- Missouri Home Makers' Conference. 601 



her children and before them is the one to be blamed when the 

 children fail to tell the truth. 



There was once a woman (perhaps more than one) who 

 did not want her Sundays disturbed by company at Sunday 

 dinner. Every Saturday she told all her children that she 

 would not let any one, not even those tiresome, meddling stick- 

 tights, the Smiths, bewitch her into giving them an invitation 

 to Sunday dinner. But after church on Sunday, being worked 

 upon by habit and a sense of the duty expected of her, she did 

 give the tiresome, meddling Smiths and others cordial invita- 

 tions to dinner, and during the long Sunday this dutiful and 

 God-fearing mother pretended a pleasure in. hospitality and 

 urged her friends to come again and often. No sooner would 

 the door be securely closed upon their departing backs than 

 the irritation from a disagreeable day would burst forth, and 

 the children were even scolded and punished for their accu- 

 mulated misdeeds. 



If there is ever to be an ideal of truthfulness in this world 

 parents will have to set better examples at home than the 

 average parents now offer. And the same is true of all the other 

 virtues. 



Honesty must be taught by example first, foremost and all 

 the time. The parent who will accept an incorrect bill when 

 the mistake is in his favor sets a wrong standard of honor before 

 his children. The mother who rejoices that the street car 

 conductor missed her in collecting fares is training her children 

 to wink at petty graft and to lower their ideals in all moral 

 situations. The parents who slip their children into theatres, 

 street cars, employments and other places of the sort with lies, 

 told or implied, about the children's ages, are demoralizing 

 these children's standards of right and responsibility. 



Intemperance is a vice usually started in the home. Rarely 

 does a child of total abstainers become a drunkard. Parents 

 who drink a little, who have liquor in the house, who go into 

 the saloons, and who allow the children a small amount of in- 

 toxicants, are paving the way for these same children to become 

 drunkards and worse. On the other hand, an example of high- 

 minded sobriety at home will save a boy through life's severest 

 temptations. 



We have so far emphasized only one phase of moral training 

 — but that is perhaps the most important phase of all. Chil- 

 dren imitate their parents; they form their habits according to 



