It should be thought of both after the home is established and before. Young women should think of this in making the choice of a partner and the young men should know that they are doing so. In fact, this may be actually happening already. Two little boys were talking in the playground not long ago, and one said to the other: "You mustn't do that, for if you do, you are not training for parentage." The new era has certainly begun!