The first sure symptoms of a mind in health,
Is rest of heart, and pleasure felt at home.
-YOUNGS' NIGHT THOUGHTS.

Home is the resort

Of love, of joy, of peace, and plenty, where,
Supporting, and supported, polished friends
And dear relations mingle into bliss.

-THOMPSON'S SEASONS.

Look to your health, and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience. For health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of a blessing that money cannot buy. Value it.

Surround the sick man with the pomp of kings; let his chair be a throne, and his crutch a scepter; he will look with contemptuous eye on marble, on gold, and on purple, and would deem himself happy could he enjoy, even under thatched roof, the health of the meanest of his subjects.-ZSCHOKKE.

The fireside is a seminary of infinite importance. Few can receive the honors of a college, but all are graduates of the home. The learning of the university may fade from the recollection, its classic lore may molder in the halls of memory; but the simple lessons of home, enameled upon the heart of childhood, defy the rust of years, and outlive the more mature, but less vivid, pictures of after years.-GOODRICH.

I will not, therefore, believe that what is so natural in the house of another is impossible at home; but maintain, without fear, that all the courtesies of social life may be upheld in domestic societies. A husband as willing to be pleased at home, and as anxious to please as in his neighbor's house; and a wife as intent on making things comfortable every day to her family as on set days to her guests, could not fail to make their own home happy.-PHILLIP.

PREFACE.

THIS Volume has been prepared for a given purpose. The supreme end sought in it is usefulness. It is a book of practical knowledge. No space has been given to rhetoric. The greatest amount of information in the smallest space has been our ever-present ideal.

The preparation of these pages has been a constant delight. The privilege of putting so many hundred important suggestions into a hundred thousand homes, to enter into the convictions and manners and lives and destinies of so many young people, and bear the fruit of peace and comfort and gentleness and culture in a million homes of the future, is gratefully accepted as the opportunity of a life-time.

AUTHORITIES CONSULTED.*

Hand-Book for Home Improvement.

The Housekeeper's Manual. By Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Life at Home. By Rev. Wm. Aikman, D.D.

Half-Hour Studies of Life. By Rev. E. A. Johnson, D.D.

The Art of Conversation.

Hill's Manual of Social and Business Forms.

The American Journal of the Medical Societies. Philadelphia.

Medical and Surgical Reporter. Philadelphia.

The Sanitarian, and Organ of the Medico-Legal Society. New York.
Popular Science Monthly. New York: D. Appleton & Company.
Appleton's Journal. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

New Jersey Eclectic, Medical, and Surgical Journal. Newark, N. J.
American Agriculturist. New York: Orange Judd Company.

Phrenological Journal, and Journal of Health. New York: S. R. Wells & Company.

Herald of Health. New York: Wood & Holbrook, Publishers.

The Lancet. London, England.

New York Eclectic Medical and Surgical Journal. Edward N. Fishblatt, M.D.

American Journal of Microscopy. New York.

Hall's Journal of Health. New York.

Report of Special Committee on Croup of the Illinois State Medical Society, 1878. H. L. Gill, M.D.

Till the Doctor Comes. By Geo. M. Hope, D.D. New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons.

Steele's Fourteen Weeks in Physiology. New York: A. S. Barnes & Company.

We also add, as helpful to us, the names of Rev. L. D. Barrows, D.D., and Rev. John Wesley, A.M.

* Partial List.