Great numbers of American households are dominated by that marvel of the age, the Sunday newspaper. For this prodigious expression of journalistic enterprise I have only the warmest admiration, but I should certainly exclude it from the breakfast table as provocative of discord and subversive of discipline. Amusing as the “funny page” may be, its color scheme does not blend well either with soft-boiled eggs or marmalade. Madeline’s appetite for news of the social world may wait a little, and as there is no possibility of buying or selling on the Sabbath-day, the gentleman at the head of the table may as well curb his curiosity about the conclusions of the weekly market review. Fragments of Sunday newspapers scattered about a breakfast table are not decorative. They encourage bad manners and selfishness. A newspaper is an impudent intrusion at the table at any time, but on Sunday its presence is a crime. On an occasion, the late William Graham Sumner was a guest in my house. Like the alert, clear-thinking philosopher he was, he rose early and read the morning paper before breakfast. He read it standing, and finding him erect by a window with the journal spread wide for greater ease in scanning it quickly, I begged him to be seated. “No,” he answered; “always read a newspaper standing; you won’t waste time on it that way.” With equal firmness I should exclude the morning mail from the table. The arrival of the post is in itself an infringement upon domestic privacy, and the reading of letters is deadly to that conversation which alone can make the table tolerable at any meal. Good news can wait; bad news is better delayed until the mind and body are primed to deal with it. If the son has been “canned” at school, or if the daughter has overstepped her allowance, or if some absent member of the family is ill, nothing can be done about it at the breakfast table. On the first day of the month, the dumping of bills on the table, to the accompaniment of expostulations, regrets, and perhaps tears, should be forbidden. Few homes are so controlled by affection and generous impulses as to make possible the distribution of bills at a breakfast table without poisoning the day. A tradesman with the slightest feeling of delicacy will never mail a bill to be delivered on the morning of the first day of the month. Anywhere from the third or fourth to the twentieth, and so timed as to be delivered in the afternoon--such would be my suggestion to the worthy merchant. The head of the house knows, at dinner time, the worst that the day has for him; if fortune has smiled, he is likely to be merciful; if fate has thrown the dice against him, he will be humble. And besides, a discreet wife, receiving an account that has hung over her head ever since she made that sad, rash purchase, has, if the bill arrive in the afternoon post, a chance to conceal the odious thing until such time as the domestic atmosphere is clear and bright.