Childhood
Childhood, after reason has begun her sway, seems to us the happiest season of life. It is also the critical period. At this time they receive those impressions and contract those habits which impel them towards the good and true or towards the evil and false.
The child's soul is without character. It is a rudimental existence, pure as the driven snow—beautiful as a cherub angel, spotless, guileless, and innocent. It is the chart of a man yet to be filled up with the elements of a character. These elements are first outlined by the parents. With what delicacy should they use the pencil of personal influence! The soul is soft, and the lines they make are deep and not easily erased. It is a man they form. Responsible work! It is an immortal soul they work upon, destined to survive the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds, and to show in its character forever some distant trace, at least, of their work.
Engraved & Printed by Illman Brothers.
MOTHER AND CHILD.
Never believe any thing that concerns children to be of no importance. A hasty word is of consequence. The little things that they see and hear about them mold them for eternity. Observe how very quick the child's eye is to perceive the meaning of looks, voices, and motions. It peruses all faces, colors, and sounds. Every sentiment that looks into its eye is reflected therefrom, and plays in miniature on its countenance. The tear that steals down the cheek of a mother's suppressed grief gathers the little infantile face into a sob. With a wondering silence it studies the mother in her prayers, and looks up with her in that exploring watch which signifies unspoken prayer. If the child be tended with impatience, or coolly and with a lack of motherly gentleness, it straightway shows by its action that it, too, feels the sting of just that which is felt towards it. And thus it is angered by anger, fretted by fretfulness, irritated by irritation, having impressed upon it just that kind of impatience or ill-nature which is felt towards it, and growing faithfully into the bad mold as by a fixed law.
However apparently trivial the influences which contribute to form the character of the child, they endure through life. Those impulses to conduct which last the longest and are rooted the deepest always have their origin near our birth. It is there that the germs of virtue or vice, of feeling or sentiment, are first implanted which determine the character for life. It is in childhood that the mind is most open to impression, and ready to be kindled by the first spark that flies into it. The first thing continues always with the child. The first joy, the first failure, the first achievement, the first misadventure, paint the foreground of life.
Influence is as quiet and imperceptible on the child's mind as the falling of snowflakes on the meadows. One can not tell the hour when the human mind is not in the condition of receiving impressions from exterior moral forces. In innumerable instances the most secret and unnoticed influences have been in operation for months, and even years, to break down the strongest barriers of the human heart, and work out its moral ruin while yet the fondest parents and friends have been unaware of the working of such unseen agents of evil.
Children are more easily led to be good by examples of loving kindness and tales of well-doing in others than threatened into obedience by records of sin, crime, and punishment. Then strive to impress on the child's mind sincerity, truth, honesty, benevolence, and their kindred virtues, and the welfare of your child, not only for this life, but for the life to come, will be assured. What a responsibility it is to form a creature, the frailest and feeblest that heaven has made, into the intelligent and fearless sovereign of the whole animated universe, the interpreter, adorer, and almost representative of Divinity!
There is much mistaken kindness in the management of children. The law of love is great, but it showeth not its full strength, save when united with kindness. Make your children helpful and useful, and you make them happy. Let them early form habits of neatness, and when you are weary you will not have to wait on their carelessness.
Teach them to give you courteous speech and manners, and they will live to honor you. Take pains to have the home attractions stronger than can come from outside influences. It is a sad fact that few children confide in their parents. The parents must take an interest in them, and draw them to their hearts instead of repelling them away. There is no mystery in attaching children to one's self. If you love them, they will love you. If you make much of them, they will make much of you. They can readily pick out the children's friend among many. They have a quick way of discerning who really love them and who care for them.
Parents do not think how far a word of praise will ofttimes go with children. Praise is sunshine to a child, and there is no child who does not need it. It is the high reward of one's struggle to do right. Many a sensitive child hungers for commendation. Many a child, starving for the praise which parents should give, runs off eagerly after the designing flattery of others. To withhold praise where it is due is dishonest, and, in the case of a child, such a course often leaves a stinging sense of injustice. One may as well think to rear flowers in frost as to think of educating children successfully in rebuff and constant criticism. Judicious flattery is almost one of the necessities of existence with children. Indiscriminate flattery is, of course, bad. When it becomes necessary to reprove children, use the gentlest form of address under the circumstances. Reproof must not fall like a violent storm, breaking down and making those to droop whom it is meant to cherish and refresh. It must descend as the dew upon the tender herb, or like melting flakes of snow. The softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into, the mind.
