CHAPTER XIV

31See chap. xvii, "The Family and the Church."32See chap. vii on "Directed Activity," and the references for study at its end.33Much may be learned by a study of Primary plans in a modern Sunday school. See Athearn,The Church School, chap. vi.34Since we are dealing here especially with religious education in the family, the author refers to his more extended treatment of the question of children in church services inEfficiency in the Sunday School, chap. xv.

31See chap. xvii, "The Family and the Church."

32See chap. vii on "Directed Activity," and the references for study at its end.

33Much may be learned by a study of Primary plans in a modern Sunday school. See Athearn,The Church School, chap. vi.

34Since we are dealing here especially with religious education in the family, the author refers to his more extended treatment of the question of children in church services inEfficiency in the Sunday School, chap. xv.

Shall the periods for meals be for the body only or shall we see in them happy occasions for the enriching of the higher life? Upon the answer depends whether the table shall be little more than a feeding-trough or the scene of constant mental and character development. In some memories the meals stand out only in terms of food, while pictures of dishes and fragments of food fill the mind; in others there are borne through all life pictures of happy faces and thoughts of cheer, of knowledge gained and ideals created in the glow of conversation.

The family is together as a united group at the table more than anywhere besides. Table-talk, by its informality and by the aid of the pleasures of social eating, is one of the most influential means of education. Depend upon it, children are more impressed by table-talk than by teacher-talk or by pulpit-talk. They expect moralizing on the other occasions, but here the moral lessons throw out no warning; they meet no opposition; they are—or ought to be, if they would be effective—anatural part of ordinary conversation and, by being part and parcel of everyday affairs, they become normally related to life. The table is the best opportunity for informal, indirect teaching, and this is for children the natural and only really effective form of moral instruction.

The child comes to these social occasions with a hungry mind as well as with an empty stomach. His mind is always receptive—even more so than his stomach; at the table he is absorbing that which will stay with him much longer than his food. Even if we were thinking of his food alone, we should still do well to see that the table is graced by happy and helpful conversation; nothing will aid digestion more than good cheer of the spirit; it stimulates the organs and, by diverting attention from the mere mechanics of eating, it tends to that most desirable end, a leisurely consumption of food.

The general conversation of the family group has more to do with character development in children than we are likely to realize, and the table is peculiarly the opportunity for general conversation. Here, most of all, we need to watch its character and consider its teaching effects. Where father scolds or mother complains the children grow fretful and quarrelsome. Where father spends the time in reciting the sharp dealing of the market or the political ring, where motherdelights in dilating on the tinsel splendors of her social rivalries, they teach the children that life's object is either gain at any cost or social glory. But it is just as easy to do precisely the opposite, to speak of the pleasures found in simpler ways, to glory in goodness and kindness, and to teach, by relating the worthy things of the day, the worth of love and truth and high ideals. The news of the day may be discussed so as to make this world a game of grab, inviting youth to cast conscience and honor to the winds and to plunge into the greedy struggle, or so as to make each day a book of beautiful pictures of life's best pleasures and enduring prizes.

But table-talk, helpful, cheerful, and educative, does not occur by accident. It comes, first, from our own constant and habitual thought of the meals in social and spiritual, as well as in physical, terms. And it reaches its possibilities as we endeavor to create and direct the kind of conversation that is desired. "Let all your speech be seasoned with salt," wrote the apostle, and we might add, let your salt be seasoned with good speech. That is the quality we must seek, the seasoning of healthful, saving, and not insipid, speech.

One of the great advantages of "grace before meat" lies in this: it gives a tone to the occasion.Its chief meaning is surely that we remind ourselves of the ever-present guest who is also the giver of all good. Where the grace is not a perfunctory act, but rather the welcoming of such a guest, the meal has started on a high level. We cannot do better than so to act and speak as those who take the divine presence for granted. We need not preach about it; we need only to assume it and move on the level of that friendship. Children will feel it; they will seek to answer to it, and will find pleasure in the very thought which they have perhaps never expressed in words.

The central idea of the grace suggests another means of helpful influences at the table, by bringing into our homes, for the meals, the friends whose lives will lift these younger ones. It is worth everything to live even for an hour with good and broadening lives. There are obligations to our guests to be considered, and their wishes should be consulted, but one always feels that children are being cheated when they are sent to eat at another table and deprived of the peculiar intimate touch with lives that bring the benefits of travel and experience. Ask your own memory what some persons who ate at the table with you in childhood meant to you.

