36 THE HOME, FARM AND BUSlNKs^ CYCLOPAEDIA. 



servants of their daughters, and who consider the daughter as the best 

 judge of her own actions. Such a mother must, of course, take the conse- 

 quences of her own folly, and bear with whatever sort of treatment her 

 daughter chooses to give her. We can not make them over such unwise 

 mothers. 



But for the future there is always hope. We can begin with a young 

 liome, a young mother ; and from experience, and from the memory of 

 mistakes, we can try to teach a better code, feeling sure that, when mothers 

 appreciate how far-reaching are the amenities of home, they will try to 

 make the nursery the infant school, as the parlour and dining-room should 

 be the college and university, of a new and an improved system of national 

 manners. 



n. 



A SUBTILE SYMPATHY. 



IN order to make home happy to a child, he should never be laughed at. 

 The chaotic view of life which presents itself to a child, we can all re- 

 member ; how we only half understood things, or how we misapprehended 

 them altogether; how formalists wearied us, and gave us texts which we 

 could not remember ; and how the hasty and the heartless trampled down 

 the virgin buds of good resolve and of heroic endeavour. Our early heart- 

 breaks are never quite forgotten, nor can we recall them without tears. 

 They are, of course, a part of the forging of the armour. We have to be 

 hammered into shape by all sorts of hard blows before we ore good for 

 anything. The only thing we can ask is that the strokes be so well given 

 that we are not bent awry ; that the character does not receive some fatal 

 twist from which it never recovers. 



<[ He comes, and lays my heart all heated 



On the hard anvil, minded so 

 Into his own fair shape to beat it 



With hi* great hammer, blow on blow ; 

 And yet I whisper, ' As God will !' 

 And at his heaviest blows lie still. 



" He takes my softened heart, and beats it, 



The sparks fly off at every blow ; 

 He turns it o'er and o'er and beats it, 



And lets it cool and makes it glow ; 

 And yet I whisper, ' As God will ! ' 

 And in his mighty hand lie still." 



We are all on God's anvil; to be thus moulded, but, in a lesser degree, 

 our children are in our hands to be shaped into the image of their Maker. 



