sea a long time) thirsts for home, longs to be again by his own hearth, enjoying domestic life. The wife on her side, separated for several hours from her husband, reserves for him her most cheerful mood and her pleasantest smile. She saves him from the thousand annoyances of the day, the household perplexities, the little embarrassments of life, the children's romping. The little ones run to meet their father, and recreate him after his work with caresses and prattle. This is the way in which men enjoy children; as a necessity of every day and all day, they dread them. But without rising so high, I ask simply what can be more agreeable, even for a husband who spends his life in hunting or anywhere else out of his own house, than to find on coming home his wife cheerful and good-tempered, because after getting him a good dinner she has amused herself with painting a pretty picture, or studying with genuine interest a little natural history, or trying some experiment in domestic chemistry, or even solving a problem in _géométrie agricole_, instead of finding her languid and melancholy, a _femme incomprise_, with some novel or another in her hand. {42} If I persist in preaching industry to men and women, it is for very urgent reasons, not only domestic and political, but social. Who does not see that we verge on socialism at present? The masses will not work, they detest labor. Salaries have been raised again and again; for many trades they go beyond necessity, and so the workman, instead of giving six days in the week to his trade, gives but four, three, or even two days. It is for the higher classes who are supposed to understand their duties and to feel the import of their responsibilities, it is for them to reinstate labor in popular estimation. In this as in all other things, example must come from above; for here, as in religion and morals, the higher classes owe to society and to their country some expiation. The eighteenth century, with its corruptions, its scandals, and its irreligion, hangs upon us with the weight of a satanic heritage. Like original sin, these errors have been washed in blood; it is the history of all great errors. It remains for us to expiate the idleness, the inaction, inutility, annihilation to which we have hitherto surrendered ourselves, setting a fatal example to those around us. Our generation must be steeped in labor. There and only there is to be found our safety, and mothers must be convinced of this truth. The mother is the centre of home, everything radiates from her--on one condition, that she is a mother worthy of the name and mission--and such mothers are rare.