Farmers' Week in Agricultural College. 275 



to the raising of stock and the growing of crops than to the training of 

 the children? 



I think you, as mothers and home-makers, will all agree with me 

 that our lives are indeed busy and crowded, and w^e find it hard to do 

 everything that we should, but if we allow business, pleasure or any 

 oilier interest to crowd out the training of our boys and girls, we have 

 made indeed, a fatal mistake. For if the child is not taught in the 

 home, by its parents, principles of honesty, truthfulness, charity, right 

 living, industry, etc., the impressionable mind will be filled with wrong 

 principles and the character which God intended to be well rounded and 

 beautiful, will be sadly warped and disfigured. The wise Solomon 

 said, "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he 

 W'ill not depart from it." Oh, that we could realize this, every moment 

 of our lives, and remember we are training, not only for time but for 

 eternity ! 



Every home influence, no matter how small, works itself into the 

 heart of childhood and re-appears in the opening character. To quote 

 the words of the lecturer on last evening — "The child absorbs environ- 

 ment." The influences that surround the child in infancy should be 

 such as to fashion strong noble manhood and queenly womanhood. 

 Homes are the real schools in which men and women are trained, and 

 fathers and mothers are the real teachers. The lovely things that come 

 out in the life of the strong man had their origin in the lovely thoughts 

 that were whispered into his heart in early childhood. How essential it 

 is that the mother do this herself, whenever it is possible, not entrusting 

 this very important thing to some stranger. 



The mind of the child is easily impressed, and as the earliest im- 

 pressions are the most lasting, let us surround them wdth the beautiful, 

 the pure, the uplifting things. 



The house, its shape, color, location, decorations, the yard, the 

 lawn, the woods, fields and streams — all are intertwined with his early 

 memories of childhood. And what beautiful pictures they are — hanging 

 on the wall of memory, if the scenes to which the canvas was exposed 

 were but beautiful. 



God pity the poor children in the great cities, who live in wretched 

 hovels and into whose young lives no thoughts of a beautiful and happy 

 childhood can come. 



While I feel that all this about material surrounding is very true, 

 yet I believe that you will all agree that there is also z spiritual side. 

 The home and all its surroundings may be ideal, but without the sweet 

 home spirit, the spirit of love, the lives of the children will not be 



