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o word in the English language approaches in sweetness the sound of this group of letters. Out of this grand syllable rush memories and emotions always chaste, and always noble. The murderer in his cell, his heart black with crime, hears this word, and his crimes have not yet been committed; his heart is yet pure and free; in his mind he kneels at his mother's side and lisps his prayers to God that he, by a life of dignity and honor, may gladden that mother's heart; and then he weeps, and for a while is not a murderer. The Judge upon his bench deals out the dreaded justice to the scourged, and has no look of gentleness. But breathe this word into his ear, his thoughts fly to his fireside; his heart relents; he is no longer Justice, but weak and tender Mercy.
What makes that small, unopened missive so precious to that great rough man? Why, 'tis from Home—from Home, that spot to which his heart is tied with unseen cords and tendrils tighter than the muscles which hold it in his swelling chest. Perhaps he left his Home caring little for it at the time. Perhaps harsh necessity drove him from its tender roof to lie beneath
THE THATCH OF AVARICE.
It does not matter. As the great river broadens in the Spring, so do his feelings swell and overflow his nature now. Why does he tremble,—that rough, weather-beaten man? Because there is but one place on the great earth where "an eye will mark his coming and grow brighter." If that beacon still burns for him, he can continue his voyage. If it has gone out, if anything has happened to it, his way is dark; nothing but the abiding hand of the Great Father can steady his helm and hold him to his desolate course.
childhood
"Childhood is the bough where slumberedBirds and blossoms many-numbered;Age, that bough with snows encumbered."
The man who wandered "mid pleasures and palaces," had no Home, and when he died he died on the bleak shores of Northern Africa, and was buried where he died, at the city of Tunis, where he held the office of United States Consul. "To Adam," says Bishop Hare, "Paradise was Home. To the good among his descendants,
HOME IS PARADISE."
"Are you not surprised," writes Dr. James Hamilton, "to find how independent of money peace of conscience is, and how much happiness can be condensed in the humblest home? A cottage will not hold the bulky furniture and sumptuous accommodations of a mansion; but if love be there, a cottage will hold as much happiness as might stock a palace." "To be happy at home," writes Dr. Johnson in theRambler, "is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution." In the mind of the good there gather about the old Home
HALO UPON HALO OF FOND THOUGHT,
of nearly idolatrous memory. Upon this very green, the joyous march of youth went on. Here the glad days whirled round like wheels. At morn the laugh was loud; at eve the laughter rang. To-day, perhaps the most joyous of the flock lies in the earth. Perhaps the chief spirit of the wildest gambols is bent with sharp affliction; the one that loved his mother best is in a foreign land; the one that doubled her small cares with dolls goes every week to gaze at little gravestones, and the one that would not stay in bed upon the sun's bright rise now sits in awful blindness. You cannot rob these hearts of their sweet memories. The mystic keyword unlocks the gates. The peaceful waters flow; the thirsty soul is satisfied.
THE LONG AGO.
A lady opens a short epistle from her brother. He is rich, successful, busy, in short driven, cannot visit her at a certain date, regrets, with love, etc., all in ten short lines. What does this dry notice tell? It tells of a buffalo-robe which, by much strategy, can be secured from father's study; it tells of a daring, rollicking boy who has got the strategy and will soon get the buffalo-robe. It tells of two boys and three girls, all gathered in the robe, with the rollicking one as fireman and engineer, making the famous trip down the stairs which shall tumble them all into the presence of a parent who will make a weak demonstration of severity, clearly official, and merely masking a very evident inclination to try a trip on the same train.
WHERE WAS THIS?
Why at the dear old Home, in the Long Ago. Who was the fireman and engineer? Why, this great, pompous man of business, whose short note his sister has just laid down—of course, he was the fireman and the engineer!
We see the sister of Rembrandt, the painter, traveling weary miles to the house of the brother whom in youth she shielded from the wrath of a drunken father, whose rude pictures she concealed from eyes that would have looked upon them in anger. Now he is the most celebrated painter of his time. He is rich beyond the imagination of his humble contemporaries. He never receives people into his stronghold.
TWO GREAT DOGS GUARD THE ENTRANCE.
