230 MORAL ASPECTS OF HOME. 



language and habits are cleansed from every taint from which you 

 would guard his innocence; see that your passions are kept under 

 control, and that your own dignity and self-respect are always 

 maintained, and you will find not only the pleasure which you seek 

 in the development of his character, but an added reward in the 

 improvement of your own. 



Home and Health The laws of health make an imperative 

 demand for ample seasons of recreation and relaxation from the 

 continuous strain of the labors of existence and the cares of business. 

 In no other place can pleasure and relaxation be found of as elevat- 

 ing and healthful a nature as among the pure and wholesome 

 influences of home, in the loving society of wife and children. And 

 yet to how great an extent are they neglected in the high-pressure 

 rate of modern American life, depriving both the heads of families 

 and their dependents of their best and most pleasurable associations, 

 of their purest enjoyments, and of the best stimulus for renewed 

 encounter with the cares of life. Even where those salutary 

 influences are not neglected for doubtful if not injurious pleasures, 

 it is too much the custom to bring the shop or the counting-house 

 into the home. There is a lesson which might be learned with 

 advantage by thousands of business men in the following extract 

 from an article on this subject, in the Golden Key, by Mr. I. 

 Harley Brock: 



" If there be a fault to be found with the progressive, vigor- 

 ous, energetic mode of life which is distinctively American, the 

 characteristic of the healthy vitality of our people and their insti- 

 tutions, it is the tendency, too often developed, to allow the mind to 

 become wholly engrossed in the care of business to the neglect of that 

 large fund of resources for the higher enjoyment of domestic and social 

 life, which every man with a sound mind in a healthy body inherently 

 possesses. And this, when it does occur, invariably encroaches 

 upon that period of life in which the capacity for rational enjoy- 

 ment and wholesome pleasures is in its most vigorous stage, it is 

 the too common mistake of the man of business to put off for the 

 future day, when he shall have reached the affluence at which he 

 aims, the exercise of that faculty of enjoyment which he robs of its 

 present gratification with a promise to pay in the indefinite future, 

 in order that he may redouble his attention to business pursuits. 

 This is doubly a mistake, in that the future may never be reached ; 

 and if it be, then may be found that the time has gone by; that 

 the capacity has perished in its neglect; that it is impossible to 

 rekindle the fires of youth in the ashes of old age, and that when 

 once resolved to devote the remnant of life to the pursuit of pleas- 

 ure fairly won by arduous toil, there remains only the desire with- 

 out the realization able to 'clip Elysium, but to lack its joy.' 

 He who keeps life well balanced, neither evading its duties nor re- 

 fusing its passing rewards, will find in the end that he has made as 



