American men have the reputation of being considerate husbands and indulgent fathers; but they have been apt at all events, until recently, to make permission to spend take the place of personal comradeship. This has been involuntarily and regretfully ascribed to business pressure; but fatalistic remorse is a poor substitute for duty, even though the loved ones eat off gold plate and ride in their own carriages as a consequence. We Americans who have begotten children in the last twenty years do not need to be informed that the time given to the society of one’s wife and family is the most precious expenditure of all, both for their sakes and our own. But though the truth is obvious to us, are we not sometimes conscious at the end of the week that the time due us and them has been squandered or otherwise appropriated? Those walks and talks, those pleasant excursions from city to country, or country to city, those quiet afternoons or evenings at home, which are possible to every man and woman who love each other and their children, are among the most valuable aids to wise living and peace of mind which daily existence affords. Intimacy and warm sympathy, precept and loving companionship, are worth all the indulgent permission and unexpected cheques in the world. Some people, when Sunday or a holiday comes, seem to do their best to get rid of their families and to try to amuse themselves apart from them. Such men and women are shutting out from their lives the purest oxygen which civilization affords; for genuine comradeship of husband and wife, and father or mother and child, purges the soul and tends to clear the mind’s eye more truly than any other influence.