FATHER AND SON
Properly enough, the responsibility for health and development of young
children rests upon the mother, and in most families this care remains
with her till the children are able to look out for themselves. However,
upon the father devolves more responsibility than the mere providing for
the daily need of his children. Especially is it true that the boys of a
family need the personal influence of the father fully as much as that
of the mother. However patient, wise and devoted a mother may be, there
comes a time in every boy's life when he ought to be under the influence
and subject to the control of a man. _Every boy looks to men for his
models and for a time follows them blindly, in spite of the most careful
training a mother can give._ Curiously enough it is often to a man other
than his father that the boy looks for advice and direction. It is some
other man who influences his thought and through his thought his actions
and the development of his character. Even when the relations between
father and son are of the closest the boy begins to look around him and
often, for no other reason than the novelty of the influence, he falls
under the tutelage of another to whom he gives a confidence that his
father could never secure. As they enter the period of adolescence, boys
will often talk on many subjects with strangers with a freedom that
parents, especially fathers, can never hope to see equalled unless the
most perfect confidence has existed from the earliest childhood. Those
who have taught for many years and who have had growing boys in their
charge know how true this fact is and try to make it of service by
seeing that someone of strong character shall be at hand for the boys to
lean upon. They are impressionable, these men in embryo, and will go to
such lengths for persons they happen to admire and who have secured
their confidence, that those who know tremble when they find evil or
trifling influences gathering about their charges.
Unfortunately in too many cases the parents fail to realize the
importance of this change of relationship and allow children to drift
without any effort to stem the tide that is bearing their progeny away.
Fathers are particularly blind. One would think that they would remember
how it was with themselves in their youth and be guided accordingly. But
as a matter of fact a large majority of the fathers of the land have
forgotten the perils of their own boyhoods; they look upon their own
sons as proof against the temptations they weathered, or as being exempt
because of their better position in life. If these same fathers would
only consider that the temptations come from within and are inseparable
from our race and from the age of the children they would regard with
the greatest concern every influence that is brought to bear upon their
rapidly developing boys.
This is no light matter we are discussing and is one that ought to be
considered seriously by every father. Every teacher, every psychologist
knows that the time comes when a man must lead the changing youth. Who
shall do it? Obviously the father. No man can put aside his
responsibilities in this matter nor can he delegate it to the mother.
She may be the one big factor in the development of her boy's character
and yet there is one time when all her carefully laid plans may go awry,
when for a little while her restraining influence is powerless to save.
No father can, in fairness to the children he has brought into the
world, say that when he has made the home and furnished it, when he has
fed and clothed his wife and children he has done all that he ought to
do. It matters not how difficult a task it has been to find the money to
support his family, nor how hard he has been obliged to work to get the
daily bread; it matters not how tired or how much in need of recreation
he may be when he returns to his home at the close of the day; he finds
his responsibility always facing him. Do not misunderstand the question,
nor the purpose of these lines. This is in no sense a criticism nor is
it a bit of preaching at the hard-working fathers upon whom rest the
hopes of the race. Every true father is willing to give his life if
necessary for his offspring and there is no greater devotion in the
world than that of father to son. But the fact remains that many a busy
man has been so overburdened with the cares of his everyday life that he
has had no time to make himself familiar with even the smallest of his
duties to his family.
Suddenly he becomes conscious that his son is growing away from him,
that the little things that have bound them together have no longer the
strength to hold, that they are drifting apart. Perhaps the father never
has been on intimate terms with his son and has never really known what
his child was thinking about or what his ideas and ideals really were.
When this consciousness comes to the father, when he learns that he is
no longer the one big figure on his son's horizon and that his words
have ceased to be accepted as final on every question, he is startled
and seeks strenuously to regain his position. Difficult will it be. To
regain what has been lost is always difficult; more difficult is it to
displace an influence that is already established. How many, many times
there comes to the earnest teachers the anxious parent with the
oft-repeated statements and questions. "My boy has grown away from me. I
don't know him any more. What I say no longer has any influence with
him. I don't know what to do. How can you help me? He thinks more of
what you say than of what I say and would follow you even if I objected.
What can I do? What advice can you give?" In many instances it is too
late and never again can the father recover the influence he has lost.
