Ah, here is Memory Hall! Many persons like to spend most of their time here. See what a great number of pictures are hanging on the wall.
Helen: O mother, let us stop and look at some of them!
Mother: Perhaps I should first tell you that the master of every house is all the time making pictures, whether he is an artist or not. His acts, good and bad, make pictures in the mind. When they are finished, he hangs them in this hall. Some are in dark corners, and he hardly ever looks at them after they are made; he even forgets that he made them. The masters of some houses spend many happy hours in this hall. Others do not like to go near it. Their pain or pleasure depends on the kind of pictures they have made. I have seen some who would weep in sorrow of heart as they looked over the different pictures that they had hung there, and some they would not for anything have any one see. There is only One who can take away these sinful pictures, but He can make them white as snow.
Elmer: Then we ought to have all our actions such that pleasant pictures will be hung in our hall of memory.
Mother: I think so; but we will pass on to some of the higher, more important rooms. Here we find the place where the master receives the poor, and where his acts of kindness are done. In some houses this is the smallest room of the whole. In others, it is large and lofty, and the master spends much time there. He is so good and kind that people can not help loving him when this is the case.
Amy: This next room looks like a church.
Mother: We might call it the chapel; for it is here that the master goes to pray, and worship God. Some use this room a great deal; others, very little. It is the highest, best room in the house, and the master ought to visit it many times each day.
Percy: And what is this large room?
Mother: This is where the master thinks things over, and “makes up his mind,” as we say. This is the “will” room; that is, the person decides what he will or will not do. This is an important room indeed. It is a good thing to have a good, strong will if we only will to do the right thing, for it helps any one in doing right; but if he is doing wrong, it causes him to do more wrong.
To show what I mean, we will say that a man who has been drinking beer or cider learns that the reason he likes these drinks is because there is alcohol in them, and he sees that they will do him harm, and that the more he drinks them, the more he will want them. He doesn’t want weak muscles, a bloated body, a fatty liver, or a weak brain and nerves. He does not wish to go to the insane asylum, to the jail, to the poor-house, or into a drunkard’s grave. But he likes the alcohol. It is hard to give it up, and his friends will call him a “temperance man,” and will jeer at him, and say that he is a coward. Now what will he do? He goes into his “will room,” and he says to himself: “I have been a slave long enough. From now on I will be master of this body-house. It makes no difference how loudly Taste may call, nor how badly I want him to have his own way, I WILL NOT give up, God helping me, and I am going to put my will on the right side of this question.”