Never reprove the little ones before strangers; for children are as sensitive, if not more so, than older persons, and wish strangers to think well of them. When reproved before any one with whom they are not well acquainted, their vanity is wounded. They have self-respect, and such mortification of it is dangerous. Praise spurs a child on to earnest effort; blame, when administered before visitors, takes away the power of doing well.
It is the parents' duty to make their children's childhood full of love and childhood's proper joyousness. Not all the appliances that wealth can buy are necessary to the free and happy unfolding of childhood in body, mind, and heart. But children must have love inside the house, and fresh air and good play and companionship outside; otherwise young life runs the danger of withering and growing stunted, or, at best, prematurely old and turned inward on itself. There is something in loving dependent children, in tender care for them, which bestows upon the soul the most enriching of its experience. They make us tender and sympathetic, and a thousand times reward us for all we do for them. We are indebted to them for constant incentives to noble living; for the perpetual reminder that we do not live for ourselves alone. For their sake we are admonished to put from us the debasing appetite, the unworthy impulse; to gather into our lives every noble and heroic quality, every tender and attractive grace. We owe them gratitude for the dark hour their presence has brightened; for the helplessness and dependence which have won us from ourselves; for the faith and trust which it is evermore their mission to renew; for their kisses, wet with tears, placed on brows that, but for their caressing, had furrowed into frowns.
The gleeful laugh of happy children is the best home music, and the graceful figures of childhood are the best statuary. They are well-springs of pleasure, messengers of peace and love, resting-places for innocence, links between angels and men. Their eyes, those clear wells of undefiled thought,—what is more beautiful? Full of hope, love, and curiosity, they meet your own. In prayer, how earnest; in joy, how sparkling; in sympathy, how tender! The man or woman who never tried the companionship of a little child has carelessly passed by one of the greatest pleasures of life, as one passes a rare flower without plucking or knowing its value. A home, and no children,—it is like a lantern, and no candle; a garden, and no flowers; a vine, and no grapes; a brook, and no water gurgling and gushing in its channels.
Nature affords striking proofs of foresight and wisdom in making the bonds of parental sympathy so invincibly strong and lasting. During childhood and youth, and even afterwards, when these charming epochs of life have passed away, the ties of constancy and attachment continue to prevail. Were not the chords of love thus strengthened, they would frequently be snapped asunder; for the severest trials which the world knows are those which assail the parental heart and pierce it with the deepest sorrows.
How fleeting are the happiness and innocent guilelessness of childhood! The years as they come bring with them intelligence and experience; but they take with them, in their resistless course, the innocent pleasures of childhood's years. Then deal gently, patiently, and kindly with them. You may be nearly over the rough pathway of life yourselves; make the only time of life that they can call happy as pleasant as possible. "Our children," says Madame de Stael, "who are tenderly reared by us, are soon destined for others than ourselves. They soon stride rapidly forward in the career of life, while we fall slowly back. They soon begin to regard their parents in the light of memory and to look upon others in the light of hope."
They will not trouble you long. Children grow up; nothing on earth grows so fast as children. It was but yesterday and that lad was playing with tops, a buoyant boy. He is a man now. There is no more childhood for him or for us. Life has claimed him. When a beginning is made, it is like a raveling stocking; stitch by stitch gives way till all are gone. The house has not a child left in it; there is no more noise in the hall; no boys rush in, pell-mell; it is very orderly now. There are no more skates or sleds, bats, balls, or strings left scattered about. There are no more gleeful laughs of happy girls, or dolls left to litter the best room. There is no delay for sleeping folks; there is no longer any task before you lie down. But the mother's heart is heavy, and the father's house is lonely.