Into a gloomy portal the aged sister enters, and soon the miser and the good angel of his past are together. There they sit in the dusk, and recall, after sixty years of separation, the scenes of the Home which existed eighty years before! We marvel at a word that comes along a cable under the ocean. Why should we not also wonder at a little word that can sound across the awful stretch of eighty years, through
AN OCEAN OF LIFE,
stormy with fearful disappointments, boisterous with seasons of success, and desolate with the drift, the slime, and the fungus of miserly greed!
Says Dickens: "If ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and proud to Home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of the true metal, and bear the stamp of heaven."
"If men knew what felicity dwells in the cottage of a godly man," writes Jeremy Taylor, "how sound he sleeps, how quiet his rest, how composed his mind, how free from care, how easy his position, how moist his mouth, how joyful his heart, they would never admire the noises, the diseases, the throngs of passions, and the violence of unnatural appetites that fill the house of the luxurious and the heart of the ambitious."
It has happened within a hundred years that men of private station have become Kings. One of the severest trials of their exalted lot has been the disaster which came upon their homes.
KINGS HAVE NO HOMES.
I am told that the Presidents of the United States have complained very naturally that they are denied that privacy which is accorded to the lowliest citizen in the land. It should content the possessor of a Home that he has that which Kings cannot have, and which if it be bright and free from wrong, is more valuable than palaces and marble halls. Of this golden right of asylum in the Home, Abraham Cowley has written: "Democritus relates, as if he gloried in the good fortune of it, that when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus; after whose death, making, in one of his letters, a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at last that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that, in the midst of that most talked of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard of; and yet, within a very few years afterward, there were
NO TWO NAMES OF MEN MORE KNOWN
or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to an ague of frigid impertinences which would make a wise man tremble to think of."
What makes the remembrance of the old Home so happy? Was it not because there the storms of life were turned away from us by those who bore the blasts to keep us in our innocence? And now that future which then was on our horizon has neared us and is our zenith, the centre of our heavens. About us are
PRATTLING LITTLE ONES
who in the far-off years will clothe this house about with that holy mantle which will give it the right to that same grand title, Home. Can we not, in thinking of the good old Home, stand a little nearer to the blast and warm some tiny heart a little more? Does the merry laugh sing out as it did in our own youth? Then this is indeed a Home, growing each day more sacred in the mind of those fledglings who will so soon fly from the nest to beat a fluttering and a weary way through the tempests that will encompass them. A Christmas-tree, a picnic, a May-day festival, make trouble for limbs already weary with labor, but
IT IS THE WEARINESS AND THE SELF-SACRIFICE
as well as the mirth and the innocence which have girt this great word round about with its bright girdle of true glory. "Suffer little children to come unto me," says the Lord Jesus, "and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." We may say likewise, following the beauteous expression of our Savior, "Suffer little children to come into our homes, and forbid them not their mirth and their joy, for their contentment is now the one lesson that will take deep hold on their lives, and their souls will grow rapidly in such surroundings." Says the poet Southey: "A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising six weeks."
"He is the happiest," says Goethe, "be he King or peasant, who finds peace in his Home." Especially should
THE YOUNG MAN
be taught the value of a Home. If his advisers lay before him the lesson of life in all its aspects, he will indeed be a prodigal if he have not a Home of his own almost immediately upon leaving the fatherly roof. There are no reasons, no exceptions, which relieve the healthy, able-bodied young man from an early advance on the enemies who threaten the welfare of the citizen. The strongest fortification which the human heart can throw up against temptation is the Home. Certain men are almost invincible against the onslaughts of the many base allurements which wreak such misery on all sides of us. Why are they so firm? It is because a glorious example has stood before their minds, a liberal and older knowledge of the world has aided their early endeavors, and a plentiful advice has fastened in their understandings the wisdom of virtue and industry. If your sons have Homes of their own, you can leave them, as a great General leaves his lieutenants to occupy a country, here a fortress held in safety, there a cantonment with natural defenses, and there a "city on a hill," while you advance into those other regions which are written on the map of your destiny, "sustained by the unfaltering trust" that you have kept the great obligation imposed on you, and handled your forces for the best advantage of the cause you served.
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Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,To teach the young idea how to shoot.—Thomson.
