The Child at Home | Page 2

comfort. The
parting. His father's counsel. His reflections in the stage-coach. He consecrates himself to
his Maker. . .347

THE CHILD AT HOME
CHAPTER I.

RESPONSIBILITY.

In large cities there are so many persons guilty of crimes, that it is necessary to have a
court sit every day to try those who are accused of breaking the laws. This court is called
the Police Court. If you should go into the room where it is held, you would see the
constables bringing in one after another of miserable and wicked creatures, and, after
stating and proving their crimes, the judge would command them to be led away to prison.
They would look so wretched that you would be shocked in seeing them.
One morning a poor woman came into the Police Court in Boston. Her eyes were red
with weeping, and she seemed to be borne down with sorrow. Behind her followed two
men, leading in her daughter.
"Here, sir," said a man to the judge, "is a girl who conducts so badly that her mother
cannot live with her, and she must be sent to the House of Correction."
"My good woman," said the judge, "what is it that your daughter does which renders it so
uncomfortable to live with her?"
"Oh, sir," she replied, "it is hard for a mother to accuse her own daughter, and to be the
means of sending her to the prison. But she conducts so as to destroy all the peace of my

life. She has such a temper, that she sometimes threatens to kill me, and does every thing
to make my life wretched."
The unhappy woman could say no more. Her heart seemed bursting with grief, and she
wept aloud. The heart of the judge was moved with pity, and the bystanders could hardly
refrain from weeping with this afflicted mother. But there stood the hard-hearted girl,
unmoved. She looked upon the sorrows of her parent in sullen silence. She was so
hardened in sin, that she seemed perfectly insensible to pity or affection. And yet she was
miserable. Her countenance showed that passion and malignity filled her heart, and that
the fear of the prison, to which she knew she must go, filled her with rage.
The judge turned from the afflicted mother, whose sobs filled the room, and, asking a few
questions of the witnesses, who testified to the daughter's ingratitude and cruelty, ordered
her to be led away to the House of Correction. The officers of justice took her by the arm,
and carried her to her gloomy cell. Her lonely and sorrowing mother went weeping home
to her abode of penury and desolation. Her own daughter was the viper which had stung
her bosom. Her own child was the wretch who was filling her heart with sorrow.
And while I now write, this guilty daughter is occupying the gloomy cell of the prison,
and this widowed mother is in her silent dwelling, in loneliness and grief! Oh, could the
child who reads these pages, see that mother and that daughter now, you might form
some feeble idea of the consequences of disobedience; you might see how unutterable the
sorrow a wicked child may bring upon herself and upon her parents. It is not easy, in this
case, to judge which is the most unhappy, the mother or the child. The mother is
broken-hearted at home. She is alone and friendless. All her hopes are most cruelly
destroyed. She loved her daughter, and hoped that she would live to be her friend and
comfort. But instead of that, she became her curse, and is bringing her mother's gray hairs
in sorrow to the grave. And then look at the daughter--guilty and abandoned--Oh, who
can tell how miserable she must be!
Such is the grief which children may bring upon themselves and their parents. You
probably have never thought of this very much I write this book that you may think of it,
and that you may, by obedience and affection, make your parents happy, and be happy
yourselves.
This wicked girl was once a playful child, innocent and happy. Her mother looked upon
her with most ardent love, and hoped that her dear daughter would live to be her
companion and friend. At first she ventured to disobey in some trifling thing. She still
loved her mother, and would have been struck with horror at the thought of being guilty
of crimes which she afterwards committed. But she went on from bad to worse, every day
growing more disobedient, until she made her poor mother so miserable that she almost
wished to die, and till she became so miserable herself, that life must have been a burden.
You think, perhaps, that you never shall be so