vegetable beds reached close to the well, and little pine sticks with paper labels stuck in them, stood as headstones, telling what lay buried there; but perhaps they held more than the labels called for, for looking upon them Annie turned, and laying her head upon her baby's neck, cried, and John coming in and learning the cause, went out of the house quickly, and the door, either by accident or otherwise, slammed, and as John stood at the well drinking, he thought: "How can a woman make such a fuss over a little thing." It is the sliver and not the pine wedge that makes its own way under the flesh festeringly. Had it been a difficult thing Annie asked of her husband, in his busy seeding time, she would not have felt to measure his love for her by its non-accomplishment.

The next year John made the flower bed himself, and it was not shaped like a grave; in fact, he took particular pains not to raise it above the level of the ground-for so Annie wished; and he covered it with the blue-eyed periwinkle Annie loved; and he planted also the sturdy pinks and sweet elysium Annie raved over; and he even went over to the old home among the hills, and asked Annie's mother for a shoot of the white-rose by the gate - the gate where the doves had cooed. And there seemed nothing too sweet, and nothing too costly, to be planted upon that bed. But it was not in the home garden it rested, but in God's Acre; and though it was hidden in bloom, so that it lost its shape in a wilderness of sweet-smelling things, it was for all a grave; and as the days went by, more and more did John realize what was buried there. Often in the cool of evening he was to be seen working among his blooms, and people passing, said: "How he loves her." But in John's heart was ever an unsatisfied longing as he remembered items of the past; longings for power to do something more to prove the love that really existed. And he wished he might make that bed as wide as all out door, so that he could pour into the past what he had withheld from it. But, alas! only the interest of the debt could now be touched by loving attention, for the principal had passed beyond his reach.

Do we not owe it to the ones we ask to share life with us; to the ones we agree to share life with; that as far as in our power lies, we will answer to the wants of their nature thus supplying heart and soul nourishment. As surely as we fail in this, we too may plant flowers to hide a grave, watering them with regretful tears.

And, now we come to the little vines, the off-shoots of ourselves. Children seldon thrive well as cuttings. We do find them stuck down in life's sand, and striking out for themselves independently; but, in general, their future is more assured when cultivated as layered branches of the parent stalk. But there is many a parent who refuses to do by his child as by the vine he thus propagates, and why? For lack of faith with the vine; after he has a branch with many buds carefully arranged upon the ground, but unsevered from the main stalk, he proceeds to leave some of the buds of that branch uncovered to shoot-up through the sunshine into leaves and tendrils, and covering others with the moist soil, believing they will shoot down into the darkness of earth forming roots and fibres; and if, as the growth of the vine proceeds, he finds more buds starting forth than he thinks wise, he rubs some off so that the main vine may not be too heavily taxed for sustenance ere the time arises for severing the branch. Now, with his child, he is willing to follow much the same plan, save, that he wants all the buds of the child's nature to shoot right up into sight where he can know about them, and when he sees the child putting out a rootlet of thought, that strikes down, below the surface, out of sight, beyond his oversight and full comprehension, and he takes alarm at once, and he says: "Here is something I don't quite like the looks of,-it don't grow like the others, and it has a shy way of creeping off out of sight as though it didn't want folks to know about it; I guess I won't have it;" and he rubs it off. As well might the husbandman say to his vine, as it strikes its roots down into the earth: "See here; none of that! You've got to do your growing above ground. I'll have no underhanded sneaking off into the dark."

If that vine grows, it will grow the way it is its nature to

grow; and, while that growth by a judicious cultivation may be guided and controlled, an honorable faith must be extended to that growth that wills to exist out of sight, as well as that existing in sight, for both are essential to development. Down in the woods we find a boy fixing a waterwheel. Adjusted to his satisfaction, he throws himself back upon the sod, and with arms pillowing his head, he looks up through the net-work of green into the blue vault of heaven as though he would pierce it with his gaze and know what was beyond. But, even as he rests thus, the rustle of the leaves, the falling of the water, the dropping of the nut, the chip of the squirrel, is all taken thought of, and their music thrills him as pure symphony the soul of a musician. Now that boy appreciates nature when found thus, and his father appreciates it when found at the end of a hoe handle. The father "can't see for the life of him where his Jack got so much love of fol-de-rol." Well, it does not make so very much difference as to where he got it - if by fol-de-rol is meant his love of sweet music, and vocal music, and chipmunk haunts and water-courses. It was no doubt given him by the Great Father, back of all life, who gave to the rose its fragrance and to the onion its fragrance; and if you have the rose and the onion, you have to take them with their fragrance; and, if you have Jack at all, we're afraid you'll have to take him as he is with his ear attuned to earth's music your's is closed to, and eyes open to things you behold not. He's yours, as much as his nature's his, and you've both a part of that little item life bestowed on man on long credit, with nothing but his honor for a backing. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