On the other hand, it is possible in most cases for the father to
reinstate himself if he proceeds in the right way. That way is never
through command or restraint or discipline. _By only one process can he
succeed, and that is by placing himself in the position of the boy,
learning the boy's tastes and interests and in joining with the boy in
the things the latter likes._ If there has never been much community of
thought between the two, the parent may say in substance or show by his
acts that he has rather neglected the youth because he was too young to
be in sympathy with a man's work and because it was better for the
mother to have the care of her son during his boyhood; but that now he
is old enough to begin to think a man's thoughts and to take an interest
in a man's occupations. Sometimes if this is followed by a real hearty
confidence, if the father takes the boy with him on his business trips,
shows him how the money for the family is made and what are the joys and
compensations of a busy career, the boy's confidence is won, his
interest aroused and a frank comradeship established, new bonds are
created and the father finds a delightful companion, the boy an honored
friend and a worthy leader. Such fathers have said again and again, "I
have found a new and trustworthy friend, a helper whose enthusiasm and
good sense is worth more to me than anything I have had in years; and it
is _my_ boy who is doing it." Unfortunately, most men fail to realize
the power of a boy's mind, the helpfulness of his companionship. His
outlook on life is so fresh and true, his ambition so strong and his
willingness to be taught so refreshing that intimacy with him makes the
adult much stronger and better able to master the annoyances of the day,
and to win the commercial victories upon which subsistence depends.
But at its best this latter-day acquaintanceship is never so strong nor
so helpful as that which begins when the child is an infant and
continues through boyhood to the larger youth and manhood. And it is
easy to win the confidence and respect of the very young, easy to retain
it when won. Yet many a sincere and anxious man fails utterly to earn
that sympathetic companionship which any father may have for the asking,
if the request is made in a way the child can understand and appreciate.
The foundation of it all is a sympathy in the things that children know
and love. _A child lives on a plane of his own. You cannot take him very
far from it nor substitute anything in its place except by the slowest
and most careful management._ There can be no sympathy, no understanding
that is not located on the childish plane. The father must come down
where the child lives, must find his interest in the things that the
child loves and must be sincere in every manifestation of that interest.
Right here is where so many fathers fail. They try to interest the child
in things which the older mind enjoys, and finding themselves unable to
create the artificial atmosphere give up in discouragement and disgust.
Such a course is foolish in the extreme. The older person who knows more
and has had the experiences that are now new to youngsters must go back
into his memories and join in the little things that make up the big
complex of a child's world. Unless you become as little children you can
never enter into the lives of children.
To become young again in a genuine fashion is not permitted to many of
us and we must accordingly seek some common ground where we can meet the
children and be as they are in seeming if not in reality. We may not be
able to play their games with interest and sympathy, or the boys may be
so skilful that we lose standing rather than gain influence by
participation. We may not be able to sympathize with the rivalries of
school or talk intelligently on the sports that make up a large part of
their daily occupation. Where, then, can we meet them and how shall we
put ourselves on an equality with them and at the same time preserve our
leadership?
Such a question is not easy to answer in detail, but many a man has
found a way and a simple one at that. In the first place, play is part
of the life of every child and he has as much right to his fun as any
adult has to the recreation he finds necessary to keep him at the top of
his working power. _Many a child may properly complain that he has had
no childhood_, that all the time he was being repressed and never
allowed to express himself in his own way. He may not realize at the
time that anything is wrong in the treatment that his father gives him,
but the time comes when he will know and understand. Right there is a
fact that every father ought to know and realize so thoroughly that he
will never lose sight of it. _Yes, some time every boy will know just
what kind of a father he has had and just how worthy of respect and
veneration that father has been._ A little boy is credulity itself and
everything tends to make him believe in his father. But as he grows
older he will surely know. Woe be it to the parent who when
disillusionment comes falls below the standard the child has set. Some
time the boy will know. If he has never had the pleasure that was his
due, if he has never had the fun in his home that he had a right to
expect, his estimate of his parent will be appallingly low.
Through play in the home in the evening after the day's work is ended
has many a father laid the foundation for an influence that controlled
when other ties seemed strained to the breaking point. It is in this
playtime that the boy expresses himself most fully. Every animal has its
playtime, and the most savage of the beasts play with their little ones
to educate them to succeed in the struggle for existence. If play is a
natural expression of the child's mind and body, anything that represses
play is a hindrance to development. In the cheery home where to have fun
and lots of it is a daily habit every child grows and matures as
perfectly as a plant where there are just the right amounts of sun and
moisture and where the soil is perfectly adapted to growth. A little
less light, a little less moisture, and the plant will wither and fail.
