The good home is thus the best of schools, not only in youth but
in age. There young and old best learn cheerfulness, patience,
self-control, and the spirit of service and of duty. Izaak
Walton, speaking of George Herbert's mother, says she governed her
family with judicious care, not rigidly nor sourly, "but with such
a sweetness and compliance with the recreations and pleasures of
youth, as did incline them to spend much of their time in her
company, which was to her great content."
The home is the true school of courtesy, of which woman is always
the best practical instructor. "Without woman," says the
Provencal proverb, "men were but ill-licked cubs." Philanthropy
radiates from the home as from a centre. "To love the little
platoon we belong to in society," said Burke, "is the germ of all
public affections." The wisest and the best have not been ashamed
to own it to be their greatest joy and happiness to sit "behind
the heads of children" in the inviolable circle of home. A life
of purity and duty there is not the least effectual preparative
for a life of public work and duty; and the man who loves his home
will not the less fondly love and serve his country. But while
homes, which are the nurseries of character, may be the best of
schools, they may also be the worst. Between childhood and
manhood how incalculable is the mischief which ignorance in the
home has the power to cause! Between the drawing of the first
breath and the last, how vast is the moral suffering and disease
occasioned by incompetent mothers and nurses! Commit a child to
the care of a worthless ignorant woman, and no culture in after-
life will remedy the evil you have done.
Pages:
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70