The wise hostess knows that even when she brings together the group of mature folks, and even when they are wise and witty, she must beprepared adroitly to inspire the conversation or it may flag at times. How much more does the conversation need direction where we have the same group every day composed largely of immature persons! When you have thought of all the portions and all the plates, have you thought of the food for the spirit?

Before suggesting methods of selection and direction, let a word of explanation be said: food for the spirit is not confined to theology, to hymns and the Bible; it is whatever will help us to feel and think of life as an affair of the spirit. And this must come in very simple terms, by the elementary steps, for young folks. It will be whatever will in any way help us to live more kindly, more cheerfully, more as though this really were God's world and all folks his family. Whatever does this is truly religious.

Plan for the food of the spirit as seriously at least as for the food of the body. Learn to recognize poisons and also indigestibles. The first are subjects of scandal, bitterness of spirit, malice, impatience, tale-bearing, unkindly criticism, and discontent. The second are subjects too heavy for children: your formal theology would be one of them, your judgments on some intricate subjects may be among them. It is seldom wise to announcenegative injunctions, but we can make up our own minds to avoid the conversational poisons and, when they appear, it is always easy to push them out. Even when the unpleasant subject is so common to all and has been so impressive in the day's experience that it threatens to become the sole, absorbing topic, we can say, "We won't talk of it at table! Let's find something better." But we must then have ready the something better; that will be possible only by forethought.

First, save up during the day, or between the meals, the best thoughts, the cheering, kind, ideal, and amusing incidents. Cultivate the habit of saying to yourself, "This is something for us all to enjoy tonight at the table."

Secondly, expect the other members to bring their best. Ask for "the best news of the day" from one and another. Encourage them to tell of good things seen and done and of pleasant and ideal things heard and spoken.

Thirdly, use the incidents as the basis of discussion. Let children tell what they think of moral situations. Often they will quote the opinions of teachers and others. Always you will secure under these circumstances the unreserved expression of what they actually think. A free, informal conversation of this sort where opinions are kindly examined and compared is the finest kind of teaching.

Fourthly, do not forget the grace of humor. To see the odd, whimsical, startling side of the incident or experience trains one to see the interplay of life, to catch a ray of light from all things, and to moderate our tendency to permit our tragedies to pull the heavens down.

Fifthly, use this period to strengthen the consciousness of family unity by recounting past happy experiences and discussing plans of family life. In one family there are few meals from October to Christmas that do not include reminiscences of the summer in the woods and by the water, or from Christmas to June without plans for the next summer in the same place. Then, too, if you are contemplating something new, a piano, a chair, an automobile, talk it all over here. Let each one have his share in the planning. The effect is most important for character; the children acquire the sense of a share in the family community life. They get their first lessons in citizenship in this group, and they thus learn social living. Then when the chair, or what not, is bought, it is not alone the parents' possession; it belongs to all and all treat it as the property of all.

Sixthly, introduce great guests who cannot come in person. It is fine fun to say, "We have with us tonight a man who loved bees and wrote books." Let them guess who it was; help, if necessary, by an allusion toThe Life of the BeeandThe Blue Bird. They will want to know more about Maeterlinck and they will joyously imagine what they would say to him and how he would answer, what he would eat and how he would behave. In this way we may enjoy knowing better Lincoln, Whittier, Florence Nightingale, and an innumerable company.

Seventhly, this is the place to remind ourselves that table-manners are no small part of the moral life. By the habituation of custom we can establish lives in attitudes of everyday thoughtfulness for others, in the underlying consideration of others which is the basis of all courtesy. Children's questions on table-etiquette must be met, not only by the formal rules, but also by their explanation in the intent of every gentle life to give pleasure and not pain to others, so to live in all things as to find helpful harmony with other lives and to help them to find and be the best. It is not only impolite to grab and guzzle, it is unsocial and so unmoral, because it is both a bad example and a distressing sight to others. It is irreligious, because whatever tends to make this life less beautiful must be offensive to the God who made all things good.

If we ourselves seek to maintain beauty, order, and kindliness in the conduct of the table, our children acquire a love of all that makes for beautyand order and kindliness, for righteousness in the little things of life. A clean tablecloth may be a means of grace. You have to try to live up to it. Order and quietness in eating are not separable from the rest of the life. To lift up life at any point is to raise the whole level. To let it down at any point is to let all down. But to lift up the level of conversation at the table is to raise the level of the entire occasion and to make it more than a period of eating, to convert it into a festival, a joyous occasion of the spirit. The meal should be in all things worthy of the unseen guest.