B
y the general voice of mankind, children are held to be a blessing to the good. Where the bonds of love do not tighten as the children grow, it is like those cases where the chords and muscles do not fasten together after a hurt—there has been malpractice. Let us not live like quacks. There are some general rules in life which will lead us toward a greater enjoyment of our children's lives. Through them and their issue we become immortal on this earth. Death cannot sweep us down entirely. We leave our lives set in a younger cast of flesh, to hold the fight against the enemy. While they thus serve us, to guard us from extinction, we also stand as their ambassadors in heaven, presently to go on our mission,—first to finish our own preparations, and then to begin those of our offspring, who will follow in our footsteps. Says Shakspeare: "The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants." Our experience teaches us that virtue and honesty are in themselves great rewards. Whether we be virtuous and honest matters little in our estimation of the value of those qualities. The thief, quaking before the Judge, cannot but compare his own lot with that of the good man who sits above him. The one has followed every bent of his inclination, which gradually became more and more capricious, more difficult to satisfy. The other put on a steadying curb in early life, denied himself nine times where he humored himself once, and
FINALLY HAD A CHARACTER
which made few demands upon him, and whose demands were decent and in order. Thus "some as corrupt in their morals as vice could make them, have yet been solicitous to have their children soberly, virtuously, and piously brought up." We therefore, on every ground, must teach our children religion, dignity, and probity. "Parents," says Jeremy Taylor, "must give good example and reverent deportment in the presence of their children. And all those instances of charity which usually endear each other—sweetness of conversation, affability, frequent admonition—all significations of love and tenderness, care and watchfulness, must be expressed toward children; that they may look upon their parents as their friends and patrons, their defence and sanctuary, their treasure and their guide."
FATHER AND SON.
Says Sir R. Steele: "It is the most beautiful object the eyes of man can behold to see a man of worth and his son live in an entire, unreserved correspondence. The mutual kindness and affection between them give an inexpressible satisfaction to all who know them. It is a sublime pleasure which increases by the participation. It is as sacred as friendship, as pleasurable as love, and as joyful as religion. This state of mind does not only dissipate sorrow which would be extreme without it, but enlarges pleasures which would otherwise be contemptible. The most indifferent thing has its force and beauty when it is spoken by a kind father, and an insignificant trifle has its weight when offered by a dutiful child. I know not how to express it, but I think I may call it a transplanted self-love."
THE OCCUPATION.
"The time will be coming—is come, perhaps—when your young people must decide on the course and main occupation of their future lives. You will expect to have a voice in the matter. Quite right, if a voice of counsel, of remonstrance, of suggestion, of pointing out unsuspected difficulties, of encouragement by developing the means of success. Such a voice as that from an elder will always be listened to. But perhaps your have already settled in your own mind the calling to be followed, and you mean simply to call on the youngster to accept and register your decree on the opening pages of his autobiography. This is, indeed a questionable proceeding, unless you are perfectly assured of what the young man's unbiased choice will be."
THE DAUGHTER.
"Certain it is," said Addison, "that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as that of a father to a daughter. He beholds her both with and without regard to her sex. In love to our sons there is ambition, but in that to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express." "There is, however, an unkind measure by which a few persons strive to avoid living by themselves in their old age. They selfishly prevent their children (principally their daughters) from marrying, in order to retain them around them at home. Certainly matches are now and then projected which it is the duty of a parent to oppose; but there are two kinds of opposition, a conscientious and sorrowful opposition, and an egotistical and captious opposition, and men and women, in their self-deception, may sometimes mistake the one for the other. 'Marry your daughters lest they marry themselves, and run off with the ploughman or the groom' is an axiom of worldly wisdom. Marry your daughters, if you can do so satisfactorily, that they may become
HAPPY WIVES AND MOTHERS,
fulfilling the destiny allotted to them by their Great Creator. Marry them, if worthy suitors offer, lest they remain single and unprotected after your departure. Marry them, lest they say, in their bitter disappointment and loneliness, 'Our parents thought only of their own comfort and convenience. We now find that our welfare and settlement in life was disregarded!' But I am sure my hard-hearted comrade in years," continues this aged writer, "that you are more generous to your own dear girls than to dream of preventing the completion of their own little romance in order to keep them at home, pining as your waiting minds."
THANKING DEATH.
