| Home Making |
Chapter 5 |
Page 3 |
But wait a minute. They are not so useless, after all. They are like the tiny wheels of the watch. They may not look large enough to be of any use, and yet there is not a child in any true home so small as to have no influence. There is not even a baby that does not unconsciously affect all the home life by its coming. Indeed, every baby is an emperor, with crown and scepter, and from its throne on the mother’s bosom it rules all the house. The father, out at his work in the busy world, has a lighter, warmer heart because he is thinking of the baby at home. The mother gets through all her work more easily because her baby is sleeping in its crib or kicking up its heels on the floor beside her. The boys and girls are gentler, quieter and more thoughtful since Baby came. No one can say that any child is too small to have a part in making the home life. Of course a baby’s part is done unconsciously, and it is not to be held responsible, as are the children who have grown older. This chapter is not addressed to babies, but to those who are of sufficient age to know what they ought to do and to try to do it.
Here is the question on which every child, living in a parent’s house, should think much: “What is my part in making this home what it should be?”
You know what a true home ought to be. It ought to be a place where love rules. It ought to be beautiful, bright, joyous, full of tenderness and affection, a place in which all are growing happier and better each day. There should never be any discord, any wrangling, any angry words or bitter feelings. The home life should be a harmonious song without one marring note, day after day. The home, no matter how humble it is, how plain, how small, should be the dearest spot on the earth to each member of the family. It should be made so happy a place and so full of life that no matter where one may wander in after years, in any of the ends of the earth, his home should still hold its invisible lines of influence about him and should ever draw resistless upon his heart. It ought to be the one spot in all the earth to which he would turn first in trouble or in danger. It should be the refuge of his soul in every trial and grief.
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