Audubon, the great ornithologist, with gun and pencil, went through
the forests of America to bring down and to sketch the beautiful
birds, and after years of toil and exposure completed his manuscript,
and put it in a trunk in Philadelphia for a few days of recreation and
rest, and came back and found that the rats had utterly destroyed the
manuscript; but without any discomposure and without any fret or bad
temper, he again picked up his gun and pencil, and visited again all
the great forests of America, and reproduced his immortal work. And
yet there are people with the ten thousandth part of that loss who are
utterly unreconcilable, who, at the loss of a pencil or an article of
raiment will blow as long and sharp as a northeast storm.
Now, that man who is affable in public and who is irritable in private
is making a fraudulent overissue of stock, and he is as bad as a bank
that might have four or five hundred thousand dollars of bills in
circulation with no specie in the vault. Let us learn to show piety at
home. If we have it not there, we have it not anywhere. If we have
not genuine grace in the family circle, all our outward and public
plausibility merely springs from a fear of the world or from the
slimy, putrid pool of our own selfishness. I tell you the home is a
mighty test of character! What you are at home you are everywhere,
whether you demonstrate it or not.