The very tone of the voice has a tendency to influence and control character.  I wonder so many parents train their voices as they do.  They have a kind of snap to the tone which they evidently think makes the children and the servants “get a move” on them.  Perhaps it does, but at the same time it falls upon a family like frost upon a field of flowers.  You pay three dollars to have your piano tuned, yet you train your voice to sound harsh and hard.

How the tone of the voice controls was illustrated in my own home several years ago.  I went home in the early spring and found some one had been among my bees and had left the lids of the hives lifted at the time the bees were making brood.  Going to the house I said to my wife: 

“Where is Charlie?” He was the colored man in charge of the barn and garden.

Mrs. Bain replied:  “I suppose he is about the barn; he doesn’t stay in the house.”  I knew that, but somehow we Adams will go to our Eves with anything that goes wrong.

“What’s the trouble?” my wife asked.

I told her about the exposure of the bees, (about the effect of which I knew very little) and said: 

“I want Charlie to keep out of that apiary.  He’ll kill every bee I have.”

Mrs. Bain in a very gentle manner said:  “I did that myself.  That’s the way father used to do.  I was afraid your bees might starve during the long cold spell, so I made some syrup and placed it in the upper compartments.  I lifted the lids so that the light would attract the bees up to the syrup.  I’m very sorry I did it, but I thought it would please you.”

I said:  “Well, I believe you did the right thing, my dear, and I am very much obliged to you.”

If my wife had said in a harsh tone:  “I did that, sir.  What are you going to do about it?” then I would have said something.

A little bit of anger let loose in a field of human nature is as destructible to noble impulses and generous feelings as a cyclone is to a town.  I was in an Iowa cyclone some years ago and I noticed when it was approaching the people didn’t run out of their homes and throw stones at it.  They ran for the storm cellars.  When you see a bit of anger coming toward you from brother, sister, husband, wife or friend, don’t throw a dictionary of aggravating words at it; get out of the way and it will quiet down like the troubled waters of Galilee when “Peace be still” fell upon them.

When we realize how sensitive character is to the touch of influences, and how uncertain the character of the influence that may touch us, how very careful we should be as parents as to what shall touch us, how we shall touch others, who may be fed by our fulness, starved by our emptiness, uplifted by our righteousness or tainted by our sins.

Sometimes a boy is sent to school with the idea that the influence of the teacher will mold the character of the boy, when the magnetic touch by which the faculties of the boy are sprung doesn’t come from the teacher, but from some boy on the playground and perhaps not the best boy.  Some boys are as potent on the playground as a major-general on a battle-field.  Some persons are like loadstones, they draw, others are like loads of stone, they have to be drawn.