“You see then the value of caring for yourself in youth, not only for your own sake but for that of your children. Your mother did not know that she would ever have children to be benefitted by her out-door life. But one day she met a young man who pleased her, and as they grew to know each other better they came to love each other so that they wished to leave home and friends and make their own home and live their united lives separate and apart from all the rest of the world. So they were married, as we say. Marriage is the union of one man and one woman under the sanction of the law. This is the closest and most sacred human relation. In this relation the spermatozoon of the man unites with the germ or ovum of the 17 woman and a new life is begun. When your parents knew that such a little life had begun in their home they felt a great and holy joy, and desired that every good might surround it in its development. You were the first to come into your father’s home. After your life had begun you were still so small as not to be visible to the naked eye, and would have been lost had you come into the world. But a home had been prepared for you in your mother’s body, where day by day you grew and grew. The food which she ate nourished you as well as herself. The air which she breathed was life to you as well as to her.
“You have seen the father-bird bringing food to the mother-bird as she sits upon her eggs and waits for the birdlings to come forth, and you have thought it a pretty sight to watch his tender care of her. Even so your father watched over your mother and you. He provided everything as pleasant as possible, he removed every care from her path so that she might be happy and so make you happy. His love for her took on a new and strange tenderness it had not known before. And she, holding you warm and close in the embrace of her body, thought of you and loved you. She wondered how you would look; she dreamed of you; she fancied she could feel the touch of your fluttering fingers; she made your little wardrobe and with each stitch wove in some tender thought of the baby whom she had never seen. Then one day she cried out with great anguish of body but joy of heart, ‘O my baby is coming.’ Then through long hours she suffered, going down almost to the gates of death that you might have life. But she never murmured; 18 in spite of all her pain and anguish of body her very soul was full of rejoicing that soon she would hold you in her arms. When all those hours of peril and anxiety were past and you were laid in your mother’s arms, your father came and bent over you both with a measureless love, and looking into your little face they knew what the Scripture meant when it said, ‘And they twain shall be one flesh,’ for were not you a living fulfillment of that saying? You were a part of each united in a living being who belonged to them both. Then for the first time could they realize, even dimly, the yearning, tender love of their heavenly Father who had granted to them to know by experience his feelings towards his children.”
Great tears had gathered in the boy’s eyes as she talked, and now with choking voice he said, “I don’t think I can ever be disobedient again, Dr. Barrett. I did not understand it all as I do now. You know we only hear these things talked of among the boys, and I had come to feel that there was some reason why I ought to be ashamed of my father and mother; but it all looks so different to me now. I wish you could talk to the other boys as you have to me.”
“It may not be possible for me to do so, although I should be glad to do it, but you can help them to think more truly on these subjects. You can especially help them to treat women and girls with more respect than they often do, because you can see how an injury to any girl is an injury to the whole world.”
“I don’t quite see that,” said Carl.
“You can see that if any one had injured your 19 mother in her girlhood it would have been an injury to all her children, can you not?”
“O yes.”
“And that injury might be passed on to future generations. There lived a poor girl, about a hundred years ago, who was uncared for by good people and wronged by evil ones, and to-day she is known as a ‘mother of criminals,’ and no one can tell where the mischief will end. You would feel very indignant if you knew that some one had done your mother an injury in her girlhood, and you would feel the same way should any one wrong your sisters.”
“I knocked Bill Jones down last week because he said something to my sister Kate.”
“You felt a righteous anger and manifested it. Well, in all probability you will some day marry. If so, there is in the world to-day the girl who will be your wife. How do you want her to be treated by the boys who are her school-companions? Do you like to think that they are rough with her, or playing at lovering with her? Is it a pleasant thought that she is allowing them to caress her or write her silly sentimental notes?”