One of the most learned observations to parents has been made by Lord Burleigh. "Bring thy children up," said he, in "learning and obedience, yet without outward austerity. Give them good countenance and convenient maintenance, according to thy ability; otherwise thy life will seem their bondage, and what portion thou shalt leave them at thy death, they will thank death for it, and not thee!"
EDUCATION.
"I suppose it never occurs to parents," says John Foster, in his Journal, "that to throw vilely-educated young people on the world is, independently of the injury to the young people themselves, a positivecrime, and of very great magnitude; as great, for instance, as burning their neighbor's house, or poisoning the water in his well. In pointing out to them what is wrong, even if they acknowledge the justness of the statement, one cannot make them feel a sense of guilt, as in other proved charges. That they love their children extenuates to their consciences every parental folly that may at last produce in the children every desperate vice." As to this matter of education,
OUR GREAT SCHOOLS
have taken it largely out of the parents' hands to guide the course of instruction, and where this would be done logically, I cannot but feel it is to the disadvantage of the child; but the system is built for public, not for individual benefit, and will probably do the greatest good to the greatest number. If we could have a little less Latin and a little better spelling, a little less long Latin and a little more good short Saxon I believe our youth would make their mark easier. Our young people dislike interest tables and are delighted with long words. Under the present system and popular taste, our children despise
THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIBLE
until they are thirty years old, whereafter they gradually learn that the very essence of artful language is contained in its pages. There is not much need of a long word when a short one sounds better. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters." How like the ripple of a brook the syllables drop from the tongue! The fall of the voice, andthe fall of the idea, make the passage a lovely instance of the highest art in poetical expression. If our youth could be taught respect, attention, multiplication and division, spelling, short words, short sentences, Bible, Shakspeare, and geography, and could spend less time conjugating foreign verbs, there would be a really higher grade of intelligence in the end, perhaps, and there would, above all, be more of that glorious independence of mind which makes a thing worthy of commendation because it is appreciated, not because somebody else has said it is good.
WORSHIP.
The Catholics say that if they may have the spiritual culture of the child till he is ten years of age, they will willingly surrender him into the hands of the teachers of any other faith, resting secure in the permanency of early teachings. The great value of early religious instruction has always been conceded by the most learned. "The first thing, therefore," says Dr. Priestly, "that a Christian will naturally inculcate upon his child, as soon as he is capable of receiving such impressions, is the knowledge of his Maker, and a steady principle of obedience to Him; the idea of his living under a constant inspection and government of an invisible being, who will raise him from the dead to an immortal life, and who will reward and punish him hereafter according to his character and actions here.
ON THESE PLAIN PRINCIPLES
I hesitate not to assert as a Christian, that religion is the first rational object of education. Whatever be the fate of my children in this transitory world, about which I hope I am as solicitous as I ought to be, I would, if possible, secure a happy meeting with them in a future and everlasting life."
"A suspicious parent makes an artful child," says Haliburton. A tender parent makes a wayward son. A cruel parent makes a timid son. Be harsh when harshness is necessary, but be kind when kindness is needful, for as the grass of the fields needs the light of the sun, so does the human heart yearn for sympathy and kindness, in all the years of its wonderful growth. Parents may in a great measure do much of the teaching which that
NOTORIOUSLY HARSH SCHOOLMASTER, EXPERIENCE,
deals out, who beats our boys and girls so brutally. I cannot, in closing this chapter, do better than to quote the words of wise old Roger Ascham: "He hazardeth sore that maketh wise by experience. An unhappy sailor he is that is made wise by many shipwrecks, a miserable merchant that is neither rich nor wise but after some bankrouts. It is a marvelous pain to find a short way by long wandering. He needs must be a swift runner that runneth fast out of his way. And look well upon the former life of those few who have gathered, by long experience, a little wisdom and some happiness; and when you do consider what mischief they have committed, what dangers they have escaped (and yet twenty for one do perish in the adventure) then think well with yourself whether you would that your own son should come to wisdom and happiness by such experience or no."
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brother and sister
The noble sister of Publicola,The moon of Rome; chaste as the icicle,That's curdled by the frost from purest snow,And hangs on Dian's temple.But good my brother,Do not as some ungracious pastors do,Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,Whilst like a puffed and reckless libertine,Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,And recks not his own rede.—Shakspeare.
