Common sense is the only true promoter of mankind and yet how few of
our present generation strive to obtain the knowledge.
Our boys and girls may have had their proper beginning at school, in
due time successfully passed the usual graduation exercises, and some
more may have received a costly course at college, yet those having
been deprived of the most important instruction stand before the world
as helpless as in their beginning.
To learn to work is the foundation in constructing the knowledge of
common sense.
Knowing how to work and especially with those who were taught to do it
with pleasure, never faltering nor complaining, simply accomplishing
their daily task in a systematic manner will succeed.
A successful school or college training should only be considered as a
sharpened tool to be better equipped in applying this common sense.
At home is the place where the child should be taught to do little
things and as it grows older and while attending school, the importance
of accomplishing bigger things should be impressed from time to time.
Every parent who neglects to teach his child to work is robbing it of
its birthright.
There should be time for work and time for play, but as the former is
usually out of the question, that very moment our should-be-home
instructors are guilty of moral crime.
Work strengthens the body as well as the mind and a useful exercise
should be the most preferable one.
If you wish to rear a good boy, teach him how to work.
If you wish your son to become an ideal young man, preach to him that
the most valuable time lost, is, when he is neglecting to build up his
storage of common sense.
Plod along quietly, but with determination. Promotion will surely
follow.
We are none of us perfect; try to do right as nearly as you possibly
can and you will profit. To neglect means disappointments.
If you wish to bring up a good girl, teach her to be useful.
If you wish to be the possessor of a model daughter, teach her the
value of work; all other accomplishments should be subordinate issues,
but are very commendable features if connected with common sense ideas.
Common sense should be the first principle in the make-up of a young
woman, and it is only obtained while learning the rudiments and duties
to manage a home; and a home of contentment is only where such a
supreme being, commonly called wife, predominates.
Teach your daughters to be deserving, have them learn to appreciate, to
be sincere and you will encourage a better class of young men.
Let them grow up in idleness, teach them to despise labor, let them
depend upon someone for a continuously happy time, and you will
cultivate the good-for-nothing young man.
Do not let them expect to marry a worthy man unless they show
themselves to be worthy. The laws of nature will not permit otherwise.
Honor the man of toil. To snub him shows ignorance and bad breeding.
Neither good looks nor fortune should figure as a drawing card.
Nothing but virtues embodied in the knowledge of common sense will
conquer.
Virtue prevails
Where beauty fails.
Nor will riches easily won maintain comforts and satisfaction which
only true merit will reward.
To be occupied encourages health and thrift; with
self-denial--self-respect and happiness.
To be idle invites ills of many kinds; it breeds discontent, engenders
poverty and brings misery--and as the wheels of commerce are
continuously turning around, the rich becoming poor and the poor
becoming rich, the importance of acquiring the knowledge of common
sense should not be so woefully neglected.
Try not to accumulate wealth, but exert your talents in promoting your
children to become self-reliant and you will have endowed a legacy
which means more than untold fortunes to them, a consolation to the
parent and a blessing to the community at large.
The poorest boys and girls in the world are those not taught to work.
[Illustration: signature of G. A. Bauman]
October, 1897.