80 THE HOME, FAEM AND BUSINESS CYCLOPEDIA. 



What our fathers taught us, what our mothers sang to us, we shall never 

 forget. 



The impression we have made upon our children will never pass away. 

 The home we have made consciously or unconsciously is the factor in 

 their lives of the greatest importance. 



We may have sown the seeds of a positive moral goodness, to see the 

 flowers come up, but choked by weeds ; we may have studied household 

 education, and have learned the supposed seed-time and harvest of all the 

 virtues, and have sown broadcast the grain of integrity, self-denial, energy, 

 and industry, yet we have reared only idlers, drunkards, and selfish volup- 

 tuaries as the result of our home-training. The seed-time was ours ; the 

 harvest is the Lord's. We are not told why we sometimes fail in our best 

 efforts, but we know that we do fail. 



We can, therefore, promise no parent success. There are some soils in 

 which plants of virtue will not grow. Nor is character dependent either 

 upon instruction or training. The good son and the bad son grow up by 

 the same fireside. It is the use which each will make of his opportunities 

 which will determine the question. And even the best people must go 

 through deep trials before character is perfected. To live unselfishly to 

 good aims, to rise above our daily and hourly temptations, to do our duty 

 whether rewarded or not these are our stepping-stones. 



But, whether destined to be successful or unsuccessful, all people should 

 try to make a home whose influence shall be good. Whether humble or 

 important, our duty remains the same to make a good home according to 

 our lights. 



We live in an age which has thrown away tradition, yet it will not hurt 

 us to read of the past, with its trainings and teachings, its formal precepts 

 its stiff manners, its respect for elders, its old-school customs. Let us aim 

 to take for our model all that was good in that sort of home. 



Then let us read of the homes which have formed the great and good 

 and useful people of our Pantheon. We may see, as in the case of Mary 

 Russell Mitford, how a wretched and worthless father developed the most 

 generous and useful of daughters. We may learn in almost all biographies 

 some great lesson of virtue born of trouble. We shall have to accept many 

 a story of worthless children who have not been made good by anything ; 

 many worthless parents who have made their children unhappy; but we 

 shall occasionally be refreshed by a well-spring of such delightful fresh- 

 ness that we shail have strength given us wherewith to struggle on. 



And character, when fine, is such a very remunerative thing to the mind 

 which needs help ! We almost welcome any suffering if it would make 



