Morning has been much sung by the poets, some of them no doubt wooing the lyre in bed. A bard to my taste, Benjamin S. Parker, an Indiana pioneer and poet who had lived in a log cabin and was, I am persuaded, an early and light-hearted breakfaster, wrote many verses on which the dew sparkles: “I had a dream of other days,-- In golden luxury waved the wheat; In tangled greenness shook the maize; The squirrels ran with nimble feet, And in and out among the trees The hangbird darted like a flame; The catbird piped his melodies, Purloining every warbler’s fame: And then I heard triumphal song, ’Tis morning and the days are long.” I hope not to imperil my case for the cheerful breakfast table by asserting too much in support of it, but I shall not hesitate to say that the contemptuous disregard in which breakfast is now held by thousands of Americans is indisputably a cause of the low state to which the family tie has fallen. It is a common complaint of retrospective elderly persons that the family life, as our grandparents knew it, has been destroyed by the haste and worry incident to modern conditions. Breakfast--a leisurely, jolly affair as I would have it, with every member of the household present on the stroke of the gong--is unequalled as a unifying force. The plea that everybody is in a hurry in the morning is no excuse; if there is any hour when haste is unprofitable it is that first morning hour. It is impossible to estimate at this writing the effect of the daylight-saving movement upon breakfast and civilization. To add an hour to the work-day is resented by sluggards who, hearing seven chime, reflect that it is really only six, and that a little self-indulgence is wholly pardonable. However, it is to be hoped that the change, where accepted in good spirit, may bring many to a realization of the cheer and inspiration to be derived from early rising. A day should not be “jumped into,” but approached tranquilly and with respect and enlivened by every element of joy that can be communicated to it. At noon we are in the midst of conflict; at nightfall we have won or lost battles; but in the morning “all is possible and all unknown.” If we have slept like honest folk, and are not afraid of a dash of cold water, we meet the day blithely and with high expectation. If the day dawn brightly, there is good reason for sharing its promise with those who live under the same roof; if it be dark and rain beats upon the pane, even greater is the need of family communion, that every member may be strengthened for valiant wrestling with the day’s tasks.