How near we all come together at the table! In its freedom how clearly are we seen by our children! Here they know us for what we are and so learn to interpret life.

I.Reference for StudyTable Talk.Pamphlet. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa.II.Topics Tor Discussion1. The relation of mental conditions to digestion.2. The relation of table-etiquette to life-habits.3. The table as an opportunity for the grace of courtesy, and the relation of this grace to Christian character.4. Training children in listening as well as in talking at table.5. Do you regard table-talk and table-manners as having any directly religious values? Why?

I.Reference for Study

Table Talk.Pamphlet. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa.

II.Topics Tor Discussion

1. The relation of mental conditions to digestion.

2. The relation of table-etiquette to life-habits.

3. The table as an opportunity for the grace of courtesy, and the relation of this grace to Christian character.

4. Training children in listening as well as in talking at table.

5. Do you regard table-talk and table-manners as having any directly religious values? Why?

Much that has been said so far has had in mind only the problems of dealing with younger children in the life of the home. Indeed, almost all literature on education in the family is devoted to the years prior to adolescence. But older boys and girls need the family and the family needs them. Many of the more serious problems of youth with which society is attempting to deal are due to the fact that from the age of thirteen on boys have no home life and girls, especially in the cities, are deprived of the home influences.

The life of the family must have a place for the growing boy. It must make provision for his physical needs; these are food, activity, rest, and shelter. Youth is a period of physical crisis. Health is the basis of a sound moral life. Many of the lad's apparently strange propensities are due to the physical changes taking place in his body and, often, to the fact that it is assumed that his rugged frame needs no care or attention.35

It will take more than tearful pleading to hold him to his home; he can be held only by its ministry to him; he will be there if it is the most attractive place for him. Some parents who are praying for wandering boys would know why they wandered if they looked calmly at the crowded quarters given to the boy, the comfortless room, the makeshift bed, and the general home organization which long ago assumed that a boy could be left out of the reckoning.

The boy needs a part in the family activities. He can belong only to that to which he can give himself. It will be his home in the degree that he has a share in its business. Begin early to confer with him about your plans; make him feel that he is a partner. See that he has a chance to do part of the work, not only its "chores," but also its forms of service. But even a boy's attitude to the "chores" will depend on whether they are a responsibility with a degree of dignity or a form of unpaid drudgery. His room should be his own room, and he should be responsible for its neatness and its adorning. Services which he does regularly for all should receive regular compensation. In all services which the home renders for others he should have a share; this is his training for the larger citizenship and society of service.36

The boy is a playing animal. Not all homes can be fully equipped with play apparatus. But no parents have a right to choose family quarters as though children needed nothing but meals and beds. The shame of the modern apartment building is that its conveniences are all for passive adults. To attempt to train an active, growing, vigorous, playing human creature in one of these immense filing-cases, where all persons are shot up elevators and filed away in pigeonholes called rooms, is to force him out to the life of the streets. The thoughtless self-indulgence of modern parents, seeking only to live without physical effort, is the cause of much juvenile delinquency.37

But play for the boy is more than shouting and running in the grass and among trees; he needs books and opportunities for indoor recreation. For the sake of the lad we had better sacrifice the guest-room if necessary, and make way for the punching-bag and the home billiard-table or pool-table; here is a magnet of innocent skilful play to draw him off the street and to bring the boy and his friends under his own roof. If possible his room ought to be the place that is his own, where his friends may come, where he may taste the beginnings of the joys of home-living in receiving them and entertaining them.38

A workbench in the attic or basement has saved many a boy from the street. Such apparatus truly interferes with the symmetrical plan of a home that is designed for the entertainment of the neighbors; but families must some time choose between chairs and children, between the home for the purpose of the lives in it and the household for the purpose of a salon.39

In the religious family there is valuable opportunity to train youth to one form of participation in the religious life. Whatever the family gives or does for social service, for philanthropic enterprises, for the support of the church or religious work, ought to be, not the gift of one member or of the heads alone, but of the whole family, extending itself in service through the community, the nation, and the world. The form and the amount of the gifts ought to be a matter of family conference and each member ought early to have the opportunity and the means of determining his share in such extension. The child's gifts to the church should not be pennies thrust into his hand as he crosses the threshold of home for the Sunday school, but his own money, from his own account—partly his own direct earnings—appropriated for this or for other purposes by himself and withthe advice of his parents. Family councils on forms of participation in ideal activities, by gifts and by service, bind the whole life together and form occasions in which the child is learning life in terms of loving, self-giving service.40

