Encourage Your Child to Read.
As early as possible let your children be encouraged to read, and see that they are provided with books and papers adapted to their capacity of mind. Some parents, be it said to their shame, consider money spent in this way as unnecessary or even wasted. A more erroneous idea of economy never existed. Books are great educators. A mother should be more careful to provide her children with good books than fine clothes; should spend more time in teaching and training them than in decking their bodies for show and display. Mothers, if you are obliged to practice economy, do not commence to save in your children's books and papers; let it be in something else first. While, however, the mind is being trained and improved, care should be taken that the spiritual part is not neglected. While your children are reading books by various authors, have a care that they do not neglect the reading of the Bible, the Book of books.
Treat Them Kindly.
Most of us are fond of pets, and it would be hard to find the boy or girl who didn't want either a dog or a kitten. It is small wonder, for a dog is a very faithful friend, and anything more delightful than a tiny, fluffy kitten, full of fun and spirits, it would be hard to find. But sometimes these pets do not have a very easy time of it. Only a few days ago we saw a little boy out on the sidewalk with his kitten. He was enjoying himself, but the kitten wasn't, for he would pick it up and throw it across the yard, till poor pussy mewed pitifully. Now, if our boys and girls are going to have pets, they ought to learn to treat them very kindly, just as they would wish to be treated themselves.
You may think, perhaps, that your dog belongs to you, and for that reason you can do with him just as you please. But do you ever stop to consider that Rover or Don may not enjoy being kicked and beaten and pulled about any more than you would if you were in his place? That is something that we must think about. We might have been born helpless, in the power of other and larger creatures. But it has pleased our Father to make us what we are, and to give us the power over his other creatures, and for that reason we should be very kind and gentle with them. He wishes us to be merciful, and so we have his promise that those who are merciful shall have mercy shown them, if ever they come to be in need of it. And then, that it may be very plain to us, he tells us that "the merciful man is merciful to his beast." That means that he is kind and gentle to all the creatures that he has anything to do with, to his horse and his cow, to his dog, and even to the tiny kitten that ties itself up into a ball, chasing its own tail. Isn't this promise worth trying for?