Two rooms are indispensable, if there is any variety of age.  It is desirable that one should be sequestrated to the quiet employments.  A pianoforte is desirable, to lead the singing, and accompany the plays, gymnastics, frequent marchings, and dancing, when that is taught,—­which it should be.  But a hand-organ which plays fourteen tunes will help to supply the want of a piano, and a guitar in the hands of a ready teacher will do better than nothing.

Sometimes a genial mother and daughters might have a Kindergarten, and devote themselves and the house to it, especially if they live in one of our beautiful country-towns or cities.  The habit, in the city of New York, of sending children to school in an omnibus, hired to go round the city and pick them up, suggests the possibility of a Kindergarten in one of those beautiful residences up in town, where there is a garden before or behind the house.  It is impossible to keep Kindergarten by the way.  It must be the main business of those who undertake it; for it is necessary that every individual child should be borne, as it were, on the heart of the garteners, in order that it be inspired with order, truth, and goodness.  To develop a child from within outwards, we must plunge ourselves into its peculiarity of imagination and feeling.  No one person could possibly endure such absorption, of life in labor unrelieved, and consequently two or three should unite in the undertaking in order to be able to relieve each other from the enormous strain on life.  The compensations are, however, great.  The charm of the various individuality, and of the refreshing presence of conscience yet unprofaned, is greater than can be found elsewhere in this work-day world.  Those were not idle words which came from the lips of Wisdom Incarnate:—­“Their angels do always behold the face of my Father”:  “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

A PICTURE.

[AFTER WITHER.]

  Sweet child, I prithee stand,
  While I try my novel hand
  At a portrait of thy face,
  With its simple childish grace.

  Cheeks as soft and finely hued
  As the fleecy cloud imbued
  With the roseate tint of morn
  Ere the golden sun is born:—­
  Lips that like a rose-hedge curl,
  Guarding well the gates of pearl,
 —­What care I for pearly gate? 
  By the rose-hedge will I wait:—­
  Chin that rounds with outline fine,
  Melting off in hazy line;
  As in misty summer noon,
  Or beneath the harvest moon,
  Curves the smooth and sandy shore,
  Flowing off in dimness hoar:—­
  Eyes that roam like timid deer
  Sheltered by a thicket near,
  Peeping out between the boughs,
  Or that, trusting, safely browse:—­
  Arched o’er all the forehead pure,
  Giving us the prescience sure
  Of an ever-growing light;
  As in deepening summer night,
  Over fields to ripen soon
  Hangs the silver crescent moon.