I travel about occasionally, and sometimes, when I want food or a night's lodging, I call at the house of a brother, who is probably of long standing in the Church, and who is raising a family of fine children. Now, a part of that man's mission is to educate those children, to form their tastes, to cultivate their talents, and make a kingdom of holy men and women of them—a kingdom of priests unto God. But what has he got there to do it with? If you ask for a Book of Mormon, he will probably hand you one that old age seems long since to have passed its final veto upon, and if you undertake to pick it up you would say, "it stinks so that I cannot." I do not know that there are many such Elders, but if there should happen to be one here, it would be well for him to reflect that right here at the Deseret News printing office br. Kelly has the standard works of the Church for sale, and I would like every Elder in Israel to place a full set of them in the hands of his children; but especially, and above all others, the Bible, Book of Mormon, and the Book of Doctrine and Covenants. I want to find them in every house. And when I go to a meeting house to preach I want the Bishop to have them on the stand, and the better they are bound and the nicer they look the more they please me. I do not wish to see these sacred books so dirty that you cannot read them, nor so shattered by time and bad usage that you cannot find a passage you wish to read because it is torn out. Where there are meeting houses without them I recommend, if necessary, that collections be taken up to procure them. When stopping at the houses of the brethren, instead of the works of the Church I will probably find "Cresswell's Eulogy on the Life of Henry Winter Davis." "How did this get here?" I inquire. "Oh, why, br. Hooper sent it, and it is a very nice work," is the reply. Have you the Juvenile Instructor?" "No." "Why, your children are big enough to read it, and it is one of the finest written things imaginable, and there is scarcely a syllable in it but what is useful. How do you manage to keep your children at home without something to interest them? Do you take the Deseret News?" "No, they stopped publishing the sermons, so I concluded that I would do without it." "Do you take the Daily Telegraph?" "I did take it, but I did not pay for it, and the editor got out of patience at having to furnish it for nothing, and he stopped it. I felt insulted, and would not take it any more." "Do you send to the States for books?" "No." So the children are learning nothing at all, and the only chance for them to have a little excitement is to get some corn and play at three men morris.

Brethren, make your homes attractive. Procure the Deseret News and the Juvenile Instructor, and let your children read the sermons and articles printed there, and read them yourselves, you are none of you too old to learn. If you want light reading do not sent to the States for it, but support that which is got up here.