"But I can't have Jack out there on the grass looking up into the sky and that onion bed running over with weeds." Certainly not. Onions were made to be weeded, and boys were made to weed, there's no gainsaying that. But how are the two to be brought alongside?

There are three ways of accomplishing this.

First: The yank-and-haul system. But we don't advise this for Jack, for it may in the end swing him further than

you intend, landing him on the out-going ship while you are left to pay for advertising for a runaway boy.

Second: There is the dead pressure system of my will's stronger than your will, and I say weed that bed out and you weed it. This, like the other, is apt to do the work too thoroughly, it presses down so upon the boy that it presses the very best there is in him out of him his individuality. It leaves him an I-don't care-lump-of-humanity, that gets through the days automatically. If father says weed, he weeds, and then he stops, and if father says hoe, he hoes, aud then he stops, and finally he develops into a sort of wooden man. Men, that like the dancing Jack, work very well when some one else is near to pull the wires, but the moment the hand controlling the wires drops he drops. There is a better way than this, and now you've brought Jack into the world it's only fair that you give him the benefit of the most approved methods of development. This third way is the steady draw of sympathetic magnetism. But in order to make this plan successful you must have faith in your boy, faith in the requirements of his nature, as they were stamped by the Giver of Life and pronounced fit for use; without this you can do nothing. More, you must have faith in yourself. These assured, use your magnet of loving sympathy; first to draw your boy to you as the sun draws the flower, make him believe in you, believe that what father says is so because father says it's so and father knows. This done and you will find it comparatively easy work to interest him in nature found at the end of the hoe as found in results our own labor bring forth.

But every plant needs stimulating. Stimulate Jack by appreciation. When he has done well with the onion weeding show him your appreciation of it by an hour in the woods for the things he loves so well, as a reward. "You don't believe in rewards! Believe children should be taught the higher way." Oh, yes, yes, that's all very well in the main, but when you stick those grape cuttings down in the sand you told them that if they'd take root and grow you'd give them some better soil by-and-by, and those that didn't root you didn't give any better soil to. And Our Great

Father of all says: "You do the best you can down on that little earth of mine and if you grow well I'll give you a better place to grow in. But to bring this matter of rewards a little nearer home. We find on certain pinktinted slips of paper passed around here to-night, $10 for the best strawberries not less than ten. Now isn't that a pretty large reward for the growing of ten strawberries, and strawberries brought forth by the bushel? "Yes, but it's for the very best strawberries, mind you." And how was it about the onion weeding, didn't you ask for the very best there too? Ten dollars for ten of the best strawberries -dollar apiece- and Jack asked to pull weeds ten hours in his very best style and no reward. I'm afraid big boys sometimes ask of the little fellows what they don't ask of one another.

Reward is a legitimate incentive to development and a judicious use of it is lawful. More than this, you did not ask Jack what he thought of the idea of life before you brought him into life, you just put him down and told him to grow. Now there is a little danger if you push him into a corner, so that he feels that he is not fairly dealt with, that he may remind you of this not having been consulted, as a certain little maiden did we brought from the south to take up life in our northern home. The matter arranged of her return with us, and we said but little to the child save the bare fact that she was to go. She was but four and we acted on the plan, "least said, soonest mended," and she on her part, said very little. But the morning arrived for our departure, she permitted her traveling hat to be banded down, and she kissed her mother good bye and she climbed into the old stage, for her ride over the cordoroy roads connecting with the railway, and later she settled down into life by the rough Lake Michigan. So unlike the life she had known back of the magnolias, without a word, and we wondered if she were quite as bright as she ought to be. She took the change so indifferently. But one day we were obliged to remove her from the dinner table to have her face and hands washed, and then the change came. storm wreath gathered on her face, but save by the scowl