The boy needs friendship. Not all his needs can be met by the schoolboys whom he may bring into his room, nor can they all be met by his mother's affection. He needs a father. The most serious obstacle to the religious education of boys is that most of them are half-orphans; intellectually and spiritually they have no fathers. The American ideal seems to be that the man shall be the money-maker, the woman the social organizer, and the children shall be committed to hired shepherds or left to shift for themselves.

No one else can be quite the teacher for the boy that his father ought to be. No man can ever commit to another, still less to some tract or book, the duty of guiding his boy to sanity and consecration in the matter of the sex problems.

The first word that needs to be said on this subject is that such problems receive safe and sufficientguidance only in the atmosphere of affection and reverence. Do not attempt to teach this boy of yours as though you were dealing with a class in physiology. The largest thing you can do for him is to quicken a reverence for the body and for the functions of life. By your own attitude, by your own expressions and opinions, lead him to a hatred and abhorrence of the base, filthy, and bestial, to a healthy fear and detestation of all that despoils and degrades manhood, and to a reverence for purity, beauty, and life.41

Be prepared to give him, on the basis of reverence, the clean, clear facts. Be sure you have the facts. Do not think he is ignorant; he is in a world seething with conversation, stories, pictures, and experiences of evil. The trouble is that his facts are partial, distorted, and unbalanced by positive errors; his knowledge is gained from the street and the school-yard. Only a personal teacher can help him unravel the good from the bad, the true from the false. Do not trust to your own general knowledge; take time to read one of the simple and sane books on this subject.42Be ready to lead him aright. Remember this subject has provokeda large number of books, many of which are foolish and others unwholesome. Do not try to deputize your duty to some doubtful book.

But the boy needs more than instruction on a special subject; he needs personality, he needs the time and thought of, andpersonal contactwith, his father. Men who do not live with boys never know what they lose. And alas, see what the boy misses! He has been his mother's boy up to school age when school takes him and gives him a woman's guidance, while the Sunday school is likely to keep him—for a while only—under the eye of some dear sister who "just loves boys." The system is a vicious one. The lad needs developed masculinity. If he gets it neither in school nor in the home he will find it on the street corner, through the vicious boy-leader of the degrading poolroom or the alleys.

The boy who finds his father eager to talk over the game, to discuss the merits of peg-tops, to walk, row, play, and work with him, finds it as simple and natural to talk with him over his moral and religious questionings as it is to talk over the daily happenings. To live with the boy is to find the youth with you. But it is hard work discovering your young men if you lost your boys.43

Almost all that has been said about the boy applies to the girl of the same years. Leta special pleabe entered here against the notion that girls are favored when sheltered from a share in the activities of the home. They desire to express their ideals as much as do boys. Much of the so-called craze for amusements is due to the fact that the family is so organized that there is no vent to the ideals there, no chance to have a share in the business of life. Young folks with the sense that "this is our home," not "our parents', butours" bend their energies to its adorning, and find in it the chance to realize some of their passion for beauty and for service.44

Mothers usually do better than do fathers in the matter of sex instruction. Yet they usually begin too late, long after the little girl has acquired much misleading information in the school. Here, too, the first aim must be to quicken reverence for life, to set up the conception of the beauty and dignity of sex functions before the baser mind of the street has had an opportunity to interpret them in terms of the dirt.45

Above all, with boys and girls, the whole subject, including marriage and the founding of a family,must ever be treated with dignity and reverence. Foolish parents jest with their girls about their beaux and boast that their little ones are playing at courtship. If they could realize the wonder awakened, followed by pain and then by hardened sensibilities and coarsened ideals, they would sacrifice their jests for the sake of the child's soul. We wonder that youth treats lightly the matter of social purity when we have treated the sacred relations of life as a jest. If this family in which they now live is to be a place of sacred associations, of real religious life, the whole matter of marriage and the family must be treated with reverence. Their practice will not rise above our everyday ideals as expressed in casual conversation and in our own practice.