T
here has always been a charm for me in the speech of the haughtyCoriolanusconcerningValeria, the sister ofPublicola. There is such a noble alliance of the brother and the sister. The one is a man in high regard; therefore his sister likewise takes on those correlative qualities which make her the moon of Rome, the Goddess Diana, as it were. The young man of good quality will begin his life with an exalted appreciation of his sister. He will give her that tender regard and assistance which is her gentle due, and she, in turn, will form her ideas of young men by the character of her brother, and, in choosing a man upon whom to settle her womanly affections, will be largely guided by her estimate of her brother's manhood. The young man can not over-estimate the importance of his influence in this connection. Depend upon it, if he be high-minded, courteous, attentive, self-sacrificing at the proper times,
HIS SISTER WILL DEMAND,
in the man who aspires to be her companion in life, the qualities of a high mind, a courteous demeanor, an attentive inclination, and a willingness to put aside self at the time that duty and manhood demand. The brother's acquaintances and associates are often the first young men introduced to the sister on terms of intimacy. If the brother lower the standard of his life, the colors of his house are also trailed. His family pride should be, and usually is, one of the strongest supports in holding him to a course of action that will retain the entire respect of his community. When a son with a sister grown plunges into ways of disrepute, there is no more sorrowful example of the utter selfishness of a depraved human heart.
HOW MUCH LESS GRASPING IS THE BURGLAR
who is not willing to let the hard-working citizen keep his earnings, but steals upon him in the night and robs him into poverty—how much less selfish, I say, is he than the brother who steals upon the fair young life of a pure, good maiden, brands her as the sister of a disreputable loafer, and leaves her to choose loafers for a husband, or marry a stranger who may afterward taunt her with her low connection! I can conceive of no keener spur to the young man of pride and purpose than to keep this view of things before him, that he may be worthy of the company of young men who, in turn, will be worthy of the company of his sister.
MANY OF THE NOBLEST YOUNG MEN
of the present day, when they go for a summer vacation, take their sisters with them. The act gives them their first true knowledge of the responsibilities attaching to the care of a woman—to the gravity of married life. It being cheaper, as a rule, for man and wife to travel together than for brother and sister, the brother has an idea of future expense awaiting him (after he shall have married) which is on the right side of an estimate—that is, the surplus side. The sister's mind is broadened by this kindness and self-sacrifice of the brother. She has a higher opinion of manhood, and her choice will fall all the higher up. What makes our finest girls often go through the forest of maidenhood rejecting the most promising staffs of support, and, finally, nearing the plains of spinsterhood, pick up in a panic
THE CROOKEDEST STICK OF THE LOT?
It is mainly the brother's fault. He has not shown her how much of a man he himself can be, and she has not noticed the manly qualities of many of the admirers whom she has passed by in disdain. A wise young woman should be on the lookout for gentleness and courage in man. If she finds those qualities—if she can only become aware they are there, her heart will relent in spite of her, and there will be no hesitancy in her final choice, nor regret in her final retrospect.
IN YOUR SISTER
you behold the exact complement of yourself. Yourself and herself, brother and sister, are the links which your parents have left to hold their minds, their qualities, their aggregated development and progression, to the earth. All that your parents were, yourself and your sister will perpetuate, adding the acquirements of your own lives. You have in your sister an opportunity for self-study without its like or equal. Where your sister is weak, there are you weak (naturally) also. Your vanity may conceal the fact in your own nature, but her character will express it to you.
STRENGTHEN UP THESE POINTS.
As the calker goes through the hold of the ship, peering intently for light, or listening for the trickling of water, so should you, in observing your sister's character and family peculiarities, find and calk up all the treacherous leaks in your own nature. Her carelessness is your forgetfulness. Mend it. Her heedlessness is undoubtedly your recklessness. Send out scouts. Her impatience is possibly your high temper. Hit yourself when you are in rage, and thus learn its folly. I know of a man who once came within an inch of braining his fellow-soldier. They were lying on the grass, when the fellow struck my friend a smart blow with the iron ramrod of a Springfield musket, all in fun, you know. My friend was like Cowper, who wrote:
The man who hails you Tom or Jack,And proves, by thumping on your backHis sense of your great merit,Is such a friend as one had needBe very much his friend, indeed,To pardon or to bear it.
