HOME INFLUENCES.
"A careful preparation is half the battle." Everything depends on a
good start and the right road. To retrace one's steps is to lose not
only time but confidence. "Be sure you are right then go ahead" was
the motto of the famous frontiersman, Davy Crockett, and it is one
that every young man can adopt with safety.
Bear in mind there is often a great distinction between character and
reputation. Reputation is what the world believes us for the time;
character is what we truly are. Reputation and character may be in
harmony, but they frequently are as opposite as light and darkness.
Many a scoundrel has had a reputation for nobility, and men of the
noblest characters have had reputations that relegated them to the
ranks of the depraved, in their day and generation.
It is most desirable to have a good reputation. The good opinion of
our associates and acquaintances is not to be despised, but every
man should see to it that the reputation is deserved, otherwise his
life is false, and sooner or later he will stand discovered before
the world.
Sudden success makes reputation, as it is said to make friends; but
very often adversity is the best test of character as it is of
friendship.
It is the principle for which the soldier fights that makes him a
hero, not necessarily his success. It is the motive that ennobles
all effort. Selfishness may prosper, but it cannot win the enduring
success that is based on the character with a noble purpose behind
it. This purpose is one of the guards in times of trouble and the
reason for rejoicing in the day of triumph.
"Why should I toil and slave," many a young man has asked, "when I
have only myself to live for?" God help the man who has neither
mother, sister nor wife to struggle for and who does not feel that
toil and the building up of character bring their own reward.
The home feeling should be encouraged for it is one of the greatest
incentives to effort. If the young man have not parents or brothers
and sisters to keep, or if he find himself limited in his leisure
hours to the room of a boarding house, then if he can at all afford
it, he should marry a help-meet and found a home of his own. "I was
very poor at the time," said a great New York publisher, "but
regarding it simply from a business standpoint, the best move I ever
made in my life was to get married. Instead of increasing my
expense's as I feared, I took a most valuable partner into the
business, and she not only made a home for me, but she surrendered
to me her well-earned share of the profits."
A wise marriage is most assuredly an influence that helps. Every
young man who loves his mother, if living, or reveres her memory if
dead, must recall with feelings of holy emotion, his own home.
Blest, indeed is he, over whom the influence of a good home
continues.
Home is the first and most important school of character. It is there
that every civilized being receives his best moral training, or his
worst; for it is there that he imbibes those principles that endure
through manhood and cease only with life.
It is a common saying that "Manners make the man;" and there is a
second, that "Mind makes the man;" but truer than either is a third,
that "Home makes the man." For the home-training not only includes
manners and mind, but character. It is mainly in the home that the
heart is opened, the habits are formed, the intellect is awakened,
and character moulded for good or for evil.
From that source, be it pure or impure, issue the principles and
maxims that govern society. Law itself is but the reflex of homes.
The tiniest bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private
life afterward issue forth to the world, and become its public
opinion; for nations are gathered out of nurseries, and they who
hold the leading strings of children may even exercise a greater
power than those who wield the reins of government.
It is in the order of nature that domestic life should be preparatory
to social, and that the mind and character should first be formed in
the home. There the individuals who afterward form society are dealt
with in detail, and fashioned one by one. From the family they enter
life, and advance from boyhood to citizenship. Thus the home may be
regarded as the most influential school of civilization. For, after
all, civilization mainly resolves itself into a question of
individual training; and according as the respective members of
society are well or ill trained in youth, so will the community
which they constitute be more or less humanized and civilized.
Thus homes, which are the nurseries of children who grow up into men
and women, will be good or bad according to the power that governs
them. Where the spirit of love and duty pervades the home--where
head and heart bear rule wisely there--where the daily life is
honest and virtuous--where the government is sensible, kind and
loving, then may we expect from such a home an issue of healthy,
useful, and happy beings, capable, as they gain the requisite
strength of following the footsteps of their parents, of walking
uprightly, governing themselves wisely, and contributing to the
welfare of those about them.
On the other hand, if surrounded by ignorance, coarseness, and
selfishness, they will unconsciously assume the same character, and
grow up to adult years rude, uncultivated, and all the more
dangerous to society if placed amidst the manifold temptations of
what is called civilized life. "Give your child to be educated by a
slave," said an ancient Greek, "and, instead of one slave, you will
then have two."
The child cannot help imitating what he sees. Everything is to him a
model--of manner, of gesture, of speech, of habit, of character.
"For the child," says Richter, "the most important era of life is
childhood, when he begins to color and mould himself by
companionship with others. Every new educator effects less than his
predecessor; until at last, if we regard all life as an educational
institution, a circumnavigator of the world is less influenced by
all the nations he has seen than by his nurse."
No man can select his parents or make for himself the early
environment that affects character so powerfully, but he can found a
home no matter how humble, at the outset, that will make his own
future secure, as well as the future of those for whose existence he
is responsible.
The poorest dwelling, presided over by a virtuous, thrifty, cheerful,
and cleanly woman, may be the abode of comfort, virtue, and
happiness; it may be the scene of every ennobling relation in family
life; it may be endeared to a man by many delightful associations;
furnishing a sanctuary for the heart, a refuge from the storms of
life, a sweet resting-place after labor, a consolation in
misfortune, a pride in prosperity, and a joy at all times.
The good home is the best of schools, not only in youth but in age.
There young and old best learn cheerfulness, patience, self-control
and the spirit of service and of duty. Isaak Walton, speaking of
George Herbert's mother, says she governed the family with judicious
care, not rigidly nor sourly, "but with such a sweetness and
compliance with the recreations and pleasures of youth, as did
incline them to spend much of their time in her company, which was
to her great content."
The home is the true school of courtesy, of which woman is always the
best practical instructor. "Without woman," says the Provencal
proverb, "men were but ill-licked cubs." Philanthropy radiates from
the home as from a centre. "To love the little platoon we belong to
in society," said Burke "is the germ of all public affections." The
wisest and the best have not been ashamed to own it to be their
greatest joy and happiness to sit "behind the heads of the children"
in the inviolable circle of home. A life of purity and duty there is
not the least effectual preparative for a life of public work and
duty; and the man who loves his home will not the less fondly love
and serve his country.
At an address before a girls' school in Boston, ex-President John
Quincy Adams, then an old man, said with much feeling: "As a child I
enjoyed perhaps the greatest of blessings that can be bestowed upon
man--that of a mother who was anxious and capable to form the
characters of her children rightly. From her I derived whatever
instruction (religious especially and moral) has pervaded a long
life--I will not say perfectly, or as it ought to be; but I will
say, because it is only justice to the memory of her I revere, that
in the course of that life, whatever imperfection there has been or
deviation from what she taught me, the fault is mine and not hers."
So much depends on the home, for it is the corner-stone of society
and good government, that it is to be regretted, for the sake of
young women, as well as of young men, that our modern life offers so
many opportunities to neglect it.
As the home affects the character entirely through the associations,
it follows that the young man who has left his home behind him
should continue the associations whose memories comfort him. He
should never go to a place for recreation where he would not be
willing and proud to take his mother on his arm. He should never
have as friends men to whom he would not be willing, if need be, to
introduce his sister.
These are among the influences that help to success. But association
is a matter of such great importance as to deserve fuller treatment.