I.References for StudyTHE BOYW. A. McKeever,Training the Boy, Part III. Macmillan, $1.50.Boy Training, Part IV. A Symposium. Associated Press.Johnson,The Problems of Boyhood. The University of Chicago Press, $1.00.THE GIRLMargaret Slattery,The Girl in Her Teens, chaps. iv, vii. Sunday School Times Co., $0.50.Wayne,Building Your Girl. McClurg, $0.50.II.Further ReadingW. B. Forbush,The Coming Generation. Appleton, $1.50.Puffer,The Boy and His Gang. Houghton Mifflin Co., $1.00.Irving King,The High School Age. Bobbs-Merrill, $1.00.Building Childhood, A Symposium. Sunday School Times Co., $1.00.III.Topics for Discussion1. What are the special needs of the growing boy?2. What are the things that a boy enjoys in his home?3. In what way does city life interfere with the natural development of the child?4. What are some of the natural expressions of religion for a boy?5. How early should the sex instruction begin?6. What does a father owe to the boy, and what are the best methods of meeting the duty?7. What are the normal activities for girls in the home?8. What are their especial needs?

I.References for Study

THE BOY

W. A. McKeever,Training the Boy, Part III. Macmillan, $1.50.

Boy Training, Part IV. A Symposium. Associated Press.

Johnson,The Problems of Boyhood. The University of Chicago Press, $1.00.

THE GIRL

Margaret Slattery,The Girl in Her Teens, chaps. iv, vii. Sunday School Times Co., $0.50.

Wayne,Building Your Girl. McClurg, $0.50.

II.Further Reading

W. B. Forbush,The Coming Generation. Appleton, $1.50.

Puffer,The Boy and His Gang. Houghton Mifflin Co., $1.00.

Irving King,The High School Age. Bobbs-Merrill, $1.00.

Building Childhood, A Symposium. Sunday School Times Co., $1.00.

III.Topics for Discussion

1. What are the special needs of the growing boy?

2. What are the things that a boy enjoys in his home?

3. In what way does city life interfere with the natural development of the child?

4. What are some of the natural expressions of religion for a boy?

5. How early should the sex instruction begin?

6. What does a father owe to the boy, and what are the best methods of meeting the duty?

7. What are the normal activities for girls in the home?

8. What are their especial needs?

35A good brief book on the problem of the adolescent is E. T. Swift,Youth and the Race; another, from the school point of view, is Irving King,The High-School Age, which has much material of great value to parents.36On the various activities of boys see W. A. McKeever,Training the Boy.37See the notable report by Breckinridge and Abbott,The Delinquent Child and the Home.38On the gregarious instincts see J. A. Puffer,The Boy and His Gang.39See the books on manual work given in chap. vii, "Directed Activity."40On the religious life of the boy in relation to society and the church see Allan Hoben,The Minister and the Boy, and the author's treatment of boys and the Sunday school inEfficiency in the Sunday School, chap. xiv; also J. Alexanderet al.,Training the Boy, a symposium.41On the attitude of reverence in this question read Dr. Cabot's fine essay,The Christian Approach to Social Morality.42The works of Dr. W. S. Hall,From Boyhood to Manhood, for parents' guidance with boys of thirteen to eighteen; E. Lyttleton,Training of the Young in Laws of Sex, is excellent for fathers;Reproduction and Sexual Hygieneis a text for older youth to be recommended; also, for reading, N. E. Richardson,Sex Culture Talks, D. S. Jordan,The Strength of Being Clean.43For further studies of the problem of the boy parents would do well to read:Building Boyhood, a symposium; W. A. McKeever,Training the Boy;W. B. Forbush,The Coming Generation;W. D. Hyde,The Quest of the Best.44On activities see W. A. McKeever,Training the Girl.45On the problem with young children see M. Morley,The Renewal of Life; in connection with older girls see K. H. Wayne,Building Your Girl.

36On the various activities of boys see W. A. McKeever,Training the Boy.

37See the notable report by Breckinridge and Abbott,The Delinquent Child and the Home.

38On the gregarious instincts see J. A. Puffer,The Boy and His Gang.

39See the books on manual work given in chap. vii, "Directed Activity."

40On the religious life of the boy in relation to society and the church see Allan Hoben,The Minister and the Boy, and the author's treatment of boys and the Sunday school inEfficiency in the Sunday School, chap. xiv; also J. Alexanderet al.,Training the Boy, a symposium.

41On the attitude of reverence in this question read Dr. Cabot's fine essay,The Christian Approach to Social Morality.