A little less play and more repression and the child will become morose
and fail to keep pace with his mates. To repress is so easy, to
reconstruct so difficult!
After the play comes the work, but the work may be made as interesting
as the play and may proceed in the same spirit of jollity and freedom
that marked the time given up wholly to amusement. The work is the
second factor in the father's influence--something on the plane of the
child's own mind, not too difficult, not too long continued. Closely
related, too, it must be with things that the child has done and
understands. Some phase of school work may need to be carried on by the
older ones in the family, but the younger boys are free to work with the
father in anything that will stimulate and inspire. What shall the work
be? To every one who has had to do with a large number of children the
answer comes quickly enough. _In reading and conversation will the boy
and his father come most closely together_, in a field that is
attractive to both and where it is as easy to find entertainment and
pleasure as it is to gain information and culture.
Two quotations from men of good judgment come into mind at this point.
Arthur T. Hadley, recently President of Yale University, has said, "Men
in every department of practical life, men in commerce, in
transportation or in manufactures, have told me that what they really
wanted from our college was men who have this selective power of using
books efficiently. The beginnings of knowledge are best learned in any
home fairly well furnished with books." Professor William Mathews has
added, "It is not the number of books which a young man reads that makes
him intelligent and well-informed, but the number of well-chosen ones
that he has mastered so that every valuable thought in them is a
familiar friend."
In those two quotations the ideas of prime importance to every father
are, first, that the beginnings of knowledge are best learned in the
home; and, second, that it is the mastery of what is read that really
counts. In school a child learns to read; at his home he reads to learn.
At school he learns how he ought to read; but it is at his home that he
learns to read in that manner. What a boy does in school is a small part
of the total amount of his reading, and its influence is small indeed.
In home reading, then, reading of the right material in the right way,
is to be found the great influence in education and the great factor in
the building of character.
If such is the case, what more important work can there be for the
father than to read with his son, to watch these beginnings of education
which mean so much more than the mere instruction in school, and to be a
power in developing that right method of reading which means not only
the acquisition of knowledge but also the acquirement of power and the
making of character. The busy man is tired at night and inclined to
think that he has no time to give to reading with his boys. He may
think, too, that reading childish stories is beneath his dignity. Such
is not the case. There is a great abundance of literature that is manly,
and at the same time interesting to a boy. If the father feels that he
is past the time when he has any sympathy with the fairy stories and the
little poems that the infants like, if he thinks the nursery rhymes are
silly and the fables too old to be true, that is because he has not
recently read them. Busy men, men of power and influence, like to renew
their youth by going to the simple things they loved as children, and
not a few of them find that the years have given them new powers of
interpretation and that what was to them at one time only an amusing
tale is now replete with the philosophy of the universe. Yet there may
be fathers of so practical a mind that works of imagination have no hold
upon them. To them, however, the world of literature is by no means
barren. There are history, biography and essays upon a thousand
subjects, any one of which will interest a boy and at the same time his
father. Particularly is this true when the reading is aloud and
interspersed with free conversation upon the subjects that come to the
surface. If the father can only select the right material and read it
with his son there is no question whatever about the interest that will
develop for both. A busy man has little time to select reading; in all
probability he has not had the experience to enable him to do so wisely,
for he has been so absorbed in business that he has forgotten what he
knew best as a boy and is unable to tell just what appealed to him most.
It may be that he never in his youth had the opportunity to read the
best of literature and does not know where to turn to find it. He hears
his little family talking about what they read at school and how they
ought to read and feels himself behind the times and hesitates to make
an exhibition of himself before his children. To any father, a
collection such as that in _Journeys Through Bookland_ is of inestimable
value. When it is considered that in addition to the literary material
there are abundant suggestions as to how interest may be created and how
the reading may be made most profitable, then the set becomes
indispensable. In other words, _Journeys_ contains the material that
must be in every family to make it "fairly well furnished with books,"
and it provides a way of "mastering the books so that every valuable
thought is a familiar friend."
