and impossible for their neighbors to be other than cringing and mean.  The largest element in environment is atmosphere, and in the development of character environment is quite as potent as heredity.  Indeed, in the sphere of the spirit, as in that of the body, heredity is always modified by environment.  The chief factor in nurture, therefore, is atmosphere.  If that is healthful, growth will be toward beauty and strength; if that is malarial, no antiseptic force but the grace of God will be able to counteract its influence.

Next to atmosphere as an element in nurture I place ideals.  For these children are usually dependent on their elders.  They reverence what they are taught to revere.  Ideals are placed before them by example and by precept.  Children grow like those whose deeds attract them, and they seek those ideals toward which they are most wisely directed.  Laws are never as potent in the formation of character as examples.  Men are made brave by the sight of bravery, and honorable by contact with those who will swear to their own hurt and change not.  There is deep philosophy in the saying that the songs of a people influence their institutions and history more than legal enactments, for songs are usually of bravery, of love, of victory.  They create ideals; they excite enthusiasm.  The Marseillaise and The Watch on the Rhine send thrills through the blood of those who hear them because in the most vivid way they suggest patriotism and heroism.  A good man inspires goodness.  Philanthropy makes others philanthropic.  One courageous act sometimes makes heroes of a hundred common men.  If a father would have his son physically brave, and he is a wise parent, he will not waste time in urging him to undertake some forlorn hope, but he will read to him the story of the Greeks at Thermopylae, of Marshal Ney at Waterloo, of Nathan Hale and his holy martyrdom, of Nelson at Trafalgar.  If he would have that son a helper and servant of his fellow-men he will tell him the story of Pastor Fliedner and his work at Kaiserwerth, of Florence Nightingale at the Crimea, of Wilberforce and Buxton, Whittier and Garrison in their efforts to awaken their fellow-men to the enormity of human slavery.  The strongest force for making a young man brave and generous, honorable and Christian, is the example of a father possessing such qualities.  Men are usually like their ideals, and their ideals in large part are created by the examples of those who are most admired and loved.

But example is not all.  Training also does much.  Conduct is but the expression of thought.  If one can determine what shall be the subject of another’s thinking, he will have gone a long way toward fixing his character.  This is a fact which deserves more attention than it has yet received in plans for the education of the people.  Parents have no holier privilege than that of directing the thought of their children.  By their own conversation, by the friends whom they invite to their homes, by