“The time will be coming—­is come, perhaps—­when your young people must decide on the course and main occupation of their future lives.  You will expect to have a voice in the matter.  Quite right, if a voice of counsel, of remonstrance, of suggestion, of pointing out unsuspected difficulties, of encouragement by developing the means of success.  Such a voice as that from an elder will always be listened to.  But perhaps your have already settled in your own mind the calling to be followed, and you mean simply to call on the youngster to accept and register your decree on the opening pages of his autobiography.  This is, indeed a questionable proceeding, unless you are perfectly assured of what the young man’s unbiased choice will be.”

THE DAUGHTER.

“Certain it is,” said Addison, “that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as that of a father to a daughter.  He beholds her both with and without regard to her sex.  In love to our sons there is ambition, but in that to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.”  “There is, however, an unkind measure by which a few persons strive to avoid living by themselves in their old age.  They selfishly prevent their children (principally their daughters) from marrying, in order to retain them around them at home.  Certainly matches are now and then projected which it is the duty of a parent to oppose; but there are two kinds of opposition, a conscientious and sorrowful opposition, and an egotistical and captious opposition, and men and women, in their self-deception, may sometimes mistake the one for the other.  ’Marry your daughters lest they marry themselves, and run off with the ploughman or the groom’ is an axiom of worldly wisdom.  Marry your daughters, if you can do so satisfactorily, that they may become

HAPPY WIVES AND MOTHERS,

fulfilling the destiny allotted to them by their Great Creator.  Marry them, if worthy suitors offer, lest they remain single and unprotected after your departure.  Marry them, lest they say, in their bitter disappointment and loneliness, ’Our parents thought only of their own comfort and convenience.  We now find that our welfare and settlement in life was disregarded!’ But I am sure my hard-hearted comrade in years,” continues this aged writer, “that you are more generous to your own dear girls than to dream of preventing the completion of their own little romance in order to keep them at home, pining as your waiting minds.”

THANKING DEATH.

One of the most learned observations to parents has been made by Lord Burleigh.  “Bring thy children up,” said he, in “learning and obedience, yet without outward austerity.  Give them good countenance and convenient maintenance, according to thy ability; otherwise thy life will seem their bondage, and what portion thou shalt leave them at thy death, they will thank death for it, and not thee!”