Those who have suffered and borne suffering best are the most anxious that the young should enjoy the simple joys of life. Like this Père Michaux, they look for a little pleasure in each twenty-four hours. Is it a wild rose laid by a plate at the simple dinner, a new story, a romp, ungrudging permission for some small relaxation of the ordinary rules, or a brave attempt to keep sorrow away from the young? No matter; it is a little thing done for the Holy Child and for childhood, that ought to be holy and joyous.
There is a commercial axiom that declares that we get out of anything just as much as we put into it. This may be true in trade or not; it is certainly true of other things in life.
When the frost begins to make the blood tingle, and the glow of neighborly fires has more than usual comfort for the passer-by, as he sees them through windows and thinks of his own, the fragrance of home seems to rise more strongly than ever, and then there is a longing that the home-circle may revolve around a common centre. Sometimes this longing takes the form of resolutions to make life more cheerful; and sometimes even the father wonders if he, in some way, cannot make home more attractive. As a rule, however, he leaves it to the mother; and if the young people yawn and want to go out, it must be her fault. The truth is, he expects to reap without having sown.
Home can be made cheerful only by an effort. Why, even friendship and love will perish if they are not cultivated; and so if the little virtues of life—the little flowers—are not carefully tended they must die. Young people cannot be imprisoned or kept at home by force. We cannot get over the change that has come about—a change that has eliminated the old iron hand and rod from family life. We must take things as they are. And the only way to direct the young, to influence, to help them, is to interest them.
Books are resources and consolation; study is a resource and consolation. Both are strong factors in the best home-life; and the man who can look back with gratitude to the time when, around the home-lamp, he made one of the circle about his father’s table, has much to be thankful for; and we venture to assert that the coming man whose father will give him such a remembrance to be thankful for can never be an outcast, or grow cold, or bitter, or cynical.
But the taste for books does not come always by nature: it must be cultivated. And everything between covers is not a book; and a taste for books cannot be cultivated in a bookless house. It may be said that there is no Catholic literature, or that it is very expensive to buy books, or that it is difficult to get a small number of the best books, or to be sure that one has the best in a small compass.
None of these things is true—none of them. There is a vast Catholic literature, and a vast literature, not professedly Catholic, which is good and pure, which will stimulate a desire for study, and help to cultivate every quality of the mind and heart. Does anybody realize how many good books twelve or fifteen dollars will buy nowadays? And, after all, there are not fifty really great books in all languages. If one have fifty books, one has the best literature in all languages. A book-shelf thus furnished is a treasure which neither adversity nor fatigue nor sickness itself can take away. Each child may even have his own book-shelf, with his favorites on it, and such volumes as treat of his favorite hobby—for every child old enough should have a hobby, even if it be only the collecting of pebbles, and every chance should be given to enjoy his hobby and to develop it into a serious study. A little fellow who used to range his pebbles on the table in the lamplight, and get such hints as he could about them out of an old text-book, is a great geologist. And a little girl who used to hang over her very own copy of Adelaide Procter’s poems is spoken of as one of the cleverest newspaper men (though she is a woman) in the city of New York. The taste of the early days, encouraged in a humble way, became the talent which was to make their future.
There should be no bookless house in all this land—least of all among Catholics, whose ancestors in Christ preserved all that is great in literature. Let the trashy novels, paper-backed, soiled, borrowed or picked up, be cast out. Let the choosing of books not be left to mere chance. A little brains put into it will be returned with more than its first value. What goes into the precious minds of the young ought not to be carelessly chosen. And it is true that, in the beginning, it is the easiest possible thing to interest young people in good and great books. But if one lets them wallow in whatever printed stuff happens to come in their way, one finds it hard to conduct them back again. Let the books be carefully chosen—a few at a time—be laid within the circle of the evening lamp—and God bless you all!
PRINTED BY BENZIGER BROTHERS, NEW YORK.