Do you sometimes forget and wound the hearts of your children with
frowns and the dagger of cruel words, and sometimes with a blow?
Do you sometimes, in your own peevishness, and your own meanness, wish
yourself away from their fretful cries and noisy sports? Then think that
to-morrow may ripen the wicked wish; tomorrow death may lay his hand
upon a little fluttering heart and it will be stilled forever. 'Tis then
you will miss the sunbeam and the sweet little flower that reflected
heaven on the soul. Then cherish the little ones! Be tender with the
babes! Make your homes beautiful! All that remains to us of paradise
lost, clings about the home. Its purity, its innocence, its virtue,
are there, untainted by sin, unclouded by guile. There woman shines,
scarcely dimmed by the fall, reflecting the loveliness of Eden's first
wife and mother; the grace, the beauty, the sweetness of the wifely
relation, the tenderness of maternal affection, the graciousness of
manner which once charmed angel guests, still glorify the home.
If you would make your homes happy, you must make the children happy.
Get down on the floor with your prattling boys and girls and play horse
with them; take them on your back and gallop them to town; don't kick up
and buck, but be a good and gentle old steed, and join in a hearty horse
laugh in their merriment. Take the baby on your knee and gallop him to
town; let him practice gymnastics on top of your head and take your
scalp; let him puncture a hole in your ear with his little teeth, and
bite off the end of the paternal nose. Make your homes beautiful with
your duty and your love, make them bright with your mirth and your
music.
Victor Hugo said of Napoleon the Great: "The frontiers of kingdoms
oscillated on the map. The sound of a super-human sword being drawn from
its scabbard could be heard; and he was seen, opening in the thunder his
two wings, the Grand Army and the Old Guard; he was the archangel of
war." And when I read it I thought of the death and terror that followed
wherever the shadow of the open wings fell. I thought of the blood that
flowed, and the tears that were shed wherever the sword gleamed in his
hand. I thought of the human skulls that paved Napoleon's way to St.
Helena's barren rock, and I said, 'I would rather dwell in a log cabin,
in the beautiful land of the mountains where I was born and reared, and
sit at its humble hearthstone at night, and in the firelight, play the
humble rural tunes on the fiddle to my happy children, and bask in the
smiles of my sweet wife, than to be the 'archangel of war,' with my
hands stained with human blood, or to make the 'frontiers of kingdoms
oscillate on the map of the world, and then, away from home and kindred
and country, die at last in exile and in solitude.'