“What!” said Coleridge, “would you have me prejudice the ground in favor of roses and lilies?”
Have you never noticed the same thing about the mind and the heart? Let a child be idle, and Satan will soon lead him into mischief. He must be looked after. Those things that will help to develop character must be selected for him, and hurtful things must be kept out, just as industriously as the farmer cultivates the useful products of the soil, but wages continual war on weeds and all unwholesome growths.
A murderer was to suffer the penalty of his crime. Speaking of his reckless career, he said:
“How could it be otherwise, when I had such bad training? I was taught these things from my youth. When only four years old my mother poured whisky down my throat to see how I would act.”
On the morning of his execution, the wretched mother bade good-bye to the son whom her influence had helped to that shameful end.
A father started for his office early one morning, after a light fall of snow. Turning, he saw his two year-old boy endeavoring to put his tiny feet in his own great footprints. The little fellow shouted: “Go on, I’se comin’, papa, I’se comin’ right in ure tracks.”
He caught the boy in his arms and carried him to his mother, and started again for his office.
His habit had been to stop on the way at a saloon for a glass of liquor. As he stood upon the threshold that morning he seemed to hear a sweet voice say: “Go on, I’se comin’, papa, I’se comin’ right in ure tracks.”
He stopped, he hesitated, he looked the future squarely in the face.
“I cannot afford to make any tracks I would be ashamed or sorry to have my boy walk in,” he said decidedly, and turned away.