SWEET HOME.

THE HOME ALTAR.

'Twas early day - and sunlight stream'd Soft through a quiet room,

That hushed, but not forsaken seemed
Still, but with nought of gloom;
For there, secure in happy age,
Whose hope is from above,
A father communed with the page
Of Heaven's recorded love.

Pure fell the beam, and meekly bright,

On his gray, holy hair,

And touched the book with tenderest light,
As if its shrine were there;

But O, that patriarch's aspect shone
With something lovelier far-

A radiance, all the spirit's own,
Caught not from sun or star.

Some word of life e'en then had met
His calm, benignant eye;

Some ancient promise, breathing yet

Of immortality;

Some heart's deep language, where the glow
Of quenchless faith survives;
For every creature said, "I know

That my Redeemer lives."

And silent stood his children by,
Hushing their very breath,

Before the solemn sanctity

Of thought o'er sweeping death; Silent - yet did not each young breast

With love and reverence melt?

O, blessed be those fair girls and bles
That home where God is felt.

WOMAN'S SUPERIORITY.

WHY term the fair the "weaker sex"?
(A foul aspersion, falsely cast!)
Behold, when worldly storms perplex,
How bravely they can bide the blast!

Lord of creation, lower thy crest:
Strive as you may, do all you can,
Woman, with all her faults confest,
Must still be double you, O man!

THE TWO HOMES.

IN a defective home education lies the groundwork of much of the evil that afflicts society. If the thoughts of parents were more centred in their homes, and as earnestly exercised in the division of ways and means for rightly educating the moral and intellectual natures of their children as in procuring food and raiment for the perishing body, they would render a service to society far greater than if they had built a city or founded a nation. If mothers wisely developed the higher and better sentiments of their sons, and cultivated in them, as far as that were possible, gentleness and forbearance towards others, there would be fewer unhappy wives in the coming generation. Ah, how many forget woman's true mission! How many forget that her hands are small, and soft, and all unfitted to grapple with the hard, iron man, yet full of a most wonderful skill to mould the pliant material of childhood! The world will never be made better through