Each child’s duty to himself is to recognize his conscious personal obligation to himself and to society, of mastering every inherited and acquired weakness, of developing fully every inherent possibility, and of accepting Christ as a necessity to the fullest attainment of the loftiest ideals.
God’s greatest blessing, offered to every individual, is personal redemption through faith in His Son.
These three agencies, good heredity, good environment, and redemption; or right generation, right education and regeneration, are essential to a perfect life.
CHAPTER LI
COURTSHIP, MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
The modern girl.—A quarter of a century ago a community knew a year ahead when one of its young women was going to be married. In this fast age, some parents don’t find it out until after their daughter has been married six months or more. When the author was a boy, the engaged girl spent her spare time piecing quilts, making feather pillows and beds, drying apples, peaches and pumpkins, making preserves, gathering garden seed and raising a flock of chickens. She had religious convictions. The Bible idea of a woman is a “help meet.” She was preparing to help meet the expenses of a home. The modern girl too often helps spend her gentleman friend’s hard-earned money at the soda fountain, on livery rigs and at the ten cent shows. Thousands of young men are not getting married to-day, because they are afraid of the expense of these modern help-eats, help-wears and help-spends.
Customs have changed.—True, times and customs have changed and much of the work of women a quarter of a century ago is no longer profitable. The