42The works of Dr. W. S. Hall,From Boyhood to Manhood, for parents' guidance with boys of thirteen to eighteen; E. Lyttleton,Training of the Young in Laws of Sex, is excellent for fathers;Reproduction and Sexual Hygieneis a text for older youth to be recommended; also, for reading, N. E. Richardson,Sex Culture Talks, D. S. Jordan,The Strength of Being Clean.

43For further studies of the problem of the boy parents would do well to read:Building Boyhood, a symposium; W. A. McKeever,Training the Boy;W. B. Forbush,The Coming Generation;W. D. Hyde,The Quest of the Best.

44On activities see W. A. McKeever,Training the Girl.

45On the problem with young children see M. Morley,The Renewal of Life; in connection with older girls see K. H. Wayne,Building Your Girl.

Families are for the spiritual development of youth as well as of childhood. The home is for the young people as well as for the younger ones. But the very period when they slip from church school is also the period when they are often lost to the real life of the family. In some measure this is due to the natural development of the social life. The youths go out to work, move forward into enlarging social groups which demand more of their free time. They are learning the life of the larger world of which they are now a part.

But the family is still the home of these young people; normally it is still the most vital educational influence for them. Yet there is no problem more baffling than that of family ministry for, and leadership of, the higher life of youth.

It is a short-measure interpretation of the home which thinks of it as only for young children and old folks. The young men and women from sixteen to twenty and over still need training and direction; they need close touch with other lives in affection and in an ideal atmosphere. In a few years they,too, will be home-makers, and here in the home they are very directly learning the art of family life.

For youth there are few effective schools, outside the home, other than the streets and the places of commercialized amusement. Even where the other agencies of training are used, such as college, classes, and associations (such as the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A.), life, at that period, needs the restraints on selfishness that come from family life, the refining and socializing power of the family group.

What are the special needs of youth upon which the family may base a reasonable program for their higher needs?

First, the need of sound physical health. This is a period of physical adjustment. Rapid bodily growth is nearly or quite at an end; new functions are asserting themselves. The new demands for directed activity may, under the ambitious impulses of youth, make undue drafts on the energies. The apparent moodiness that at times characterizes this period may be due to poor health. The moral strain of the period will need sound muscles and good health. Parents who would sit up all night—perhaps involuntarily—when the baby has the colic treat with indifference sickness in youth andtoo readily assume that the young man or the young woman will outgrow these physical ills. But bodily maladjustment or incapacity has most serious character effects. To live the right life and render high service one needs to be a whole person, with opportunity to give undivided attention and undiminished powers to the struggle of life.

Secondly, this is peculiarly the period of the joy of friendships. The social nature must have its food. This young man has discovered that the world consists of something besides things; it is full of people. He is just learning that they are all persons like himself. He enters the era of conscious personal relationships. He would explore the realm of personality. He touches great heights of happiness as other lives are opened to him. It is all new and wonderful, this realm of personality, with its aspects of feeling, thinking, willing, and longing.

Do parents know how hungry their older children are for their friendship? They will never tell us, for this world is too new and strange for facile description; they are always bashful about their hunger for persons until they find the same hunger and joy in us. We imagine that they are indifferent to us; the trouble is we are hidden from them.We seldom give them a chance to talk as friend to friend, not about trifling things, but about life itself and what it means. Perhaps at no point do parents exhibit less ability for sympathetic reconstruction and interpretation of their own lives than here. They recall the pleasures of childhood and provide those pleasures for the children. Why not recall the hunger of eighteen years of age and give these youths the very bread of our own inner selves? Or do we, when they ask this bread, give them the stone of mere provision for their physical needs or the scorpion of careless indulgence in things that debase the tastes?

One perplexing phenomenon must not be overlooked: it will often happen that young people pass through a period of what appears to be parental aversion. There will sometimes seem to be suspicion, violent opposition, and even hatred of parents. This is no occasion for despair. It is a stage of development. It is due to the attempt of a will now realizing its freedom under social conditions to adapt itself to the will that has hitherto directed it. To some degree the sex consciousness, which leads to viewing the parents in a new light, may enter in. It may be easily made permanent, however, if parents do not do two things: first, adjust themselves and their methods to the new social freedom of the youth, and, secondly, fling open the doors into their trueselves now fully understandable by these men and women.

