helping me," but while children still at home may be kept, it is too
late for the eldest born. To day he is a wanderer from home, and
mother, and God. While human hearts and human prayers follow him,
God's mercy alone can reach and save.

4. _For the safely of Home._--Home is emphatically the kingdom
of woman. Here she is queen, and can order all its belongings as she
deems best. To a very great degree its inmates are _subjects_ of
her kingdom, and acknowledge her sway. The cases are few, perhaps,
where her wishes are not respected, her right acceded to in all home
arrangements. But to ensure a perfect home it is necessary that
purity and peace should guard the threshold, that nothing unholy may
enter, and that the noise of the world's strife pass not through.
Here there should be rest and peace. The liquor traffic is the avowed
enemy of the home. While this exists not one home is absolutely safe,
not one household is quite free from danger. This enemy does not
scruple to enter the rightful kingdom of woman to rob, murder, and to
destroy, and to lay in ruins all that before was bright and
beautiful. The strong man is made helpless under its influence, all
loveliness withers at its touch, the darkness of its shadow shuts out
the sunlight, and its breath of death is over all. While this is true
we ought surely to act as if we believed it to be true, and do all in
our power to bar the door against this destroyer. As women to whom
God has given reason, intelligence, the blessings of a Christian
education and much influence in our homes, we dare not bow down
longer to a custom so fraught with evil and so ruinous in its
effects. A bird will be quick to discover the approach of the
serpent, and will spread its wings over the nest to protect its
nestlings, and shall we not shield the dear ones in the home nest
from the approach of this serpent, whose nature it is to kill and to