Well, he felt the smart of the iron ramrod, and his fury rose in a whirlwind; and he got up, took the musket by the barrel, raised it back for an awful blow, and was just about to crush the head of the joker when a white face and the simple word "Jim!" brought him to his senses. He dropped the musket and sank upon the grass in a paroxysm of excitement, but was saved from murder just by a hair's breadth. He had never curbed his temper before. Here he had been forced to overcome the fury of a building all in flames. The lesson sank deep into his heart. To-day nobody knows he has any temper at all.
THE SISTER'S INFLUENCE.
Again, as you are influential in the matter of the future prospects of your sister, and can probably elevate her lot by your aid in forming her character, so, too is she often, though to a smaller degree, potent in turning the tides of your life. She has dear friends of her own sex. They are at your house. They may come to see you by coming to see her. You meet these girls at your home, and, perhaps, some day you wake up in love. Now, if your sister, who admits these maidens into your home, has that true womanhood which is so admirable, you are certain to have fallen in love with one of the finest young women in town, and it is
A LUCKY DAY FOR YOU,
for young women usually keep away from young men for whose character they have no regard. Do not, however, get into the opinion that you are irresistible, or anywise attractive. It will give you many wounds. Young women detect masculine vanity of this order with a quickness that is appalling to the young man. They may have had no thought of you at all! They will then, all the readier, become influenced by your good points, and, above all, by your habitual good treatment of your sister. Be, therefore, on your guard, even in self-interest, which is a low guide of action, nevertheless—but
EVEN FOR THIS IGNOBLE REASON.
Watch over your sister, to protect her from any association whatever with bad young men, to minister to her wants, to help your parents minister to her health, and to love her with a sincere affection, for as long as you live, you will find her devotion unchangeable, through good and evil report. This same sister may be your companion all through your life. Where single life becomes the destiny of both brother and sister this often happens. In almost every neighborhood there are two persons thus domiciled, honorably fullfilling their duties to society, and often doing greater public service than any other two people of the community. Look therefore upon your sister as perhaps the best friend you will have
AFTER THE DEATH OF YOUR MOTHER.
Consider her as the person whose interests may be more closely allied with your own than those of any other soul on earth. It certainly cannot lessen your respect for the high relation she sustains toward your life and your happiness. Counsel her in exceeding kindness, for you will find her inclined to retort, as didOpheliato her brotherLaertes, at the head of this chapter, bidding you be sure you "reck your own rede" which was an ancient form of admonishing one to heed his own advice.
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youth
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:The soul that riseth with us, our life's Star,Hath elsewhere had its setting,And cometh from afar:Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter darkness,But trailing clouds of glory, do we comeFrom God who is our home:Heaven lies about us in our infancy.—Wordsworth.
L
ike virgin parchment," says Montaigne, "youth is capable of any inscription." Let us have only those inscriptions which will do us honor in the long years that the parchment will unroll before us. "Unless a tree has borne its blossoms in the spring," writes Bishop Hare, "you will vainly look for fruit on it in autumn." All through the great history of Thiers, wherein he recites the scenes of the French revolution, the Consulate, the Empire, and the rock of St. Helena, there runs one consistent observation that youth is noble and magnanimous. The thousands of characters who "strut their brief hour" upon the stage in the terrible drama which this historian depicts are young and generous, lofty and incorruptible. Then they ripen into manhood, glory waits upon their comings and their goings, and they are soon between two masters, their interests and their consciences. A circumstance threatens their early resolutions, an event overturns their consciences, and a selfish, jealous, ambitious mind thenceforth guides the fortunes of a life.
HOW FORTUNATE FOR THE RACE OF MAN
that when the mind is least prejudiced with set beliefs and when the heart is kindliest, it lies in the power of those who have the young near them to bear them frequent counsel, and to strengthen the natural nobility of their natures!
