SELECTION OF OCCUPATION. 235 



useful and practical knowledge, conveying profitable moral lessons, 

 and at the same time improving his ideas upon composition and his 

 faculty of language. Lead him to understand and realize that com- 

 panionship with the dime-novel, or the vicious class of fiction, is 

 degrading and disgraceful, and you will thus educate his taste up to 

 a refinement in such matters which will be his surest safeguard 

 against the evil companionship of objectionable books. 



SELECTION OF OCCUPATION. 



The selection of an occupation is something which more con- 

 cerns the ulterior objects of the home education, than those things 

 which strictly pertain to the cares, duties, trials and privileges of the 

 home circle. Home is the school in which the youth has received 

 his mental, physical and moral training, and from which he is about 

 to graduate with the diploma of paternal approval, sealed by the 

 devotion, love and hope of the mother whose tender solicitude 

 watched by his cradle, and whose fondest prayers will accompany 

 him into the future which he is to make for himself. The choice 

 of an occupation is something which may be and should be left to 

 the decision of him who is to put all his future at stake upon it. 

 But his qualification to make that choice will have rested solely 

 upon the formation of his mind, of his feelings, or of his inclina- 

 tions or prejudices, which rest to a large extent, if not solely with 

 the parental function. And in this duty of guiding the inclination 

 or interest which every youth has as to his career, into channels 

 which shall best promote his future welfare and happiness, there is 

 one rule that should govern alike rich and poor, high and low, and 

 that is, that the dignity of labor, of duty, of life with an object in it, 

 is essential to the true happiness and well-being of every human 

 being. The man without an occupation be he ever so high or ever 

 so humble, born to purple or to penury, nursed in the lap of luxury 

 or in the hard cradle of poverty is an anomaly in life, a waif 

 upon the bosom of the sea of existence, helpless, hopeless, purpose- 

 less ; doomed certainly to wreck, disaster and destruction, either 

 mentally, morally, physically or financially. All experience proves 

 that in one or other of these shapes the fate of his useless being will 

 overtake him. Let the children of the poor be taught that in what- 

 ever sphere of labor they may elect to work out their lot, if they 

 but bring to bear probity and perseverance, honesty and earnestness 

 and the sense of duty, all the best prizes of life lay open to them. 

 Let the children of the rich be taught to respect the dignity of 

 labor and to comprehend the vicissitudes of fortune, and while 

 qualifying themselves for a wholesome and useful life in that more 

 favored sphere in which they have been born, acquire also some 

 practical vocation which shall never in any emergency leave them 

 quite without the resources of self-respecting independence. 



