Searchlights on Health | Page 9

HONORED CHILD.--There have been triumphs at old Rome,

where victors marched along with many a chariot, many an elephant,
and many spoils of the East; and in all times money has been lavished
in the efforts of States to tell their pleasure in the name of some general;
but more numerous and wide-spread and beyond expression, by chariot
or cannon or drum, have been those triumphal hours, when some son or
daughter has returned to the parental hearth beautiful in the wreaths of
some confessed excellence, bearing a good name.
13. RICH CRIMINALS.--We looked at the utter wretchedness of the
men who threw away reputation, and would rather be rich criminals in
exile than be loved friends and persons at home.
14. AN EMPTY, OR AN EVIL NAME.--Young and old cannot afford
to bear the burden of an empty or an evil name. A good name is a
motive of life. It is a reason for that great encampment we call an
existence. While you are building the home of to-morrow, build up also
that kind of soul that can sleep sweetly on home's pillow, and can feel
that God is not near as an avenger of wrong, but as the Father not only
of the verdure and the seasons, but of you.
[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN DANCER.]
* * * * *
THE MOTHER'S INFLUENCE.
Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you, Many a Summer the grass
has grown green, Blossomed and faded, our faces between; Yet with
strong yearning and passionate pain, Long I to-night for your presence
again. --Elizabeth Akers Allen.
A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive. --Coleridge.
There is none, In all this cold and hollow world, no fount Of deep,
strong, deathless love, save that within A mother's heart. --Mrs.
Hemans.
And all my mother came into mine eyes, And gave me up to tears.

--Shakespeare.
1. HER INFLUENCE.--It is true to nature, although it be expressed in a
figurative form, that a mother is both the morning and the evening star
of life. The light of her eye is always the first to rise, and often the last
to set upon man's day of trial. She wields a power more decisive far
than syllogisms in argument or courts of last appeal in authority.
2. HER LOVE.--Mother! ecstatic sound so twined round our hearts that
they must cease to throb ere we forget it; 'tis our first love; 'tis part of
religion. Nature has set the mother upon such a pinnacle that our infant
eyes and arms are first uplifted to it; we cling to it in manhood; we
almost worship it in old age.
3. HER TENDERNESS.--Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother's
tenderness while living. How heedless are we in youth of all her
anxieties and kindness! But when she is dead and gone, when the cares
and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts, when we
experience for ourselves how hard it is to find true sympathy, how few
to love us, how few will befriend us in misfortune, then it is that we
think of the mother we have lost.
4. HER CONTROLLING POWER.--The mother can take man's whole
nature under her control. She becomes what she has been called "The
Divinity of Infancy." Her smile is its sunshine, her word its mildest law,
until sin and the world have steeled the heart.
[Illustration: A PRAYERFUL AND DEVOTED MOTHER.]
5. THE LAST TIE.--The young man who has forsaken the advice and
influence of his mother has broken the last cable and severed the last tie
that binds him to an honorable and upright life. He has forsaken his
best friend, and every hope for his future welfare may be abandoned,
for he is lost forever, if he is faithless to mother, he will have but little
respect for wife and children.
6. HOME TIES.--The young man or young woman who love their
home and love their mother can be safely trusted under almost any and

all circumstances, and their life will not be a blank, for they seek what
is good. Their hearts will be ennobled, and God will bless them.
[Illustration: HOME AMUSEMENTS.]
* * * * *
HOME POWER.
"The mill-streams that turn the clappers of the world arise in solitary
places."--HELPS.
"Lord! with what care hast Thou begirt us round! Parents first season us.
Then schoolmasters Deliver us to laws. They send us bound To rules of
reason."--GEORGE HERBERT.
1. SCHOOL OF CHARACTER.--Home is the first and most important
school of character. It is there that every human being receives his best
moral training, or his worst, for it is there that he imbibes those
principles of conduct which endure through manhood, and cease only
with life.
2. HOME MAKES THE MAN.--It is a