Children born amid these petty oppressions are not likely to be patterns of perfection. Then they are not allowed to be bad like other children, and to get, by degrees, rid of their inharmony. If they break windows or punch noses, they are considered fearfully depraved, and to reflect on the father. So they learn to consult appearances, and give up the only experience that would make men of them. Too much catechism and formal prayer during their early years must give a disgust for the solemnities, and create a distrust of earnest living and thinking, integrity and sincerity. Just in proportion to the degree of irrationality of the creed, are the chances for damaging the characters of the minister’s children.
Love of Truth expands the soul;
Fear of Evil cramps it.
The most unproductive use one can put one’s mind and heart to, is hatred of evil, of meanness, falsehood, ugliness in others. It does not even prove that we possess the opposite virtues. Especially if we would convey to our children generosity, ingenuousness, and beauty, let our hearts be filled with admiration of these divine qualities. As I have shown, we reproduce that which most impresses us. If it is ugliness, and we hate it, still we reproduce it, because we have dwelt on it. Do not then, when enciente, permit yourself to analyze or dislike imperfections of either mind or body, for this puts the unborn en rapport with that imperfection.
[VALUE OF TEMPORARY EFFORT.]
It certainly ought to encourage any mother to know, that no matter what her particular faults may be, she can lessen if not obliterate them in her child, by making a great effort in the right direction for so short a period as nine or even six months.
That she should make herself over entirely would appear a too formidable undertaking, but with such a motive she could aid her child. She may have, for instance, a quick temper, which she will determine to control; or she may lack order, or a good memory; or she may be wanting in quiet self-esteem (though she have inward self-respect). Either of these deficiences may be greatly lessened.
I will here insert a letter which I received some time ago from a young woman who had become greatly interested in the subject before us, and who was remarkably wanting in what the phrenologist calls “concentrativeness,” and also in consecutiveness of thought:
“You know what a day-dreamer I have always been. This has helped to confirm my ‘scatterbrains’ tendency. At first it did not seem to me reasonable that intentional activity in any direction could have the desired effect. If circumstance outside of one’s self aroused in a woman one or another set of faculties, naturally enough they might be prominent in the child. But this going to work with malice prepense, I feared, would avail but little. However, I made up my mind to give my child the benefit of the doubt.
“Every day I obliged myself to explain certain problems in geometry. This would favor continuity of thought, I decided. Then I began to recall continually the ideas that just flitted into my mind and out again. They would return, and I would dwell a little more on them—see other sides to them; the connection in which they stood to some other idea. Then, after a little I felt tired, and let them go, but still held my mind in readiness for their return. It really both amused and astonished me to see them come trooping back. Why, thought is a series of pictures! I exclaimed. It is all illustration. The ‘fetching myself up standing’ in this way was rather hard work the first two months, but it became easier, and I grew to enjoy my own improvement wonderfully. Of course there were interruptions and discouragements, but I held on bravely, and I am sure successfully, for Walter, at three years old, would fix his mind on a person or a picture in a book, and keep his attention on it to the amusement of all observers; and now if you tell him to make his slate full of figures, he pegs away at it till there is not room for one more.”