But the family life must make provision for the wider friendships of youth. Somewhere this insatiable appetite for the reality of lives will feed. Groups of friends your young man and woman will find somewhere. If they cannot bring them into your home they will go elsewhere. You can scarce pay any price too high for the opportunity that comes when they are perfectly free to have their friends with them and with you, when home becomes the natural place of the social meetings of youth. If you are afraid of the wear on the furniture you may keep your furniture, but you will lose a life or lives. Here is the opportunity of the home to enter a wider ministry, to be a place of the joy of friendships to many lives.

As through friendships the youth enters and explores this wonderful realm of personality he will find some persons more wonderful than others. Those instincts of which he is largely unconscious will impel him to make a selection. The same law is operative with the young woman. Mating is normally always first on the higher levels of personalities; it first calls itself friendship, nor does it think farther. But father and mother, if they have the least spiritual vision, stand in awe as they seetheir children taking their first evident steps toward home-making. What an opportunity is theirs!

Yet here, as the home faces its duty toward a family yet to be, is just where some of the most serious mistakes are made. This is no time for teasing and jesting, still less for mocking ridicule. If you treat this essentially sacred step as a joke it will not be strange if the young people follow suit and take marriage as a yet larger joke. The home is the place where the home is treated most irreverently. Of course one must not take too seriously those "calf" courtships, prematurely fostered by boys and girls, under the pressure of the high-school tendency to anticipate all of life's riper experiences. But even here jesting and teasing will only tend to confirm and make permanent what would be but a temporary aberration. In that case either silence or kindly, simple advice will help most of all.

To young people who think at all courtship has its times of vision, when they stand trembling before the unknown future, when they, with youth's idealism, make high vows and stand on high places. Give them at least the opportunity to enter your inmost self, to find there all the light you can give them and all the memory of your own joys and hopes. Make them feel, though you need not say it, that they are at the threshold of a temple. If to you this is an affair of the spirit it will be a matter of religion to them.

Approached in such a temper, many of the practical problems of courtship settle themselves. Take the case of the young man at home. If he knows that you think with him of the high meaning of this experience he will not hesitate to bring the young woman to the home. She will feel your attitude. Upon this level questions of times and seasons, hours in the parlor, and all the matters of their relations will settle themselves. If you treat courtship as a matter of the spirit he will do just what he most of all wants to do, treat this woman who is to be his mate as a person, a spirit, with reverence and love that lifts itself above lust. This is the only ground upon which you can appeal to either in matters of conduct at this time. The conventions of society they will despise; but the inner law speaks to them when the outer letter has no meaning.

We must expect our children to go out into their larger world. The beginning of adolescence is the normal time of their social awakening, their conversion from a nature that turns in upon itself to one that moves out into a world of persons. For them, now, the home group ought to be seen as a society as well as a family, as the social group gathering about a definite ideal and mission into which they should delight to project themselves.The appeal of religion is peculiarly vivid just now, for it involves a recognition of one's self as a person with the power of personal choices and with the opportunity to find association with other persons. The family must aid its young people to see the opportunity which the church offers for ideal social relationships which direct themselves to high and attractive service.

What should the family do about the question of the amusements of young people?

Healthy young persons must have recreation. They will seek it on its highest level first and find their way down the facile descent of commercialized amusements only as the higher opportunities are denied them. They would always rather play than be played to; they would rather, where early labor has not sapped vitality, play outdoors than sit in a fetid atmosphere watching tawdry spectacles. But play, the idealization of life's experiences, they will find somewhere. To this need the home must minister by the provision of space, time, opportunity, and the means of play. If through either sloth, selfishness, preoccupation, or a mistaken idea of an empty innocence of life you make recreation and social intercourse impossible in the family, the young people will find it on the street or in the crowd. In the family that plansfor recreation and provides facilities and time for young people to play the problem is a minor one.

But young people will naturally desire to project themselves into the social amusements of the larger groups. Then we ought to know what those amusements are; we must be able to advise, from actual knowledge, not from hearsay or prejudice, as to the healthful and worth while. The home must insist on the provision in the community for the safe socialization of amusements. The thousands of young girls in the cities, who tramp the pavements down to dance halls, primarily are only seeking the satisfaction of a normal craving; and they, on their way to the dance halls, pass the splendid plants of the schools and the churches, standing dark and idle. Families must develop a public opinion that will demand, for the sake of their young people, a provision for amusement and recreation that, instead of poisoning the life, shall strengthen, dignify, and elevate it. If the demand for clean drinking-water is a proper one, is the demand for healthful food for the life of ideals less so?

