The social position of the child should also be considered. If possible, the character of his pursuits should not conflict with those social elements in which he has been reared up. It should not detract from his standing in society, nor disrupt his associations in life. Many parents, for the sake of money, will refuse to educate and fit their children for sustaining the position they hold in society. They bring them up in ignorance, and devote them exclusively to Mammon; and then when thrown upon their own resources they are qualified neither in manners nor in pursuit for a continuance in those peculiar relations to society which they at first sustained.
The exigencies of the child should also be considered. If his home can afford him no patrimony, it is then more important to consider the lucrative character of the pursuit chosen, and also the demands of that social position he is to maintain in life. Its profits should then be fully adequate to these demands, and suited to the emergencies which are peculiar to his circumstances. The capital required to engage in it, and its bearing upon the health of body and mind, should also be regarded. This is an important consideration, and not sufficiently attended to by parents. How many children are forced into employments which they have not the means of carrying on, and for which their state of health altogether unfits them! A pursuit involving sedentary habits does not suit a child whose state of health demands exercise.
You should make choice of but one pursuit for your child, and discourage in him the American tendency to be "jack of all trades." One occupation, whatever it may be, whether trade or profession, if properly pursued, will demand all his energies, and give him no time to follow another; and besides, it will afford him an ample subsistence. There is much truth in the two old and quaint adages, "jack of all trades, and master of none;" "he has too many irons in the fire,—some of them must burn!" Show your children the truth and application of these.
But while this is one extreme, and detrimental to the interests of the child, its opposite extreme, viz., that of bringing up the child to no pursuit whatever, is still more injurious. We had better have too many irons in the fire than none at all. It is a base and cowardly desertion of duty to shrink from the task of human occupation. Constituted as human society is, the members of it being mutually dependent upon each other for support, it is evident that our happiness materially depends upon the active concurrence of each individual in the general system of social well-being. He who withholds, therefore, his coöperation and stands aloof from all employment, destroys a link in that chain of things by which the fabric of society is kept together and preserved. He is unfaithful to those sacred obligations which arise out of our relations to the state and the church, and he abuses those inalienable rights with which God has invested the social compact. Besides, he fails to meet those conditions upon which the vigorous development of individual life and character depends. Indolence is no friend either to physical, mental or moral development. The body becomes imbecile, the spirit supine and sentimental, the morals vitiated, and the mind sinks into complete puerility. Activity is a law of all life, and the condition of its healthy development and maturity. Without it we resort to jejune amusement, and from amusement we are hurried on to dissipation, to the card table and dram shop; and from dissipation we sink to degradation, infamy and wretchedness. Idleness is thus the fruitful mother of vice and misery. Our lives cannot exist in a state of neutrality between active good and active evil. It is, therefore, the duty of the Christian home to prepare her young members for some useful calling in life, not only as a means of subsistence, but also as a safeguard against the evils of idleness.
Chapter XXII—The Home-Parlor.
"The foolish floatiness of vanity, and solemn trumperies of pride,—
Harmful copings with the better, and empty-headed apings of the worse;
Vapid pleasures, the weariness of gaiety, the strife and bustle of the world;