chest to become clogged with dust, so that the pattern could hardly be seen. One day we called at the farm; the oak chest was missing. In its place there stood a brand-new white box. We asked for the oak chest. "What oak chest?" said the housekeeper. "The one that used to stand in that corner." "Oh! that old thing! Why, he wur that old and shabby and dirty, as I were ashamed to see un; and the worms had got into un; so when the painters were doing up the front o' the house, I just fetched in a pail o' paint and a brush, and I tuk and I gived un a nice coat o' paint; and don't he look a beauty now?" That good woman thought she had made a reform in the house, improved her mistress's property. We all know that she was much mistaken.
Her idea of improvement was a false one. We have not all got old carvings in our possession; but we all have charge of some valuable old things; an old language, old customs, old traditions, old modes of thought which contain the stored-up mental force of our forefathers, old memories, a race-history, and some form or other of old religious faith. And with all these things we can deal rightly, or we can deal with them wrongly. Changes of some sort we must have. We must not keep every kind of old lumber in our houses, or there would not be room for ourselves. We have to live our own lives; and we must not so crowd up the world with memorials of the past as to leave no room for the present. We must sometimes make changes or there could be no progress. Which changes are real Reform, and which are mere foolish fashion? Then, again, just as an old carving left to itself gathers dust and damp and tends to decay, so everything that is old, if left to