There can be no doubt of the attitude of any home with the least conscience for character toward all forms of public amusements in which young people are herded promiscuously for the mere purpose of killing time in trivialities. The "white cities" with their glittering lights and baubles areoften moral plague colonies. The amusements debase the intellect, blunt the moral sensibilities, and appeal to the baser passions. They are the low-water mark, we may hope, of commercialized amusement. But they remind us that young people demand company and change from the monotony of the day's toil. They ask us as to the provision we are making for young people and challenge us to use their inclinations for good.

But besides these "shows" there are many dignified forms of social recreation. Good music is to be heard and good plays are to be seen.

The theater, whether of the regular drama or of the motion-picture type, offers a perplexing problem, principally because, in the first place, American people have been too busy conquering a new soil and making a living to give careful thought to the social side of aesthetics and recreation, and, secondly, because the ministry of social recreation has fallen almost entirely under the dominance of the same trend; it has been thoroughly commercialized. We cannot cut the puzzling knot by simply prohibiting all forms of public theatrical entertainment. For one reason, these forms shade off imperceptibly from the church service to the extremes of the vaudeville. But the simple fact is that we no longer indiscriminately class all theaters as baneful and immoral; we are coming tosee their potentialities for good. If the young will go, as they will—and ought—to the theater, and if the theater can lift their ideals, parents would do well to guide their children in this matter and to enlist the aid of the theater.

It is worth while to come to a sympathetic understanding of the place of the drama and the opera, to see what they have meant in the education of the race and what is the significance, to us, of the fact of the strong dramatic instinct in childhood. Naturally the subject can only be mentioned here and the suggestion be offered that parents take time to cultivate an appreciation of good orchestral and concert music and of the drama.

The social life will find outlet in other directions. Young people need our aid to find social groups which will inspire and develop them, especially groups that are serviceful.

This is the period when ideals begin to give direction to the hitherto undirected activity of childhood and youth. Young people are idealists. They see no height too giddy, no task too hard, no dream too roseate, and no hope unattainable. If the times are out of joint they believe they were "born to set them right." Whatever is wrong or imperfect they would take a hand in setting it right. We know we felt that way, but we areloath to believe our children also cherish their high hopes. And so the tendency of the adult is to treat with cynicism the dreams of youth. Often we sedulously endeavor to pervert him to our blasé view of the world; we would have him believe it is a fated heap of cinders instead of an almost new thing to be formed and made perfect. In the home those ideals must be nourished and guided. See that at hand there are the songs and essays of the idealists. Give them Emerson and forget your Nietzsche. Renew your own youth. Get some of Isaiah's passion and let it breathe its fervor on them. Feed by poem, song, story, essay, and conversation the life of ideals.

Stop long enough to see the life that like an engine with steam up is surely going somewhere and help it to find an engineer. We call this the period of sowing wild oats. Wild oats are simply energies invested in the wrong places. The dynamic of youth must go somewhere and do something. Fundamentally it would rather go to the good than the bad. We know that this was true of us at that time; why should we assume less of others? Hold to your faith in youth. Fathers who with open eyes and active minds—not with sleepy fatalism—believe in their boys, have boys who believe in them.

They wait for leadership. If you have dropped into the easy slippers of indifference to social reformand other types of ideal service, get back into the fight again beside this new man of yours.

They wait for friendship in this matter of their ideals and their service. At any cost keep open house of the heart.

They wait for a life-task. This is the period of vocational choice. It will make a tremendous difference to this life whether his work shall be merely a matter of making a living or shall be his chance to invest life in accordance with his new ideals. Shall he go out to be merely one of the many wage-earners or salary-winners to whom life is a great orange from which he will get all the juice if he can, regardless of who else goes thirsty? Or shall he see an occupation as his chance to pay back to today and tomorrow that which he owes to yesterday? as his chance to give the world himself? He need not be a minister or a missionary to make his life a ministry; he will find life, he will be a religious person in no other way than as his dominating motive shall be to find the fulness of life in order to have a full life to give to God's world. The answer will depend on what life means to you, how you are interpreting it, and how you aid him in thinking of it and making his high choice. You will have abundant opportunity to show what it is to you—as you have been doing all along—by your daily attitude; you will have abundant opportunity to talk it all over, for he will certainlydiscuss his trade or profession with you. The family must give to the life of the new day makers of families to whom life means a chance to realize the God-vision of the world.

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