It seems to me that this writer cannot have passed out of sight of her or his own chimney, not to have seen the great army of women, wives of drunken and dissipated husbands, who, not only lacking "kiss and commendation," but receiving in place of them kicks and blows, and profane abuse, keep steadily on, performing their hard, inexorable duties with no human recognition of their heroism. Also, there are wives, clad in purple and fine linen, quite as much to be pitied, whose husbands are a disgrace to manhood, though they themselves may fail in no wifely or motherly duty. Blind indeed must that person be who fails to see all this every hour in the twenty-four.

So much for the truth of the remark. Now as to "petting." That woman is no woman—lacks woman's, I had almost said, chiefest charm—who does not love to be "petted." The very women who stifle their hearts' cries, because it is vain to listen for an answer where they had a sacred right to look for it, and go on performing their duty all the same—if it be their duty—are the women who most long for "petting," and who best deserve it too; and I, for one, have yet to learn that it is anything to be ashamed of. If so, men have a great sin on their souls; for they cannot get along at all—the majority of them—without this very sort of bolstering up.

Read any of the thousand and one precious books on "Advice to Women," and you will see how we are all to be up to time on the front door-step, ready to "smile" at our husbands the minute the poor dears come home, lest they lose heart and doubt our love for them; better for the twins to cry, than the husband and father. Just so with advice to young girls. They must always be on hand to mend rips in their brothers' gloves and tempers, and coddle them generally; but I have yet to see the book which enjoins upon brothers to be chivalric and courteous and gentlemanly to their sisters, as they take pleasure and pride in being to other young men's sisters.

"There is a time for everything," the good Book says, and so there is a time and place to be "petted." None of us want it in public. In fact, the men and women guilty of it render themselves liable to the suspicion of only being affectionate in public. But deliver me from the granite woman who prefers to live without it, who prides herself on not wanting it. I wouldn't trust her with my baby were there a knife handy. Thank God there are few such. The noblest and greatest and best women I have ever known, have been big-hearted and loving, and have known how to pet and be "petted," without losing either strength or dignity of character.

Facing a Thin Congregation.—It is comparatively easy for a clergyman to preach to a full audience; but the test which shows whether one's heart is in his work, is to get up and face a thin congregation, and yet deliver his message with an earnestness which shows that he has a realizing sense of the value of even one soul. Only that clergyman who keeps this at all times in view, can so utterly leave himself out of consideration, that he will be just as eloquent and just as earnest when speaking to a thin audience, as if he were addressing a large multitude, from whose eager, upturned faces he might well draw inspiration.