swim out to sea, thinking they can go as far as they please, and with
gay toss of silvery scale they defy the sportsman on the beach, and
after a while the fishermen begin to draw in the net, hand over hand,
and hand over hand, and it is a long while before the captured fins
begin to feel the net, and then they dart this way and that, hoping to
get out, but find themselves approaching the shore, and are brought up
to the very feet of the captors, so the memory of an early home
sometimes seems to relax and let men out further and further from God
and further and further from shore--five years, ten years, twenty
years, thirty years; but some day they find an irresistible mesh
drawing them back, and they are compelled to retreat from their
prodigality and wandering; and though they make desperate effort to
escape the impression, and try to dive deeper down in sin, after a
while are brought clear back and held upon the Rock of Ages.
If it be possible, O father and mother! let your sons and daughters go
out into the world under the semi-omnipotent memory of a good, pure
home. About your two or three rooms in a boarding-house or a family
hotel you can cast no such glorious sanctity. They will think of these
public caravanseries as an early stopping place, malodorous with old
victuals, coffees perpetually steaming, and meats in everlasting stew
or broil, the air surcharged with carbonic acid, and corridors along
which drunken boarders come staggering at one o'clock in the morning,
rapping at the door till the affrighted wife lets them in. Do not be
guilty of the sacrilege or blasphemy of calling such a place a home.