If fathers could be persuaded to spend one evening with their boys in
the reading and discussion of some selection in _Journeys_, they would
not willingly forego the pleasure thereafter. It has happened so many
times that we know this is not an overstatement. Fathers by the score
have written us on the subject. One says, "I have solved the problem of
keeping my boys off the streets, or, rather, _Journeys_ has done it for
me." "I have never spent a happier evening. The boys staid up with me
till after their usual bed time and when they had retired, I read on for
half the night," says another. "I feel young again, and John and I are
great chums. _Reminiscences of a Pioneer_ kept me telling stories long
after we had finished reading the sketch." Who are these fathers?
Clergymen, lawyers, doctors, teachers, we may expect, for they are
somewhat interested in reading, because of their life work. But they are
not the most numerous, by any means. Railroad men, manufacturers,
farmers, men in hundreds of vocations acknowledge the delight of reading
_Journeys_ with their children. Is there anything finer, more wholesome,
more inspiring than the thought of fathers and children reading
together, and together feeling the inspiration that radiates from the
great masterpieces.
But this chapter is not an argument for the purchase of _Journeys_. That
you, father of a growing boy, are reading these lines is evidence that
you have thought well enough of the _Journeys_ idea to place a set of
books in your family. You have done this because you recognized that in
this age of specialists, you, a business man, could not be expected to
select reading matter for your son and assist him in his growth and
development with the same skill as can those who have devoted many years
to that special problem. No attempt is made to advise you on the conduct
of your business or to direct the management and control of your son.
But a sincere effort has been made to help you to join with your boy in
that hearty sympathy which will make him happier, better and more of a
man; which will make you young again and add to your pleasure without
increasing your burdens. What we want is to make the books most
effective, to help them be the power for good that we know they can be,
and more than anything else, to make them a living bond between father
and son. So let us examine the books together with these thoughts in
mind and see if we cannot find just the things that will arouse your
enthusiasm and make you young again, an equal and a friend who can lead
your boy where you want him to go and where he will gladly follow you.
For instance, there is in the sixth volume that kindly humorous account
of a boyhood in Wisconsin in the early part of the last century,
_Reminiscences of a Pioneer_ (Volume V, 340). Every man will be
interested in it, and he cannot read it aloud to a boy of seven without
catching the attention of the child. Even a lad of sixteen will get into
the spirit of the thing, although it may not be the same incidents that
will attract him. Think of the contrast between that humble log cabin
with its visiting Indians and the luxurious steam-heated flat of your
son, or the farm house with all modern conveniences that a friend of
yours may have in the very region where our little friend was frightened
more by the strange Dutch immigrants than he was by the red men whom he
saw every day. Think of a six or seven year old boy that had never seen
an apple and who could enjoy chokecherries and crab apples, even though
he couldn't get his face back into line on the same day in which he ate
them fresh from the tree. Think of offering raw turnips to the guests
and of people coming twenty miles to get a small piece of salt pork,
because they were so tired of fresh meat and fish. Think that these
things happened less than a hundred years ago and within forty miles of
the now big and flourishing city of Milwaukee. What lessons there are in
courage, skill, self-reliance and contentment in the lives of these
early pioneers, especially the devoted mother who kept her yeast alive
so many years, and stood off the Indians with one hand while she tended
to her increasing family with the other. Can you imagine a boy who
wouldn't be interested in the sturdy youngster who earned and refused
his first quarter of a dollar for paddling a man across the river in a
heavy dugout? Don't you think your son will have a host of questions to
ask about it all and that you will be glad to talk to him about the
Indians he likes to imitate when he plays? Can't you see that reading
such as this is worth while and that every moment spent in this way is
an investment for yourself in the boy's confidence and good graces?
Other selections of a somewhat similar nature, all of which will appeal
to boys at the time when Indians and adventure are of more interest than
anything else, are the following:
_The Arickara Indians_, Volume IV, page 472.
_The Buccaneers_, Volume V, page 359.
_Captain Morgan at Maracaibo_, Volume V, page 365.
_Ringrose and His Buccaneers_, Volume VIII, page 1.
_David Crockett in the Creek War_, Volume VIII, page 37.
_Braddock's Defeat_, Volume V, page 379.
_The Capture of Vincennes_, Volume VI, page 428.
_The Black Hawk Tragedy_, Volume VII, page 58.
_Père Marquette_, Volume VIII, page 121.
_George Rogers Clark_, Volume VI, page 422.
