We do not breathe Catholicity in our daily life, and there is therefore the greater need of our drinking it in with our mother’s milk. This insensible and gradual instilling of religion into our infant minds is the essence of Christian “home education.” First among all the influences that go towards it is example. This extends over every detail of the household, and can be and should be kept in view in the poorest as well as the most comfortable home. In the latter, certainly, the duty is more stringent, the incentives to its performance lying so near at hand that it requires an absolutely guilty carelessness to neglect them. In the former, though a thousand excuses might be made for the neglect of this paramount duty, it should still be remembered that God’s grace is all-powerful, and never fails those who seek to do his will. Parents sorely tried during a day of toil and anxiety are often found more loving and forbearing towards their helpless children than others who, with no trouble on their minds, yet delegate the “tiresome” office of nurse to a hired attendant; and although it is certainly to be deplored that in so many cases the children of the poor should be nothing but little men and women already weighed down by cares that ought to belong only to a later age, still it may be questioned whether even this is not a lesser evil in the long run than that other sort of neglect which makes the children of the rich, for the most part, only the playthings of their parents. The poor, on the contrary, though necessity may make their children drudges, yet have in them early friends, while too often among their more fortunate neighbors children count only as the ornaments of the house. So that even out of evil comes good, and God has planted consolations in the path of his poor which go far to soften the miseries of their inevitable lot. We say inevitable, not as denying the immense, unexplored possibilities of alleviating this lot which remain in the power of future philanthropists, but as believing in our Lord’s prophecy, “The poor you have _always_ with you,” which blessed promise we count as a staff vouchsafed in mercy to help us on our way to heaven.