Debts of Honor. 27 



Do we not owe it to the ones we ask to share life with us; 

 to the ones we agree to share life with; that as far as in our 

 power lies, we will answer to the wants of their nature — 

 thus supplying heart and soul nourishment. As surely as 

 we fail in this, we too may plant flowers to hide a grave, 

 watering them with regretful tears. 



And, now we come to the little vines, the off-shoots of 

 ourselves. Children seldon thrive well as cuttings. We do 

 find them stuck down in life's sand, and striking out 

 for themselves independently; but, in general, their future 

 is more assured when cultivated as layered branches of the 

 parent stalk. But there is many a parenc who refuses to do 

 by his child as by the vine he thus propagates, and why? 

 For lack of faith with the vine; after he has a branch with 

 many buds carefully arranged upon the ground, but unsev- 

 ered from the main stalk, he proceeds to leave some of the 

 buds of that branch uncovered to shoot-up through the sun- 

 shine into leaves and tendrils, and covering others with the 

 moist soil, believing they will shoot down into the darkness 

 of earth forming roots and fibres; and if, as the growth of 

 the vine proceeds, he finds more buds starting forth than he 

 thinks wise, he rubs some off so that the main vine may not 

 be too heavily taxed for sustenance ere the time arises for 

 severing the branch. Now, with his child, he is willing to 

 follow much the same plan, save, that he wants all the buds 

 of the child's nature to shoot right up into sight where he 

 can know about them, and when he sees the child putting 

 out a rootlet of thought, that strikes down, below the sur- 

 face, out of sight, beyond his oversight and full comprehen- 

 sion, and he takes alarm at once, and he says: "Here is 

 something I don't quite like the looks of, — it don't grow like 

 the others, and it has a shy way of creeping off out of sight 

 as though it didn't want folks to know about it; I guess I 

 won't have it;" and he rubs it off. As well might the hus- 

 bandman say to his vine, as it strikes its roots down into 

 the earth: "See here; none of that! You've got to do your 

 growing above ground. I'll have no underhanded sneaking 

 off into the dark." 



If that vine grows, it will grow the way it is its nature to 