A great deal can be accomplished in the early years of life. Many men have made all their fame in the morning, and enjoyed it through the rest of their lives. Alexander, Pompey, Hannibal, Scipio, Napoleon, Charles XII., Alexander Hamilton, Shelley, Keats, Bryant—hundreds of examples readily come to the recollection, showing how thoroughly the mind can be trusted even in its immaturity. Youth is beautiful. It is "the gay and pleasant spring of life, when joy is stirring in the dancing blood, and nature calls us with a thousand songs to share her general feast." "Keep true to the dreams of thy youth," sings Schiller. We love the young. "The girls we love for what they are," says Goethe, "young men, for what they promise to be." "The lovely time of youth," says Jean Paul Richter, "is
OUR ITALY AND GREECE,
full of gods and temples." Let not the Vandals and Goths of after-life swoop down upon this sunny region in our lives; yet if they do, may we not look upon our noble ruins, our Coliseum and our Parthenon, in a kind of classic love that shall endear and sanctify the rights of the young about us and lengthen out their "golden age." Youth should be young. Says Shakspeare: "Youth no less becomes
THE LIGHT AND CARELESS LIVERY THAT IT WEARS,
than settled age its sables and its weeds, importing health and graveness." Youth is like Adam's early walk in the Garden of Paradise. "The senses," says Edmund Burke, "are unworn and tender, and the whole frame is awake in every part." The dew lies upon the grass. No smoke of busy life has darkened or stained the morning of our day. The pure light shines about us. "If any little mist happen to rise," says Willmott, "the sunbeam of hope catches and glorifies it."
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"Youth is our Italy and Greece, full of Gods and Temples."
Youth is rash. It "skips like the hare over the meshes of good counsel," says Shakspeare. "Then let our nets and snares of benevolence be laid with the more cunning. Youth is a continual intoxication," says Rochefoucauld; "it is the fever of reason." We must cool this fever, spread around it cheering flowers of truth, bathe it in the water-brooks of gentleness and self-sacrifice. "Young men," according to Chesterfield, "are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough," yet joined with this self-esteem, we find that "youth is ever confiding; and we can almost forgive its disinclination to follow the counsels of age, for the sake of the generous disdain with which it rejects suspicion." "How charming the young would be," writes Arthur Helps, "with their freshness, fearlessness, and truthfulness, if only—to take a metaphor from painting—they would make more use of grays and other neutral tints, instead of dabbing on so recklessly the strongest positives in color." Why should their colors not be rich? Are not the hues upon their cheeks as rich as the sunset?
DOES NOT THE CHERRY
"dab on" the scarlet and the carmine direct from the gorgeous sun himself? Age marvels at the happiness of youth. The sombre lessons of the world have left their marks on the mind of the one; the other has everything to learn. It would seem as though its residence had been (as the poet has written so beautifully at the head of the chapter) in some Paradise, whence, it issued to this earth, "trailing clouds of glory" as it came. Age has suffered from the heats and dust of the previous day, and sees in the blood-red "copper sun," only the indication of another march of weariness and thirst.
YOUTH BREATHES THE DEWY AIR,
and beholds only the roseate tints of the sunrise. Why should not its heart rejoice? Says Lord Lytton: "Let youth cherish the happiest of earthly boons while yet it is at its command; for there cometh a day to all 'when neither the voice of the lute nor the birds' shall bring back the sweet slumbers that fall on their young eyes as unbidden as the dews." "Youth holds no society with grief," says old Euripides. Perhaps, rather, it makes those "formal calls" which have no feeling in them.
THE LITTLE GIRL'S KITTEN DIES,
and the little human heart is inconsolable for half an hour. In half a day, when asked to tell her greatest grief, she will relate an accident to her doll, forgetting the poor kitten yet waiting for burial! How could those lips and cheeks retain their delicate tints if the wet seasons of grief set in with tropical intensity? Lord Lytton, often, in his highly colored writings, cries out "O youth! O youth!" and there is a world of regret in the exclamation. "O the joy of young ideas," sighs Hannah Moore, "painted on the mind, in the warm, glowing colors which fancy spreads on objects not yet known, when all is new and all is lovely!"
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
has justly claimed the respect and admiration of the world for many high qualities of mind. One of the most admirable of his remarks is an admonition to youth, which runs as follows: "Use thy youth so that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof. Use it as the spring-time which soon departeth, and wherein thou oughtest to plant and sow all provisions for a long and happy life." But this is difficult to do. The march of youth is through a mountainous country. The scenery is changing, but the progress is not encouraging. "Self-flattered, unexperienced, high in hope when young," says the poet Young, "with sanguine cheer and streamers gay, we cut our cable, launch into the world, and fondly dream each wind and star our friend." How many youths have believed they would, by merit alone, rise to the Presidency of the United States—
THE FIRST MAN IN FIFTY MILLIONS!
