he hoped you would bring honor to his house; he would rather you had not lived than to see you in a prisoner’s cell—­far rather.  This could not be said of your mother.  She would be contented that you had lived at all, that you had looked into her eyes and laughed.  Your father has taken care of you, dutifully.  Repay him in kindness.  “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”  This was graven by the Lord in the marble tablets on Sinai, and has been in turn graven on the countless millions of hearts that have beaten “their short funeral marches” since that awful hour.

ALL SOCIETY

has at one time or another rested on the sustaining power of the father.  The patriarch, in ancient times, protected and sustained his dependents, and, in return, received their entire allegiance, wielding over them the power of life and death, and thus initiating the first form of human government.  Next came the cities where the government was formed by all the fathers together in council, and our village and city legislators are, to this day, called “the city fathers,” although the reverence in which so august a body was once held has departed with the silent flight of the dignity of our modern convocations.  Some one has said of

A FINE AND HONORABLE OLD MAN,

that he is in the childhood of immortality.  “One’s age should be tranquil,” says Dr. Arnold, “as one’s childhood should be playful; hard work at either extremity of human existence, seems to me out of place; the morning and the evening should be alike cool and peaceful; at midday the sun may burn, and men may labor under it.”  See to it, if it be within your power, that your father has the rest due to the evening of his days.  Let him sit in the cool.  Let him listen to the voices of his night—­the crickets that cry out his mortality and the nightingales that sing of Paradise!

“GRAY HAIRS

seem to fancy,” says Richter, “like the light of a soft moon silvering over the evening of life.”  “Old age,” says Madame Swetchine, “is not one of the beauties of creation, but it is one of its harmonies.  The law of contrasts is one of the laws of beauty.  Shadows give light its worth; sternness enchances mildness; solemnity splendor.”

EXPERIENCE.

“Old age was naturally more honored,” says Joubert, “in times when people could not know much more than what they had seen.”  There are still many avenues of learning in which practical experience seems to be paramount in value.  In business its great worth is never underestimated.  You have heard of the partnership built on a contribution by one firm-member of the money, and by the other of the experience; and of the dissolution of that