Have no fear that the boy's love for Indians and adventure is a thing to
suppress. It is an evidence of growth and of development. You know every
boy lives over in himself the history of his race, and as there was a
time when the life of mankind was a struggle with physical difficulties
and personal danger so there is a time when every boy feels within
himself the admiration for brave deeds and the desire to fight and
conquer. Your province it is to meet him on that ground, enjoy with him
the tales of lofty daring and physical prowess, the tales of stirring
adventure and narrow escapes, and to lead him gently with you into the
fields of history where achievements in science, commerce and
engineering take the place of battles with wild animals and wilder
Indians.
Don't feel that you have not the time to do the things recommended. We
can always find the time to do the things we like to do, and this means
of joining in the thoughts of your boy will be one of the things you
will most enjoy when you have once accustomed yourself to it.
We get out of reading just what we put into it. That is to say, the same
selection read by different people will have just as many meanings as
there are people reading it. By assistance, a person may be caused to
see more in what he reads and in time may approximate the full
understanding of his teacher. But it is unwise and useless to expect a
child to read with the same appreciation that an adult has. Accordingly
the father, if he is wise, will be satisfied when his boy is really
interested in a thoroughly good selection if he sees at the same time
that the boy is setting about his interpretation in the right way. To
illustrate: If you are reading about a storm at sea and you are a
survivor of a shipwreck in such a storm, your appreciation of the
description will be infinitely more vivid than that of your son, who has
not even seen the sea. All that you can do is to give him some idea of
the power of the waves, make him feel that the sight is a thrilling one
and that there is imminent danger to life and property in the storm.
Some time he will have the experience to interpret and then his mind
will recur to the description and he will understand it somewhat as you
do now. This brings us to think for a moment on the permanent value of
all that is read. _The mind holds things in abeyance, brings them out to
the light now and then, and each time finds them more and more
intelligible and influential._ Many a maxim learned in youth when an
understanding of it was impossible becomes a power for good for the
person in later years when its inner significance appears.
Some poetry will appeal to boys, even though they may look askance at
most of it. Some lyrics are virile and powerful, well worthy the study
of the keenest minds. There is an unfounded prejudice against poetry in
many men because of the fancied puerility of it and its silly sentiment.
Such a prejudice always disappears if the person reads enough and
selects the things that are worthy of study. Narrative poems are more
likely to appeal to men and boys than the lyrics. When the narrative is
a stirring one and the action dramatic, the poetic form adds decidedly
to its interest and effectiveness. Take, for instance, that little poem
by Robert Browning that is known as _Incident of the French Camp_
(Volume IV, page 174). No man can read it without being stirred by it,
and its appeal to boys is immediate and strong. But strong as it is, the
whole influence of it may be intensified if it is discussed in the
manner indicated on the pages immediately after the poem. What we would
have you do is to read the little epic with your boy and talk it over
with him along the lines of the comments given. It will not be necessary
for you to point the moral. He will see it for himself, but if you can
show a little enthusiasm and delight in the incident he will go away
feeling better toward you and will be a convert to poetry, at least to
some kinds of it. Later in life the lesson will come back to him and he
will seek for more of the same sort.
There are a great number of poems of similar import in the books. Any
one of the following will be capital for reading aloud with your boy.
Try them and be convinced.
_Beth Gelert_, Volume III, page 42.
_Sheridan's Ride_, Volume IV, page 223.
_Bernardo Del Carpio_, Volume IV, page 270.
_The Wooden Horse_, Volume IV, page 383.
_Little Giffin of Tennessee_, Volume IV, page 461.
_Bruce and the Spider_, Volume V, page 314.
_How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix_, Volume V, page 335.
_Sohrab and Rustum_, Volume VI, page 173.
_How's My Boy?_ Volume VII, page 169.
_The Battle of Ivry_, Volume VIII, page 76.
_Hervé Riel_, Volume VII, page 168.
Any one of the national anthems or patriotic poems is fine reading and a
source for many a kindly talk that will tend to make a better citizen of
your son and perhaps give you a fresher and truer conception of your own
duties and responsibilities to the government. These you may readily
find from the index in the tenth volume, under the title, _Patriotic
Poems_.