Youth keeps a diary, into which it pours a volume of "thought" that seems a very mine of gems. Take up that chronicle at middle age and see its weak and driveling character. Observe the almost total lack of one idea that will aid you to some honorable end! And yet there is something touching even in the great trust and confidence of childhood. How sweet and true are the beautiful lines of Thomas Hood called "I remember, I remember:
I remember, I remember,The fir trees dark and high;I used to think their slender topsWere close against the sky;It was a childish ignorance,But now 'tis little joyTo know I'm further off from heavenThan when I was a boy.
Dr. Watts lays down to youth that it should have a decent and agreeable behavior among men, "a modest freedom of speech, a soft and elegant manner of address, a graceful and lovely deportment, a cheerful gravity and good humor, with a mind appearing ever serene under the ruffling accidents of life." This programme of action is far beyond the reach of a well-balanced adult, much further the inexperienced and untried mind of younger life. But the character which should attain to such angelic proportions would truly have a reverent place among men's memories.
THE ALPENA.
Youth has no knowledge of God's power. The confidence that early years implant in the mind supplies an unsubstantial substitute. I have pictured to myself an illustration: A bright young man is present at a grand concert. It is between the parts. He bends suavely over the back of a lady's chair and talks sweet music to her ear. He says: "Could you not follow every thought of the composer in that symphony?" (which they have just heard). "And was not the effect sublime when the storm reached the heights of the mountains, and all the elements of Nature struggled so stubbornly?" And the young woman demurely gives him an assuring look which conserves all her interests; whereupon he backs off in triumph, and feels that the concertisworth his week's wages after all!
AGAIN,
this young man at Grand Haven, on the western border of Lake Michigan, boards the structure of pine wood and ten-penny nails called the Alpena. The Alpena floats out into her last night—into the valley of the shadow of death. Presently the young man feels his vessel and his life trembling like a captive wild bird in a remorseless grasp. Anon this trembling grows into the awful, final, fatal paroxysms. Then suddenly the mind of the young man breaks from the shackles of vanity and self-sufficiency, and he views, for the first time, the visible forms of angered Nature. He recalls his white gloves, his former complete idea of a storm, his triumphant,au revoirretreat from the opera-box, and, as the discords of the Everlasting gradually resolve toward the diapason, the full chant, of His solemn eternity, the young man cries out, in a spirit of revelation, "What a worm am I!" and adds his own piteous tragedy to the unheard murmurs of bubbling death and muddy burial!
"REMEMBER NOW THY CREATOR,
in the days of thy youth," says Solomon. "Train up a child in the way he should go," says the proverb, "and when he is old he will not depart from it." Be not afraid of the sneers of the ungodly. "As the cracking of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool." "The fairest flower in the garden of creation," says Sir James E. Smith, "is a young mind, offering and unfolding itself to the influence of Divine Wisdom, as the heliotrope turns its sweet blossoms to the sun."
Lord Bacon, in his forty-third essay, thus sums up the qualities of youth: "Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them; but in new things abuseth them. The errors of young men are the ruin of business;
BUT THE ERRORS OF AGED MEN
amount to but this, that more might have been done, or sooner. Young men in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end without consideration of the means and degrees, pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them—like an unready horse, they will neither stop nor turn."
THE HARD-PAN SERIES.
Now with this wise parallel of youth and age before me, with the importance which I attach to this period of life as the precise moment at which the final cast of the clay of life is set, and with the belief in Goethe's statement that the destiny of any nation, at any given time, depends on the opinions of its young men under twenty-five years of age, I beg to call the especial attention of the young to a Hard-Pan Series of ten chapters which follow, devoted largely to just this forming-period of life, when the mould is ready and the governing characteristics are fast pouring in. I beg parents and preceptors, if they approve my efforts, to lend their aid in attracting toward these admonitions such consideration as their merit shall warrant, and I have so endeavored to dispose the bitterness of practical advice as to both somewhat cover its presence and gratify a youthful and adventurous literary taste.
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Give thy thoughts no tongue,Nor any unproportioned thought his act.Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar;Do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new hatched unfledged comradeGive every man thine ear but few thy voice;Take each man's counsel but reserve thy judgment.—Shakspeare.