The attitude of mind that can keep in harmonious touch with the oncoming generation and yet not lose the value of its own day of contribution to the social inheritance is an art to be acquired only by effort and the exercise of moral and mental power. There was, perhaps, never in the history of our civilization so great a gap between the ideals and social practices of the grandparents and those of the third generation. The parents even are feeling themselves too far from the children; the grandparents often realize a vast distance between themselves and the rising generation. The distance is not always the measure of progress. It is not seldom the effect of rapid changes in mechanical appliances, in material agencies and economic conditions, in literary taste and in ideals of culture; an effect which has unsettled youth in the inherited ways and not yet settled them in well-considered new rules of living. The experience that might aid in easing the process of readjustment is not always at hand and not always used when it is attainable. The experience of age is too often shown in dogmatic rules. The inexperience of youth is too often the accompaniment of a childish conviction that everything that has been is wrong and everything that promises to be is best. There is, therefore, greater need, perhaps, than ever before for wisdom and patience and sympathetic understanding of those from whom one differs within the family life. It is for the grandparents to set the fashion for these new adjustments. They have loved most because they have given most. They have learned most, or could have learned most, because longer in the school of life. And they have but a little way to travel on the long road their children and their children's children must go to meet their fate.