For older boys there are plenty of good selections, and the discussion
of some of them must help to bring nearer to the lad his increasing
responsibilities. A normal boy of sixteen has a lot of the man in him
and wants to be treated as a man, at least to have his ideas, hopes and
ambitions given some consideration. He does not want always to be called
"Bobby" or "Jimmy" or "Tommy." He likes better to be called "Smith,"
"Jones," or "Robinson," or whatever his last name is. He is tired of
being told to do this and that and would like to join in some of the
family councils and feel that father is beginning to see the man and
forget the "kid." He will be interested in anything that relates to
commerce, or manufacture or government if it is presented to him in such
a way that he can "be somebody" in the discussion.
It is easy to interest boys in speaking, in orations, in debates. In
_Journeys_ (Volume IX, page 321) is printed the _Gettysburg Address_ by
Abraham Lincoln. It is the one great, masterly American address, noted
not only for its perfect construction, but for its sentiment, its power
and its brevity. In no other great address are all these elements
combined. Tested by any standard it rings true in thought and is perfect
in form. It is worth while to commit it to memory, and father and son
should be equally interested in the task, if it can be called a task.
Preceding the address is a note giving its historical setting, and
following it is an analysis of the thought and a series of questions
tending to give the thought a more personal application. _The Fate of
the Indians_ and _A Call to Arms_, both in Volume IX, are good orations
accompanied by studies.
An essay that is in effect almost an oration is the extract from the
_Impeachment of Warren Hastings_ by Macaulay (Volume IX, page 32), and
in this volume are studies on that essay (page 248).
_The Boston Massacre_ by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a pleasing bit of
history which in this volume (page 370) is used as the basis of a study
in argument. You may prefer to read the studies first and arrange the
arguments for your sons or for yourself and your boy. It is surprising
into what different directions the argument will lead you and how many
interesting questions will arise which will make good subjects for
discussion. To make conversation worth while there is needed only
something interesting to talk about. To be a good talker is worth a
great deal to any young man and there is no better way to give him this
power than by conversing freely with him while he is young.
Moral instruction is difficult. A thousand little things tend to
neutralize it and there is an almost universal spirit of opposition to
moral teaching, on the part of youth. And yet it is easy to give moral
lessons in an indirect way that shall arouse no opposition and that
shall be effective for lifetime. _Journeys_ is full of what for lack of
a better name we call character-building literature. Some of it is
adapted to boys and girls of a very tender age and more of it to the
older children. _The Cubes of Truth_ (Volume VI, page 406), by Oliver
Wendell Holmes, is a beautiful little essay that expresses a great truth
in a way to impress it indelibly upon the memory of every person who
reads it. So clear is the language, so clever the idea that the
selection is read with absorbing interest, and so impressive is the
lesson that no real attention need be called to it. In reading it the
beauty of the language and the quaintness of the figure are the real
subjects of discussion, but all the time the great lesson is making its
subtle appeal. Cardinal Newman's _Definition of a Gentleman_ (Volume IV,
page 170) is more obviously a didactic selection, but here again the
definition is given so clearly and so forcibly that no possible offense
can be taken and the weight of the statements will produce their effect
without much comment.
In this connection it should be necessary merely to call attention to
the chapter on character-building, to be found in this volume. In
preparing that chapter the writer had in mind children of all ages and
both sexes, but it will be an easy matter for you to select the things
which you know will appeal to your son.
In fact, you will find in every chapter of this volume something to help
you in making your way into the thoughts and the hearts of your family,
and we know that as the years pass away and manhood comes to your boys
they will look back upon the hours spent in reading with you as the most
momentous of their lives. Do you want your son to say in his manhood, "I
look upon Mr. A or Mr. B as the person who most influenced my life"? Do
you want him to say, "I might have been a cultured man with a wide range
of interests if my father had given to me a little of the time he spent
at his club"? Do you want your boy to think that he was a wanderer from
home, because he could not find in that home the manly sympathy that his
soul craved? In many a family there is no trouble in keeping the boys
off the streets. There is no place half so attractive as the home and
for them no inclination to seek among others the fun and intellectual
stimulus they crave as they crave their food.
Usually the reading habit must be formed early or not at all. A man in
middle life will not acquire the habit easily unless there is some
stimulus which keeps him reading for a time, in spite of himself. In the
active minds of his boys he may find just that stimulus, and in his
declining years when time weighs heavily upon his hands and great
activities are denied him he will find in his later acquirement an
unfailing source of enjoyment. In such hours will come to recollection
the days he spent with his boys and his heart will fill with joy that he
did not neglect his rich opportunities.