| Home Making |
Chapter 7 |
Page 15 |
Then there are many games which bring great enjoyment. Chess is delightful to those who have patience and skill to master it, but it requires close thought. There is much enjoyment in the old fashioned game of checkers. There are many games with various kinds of historical cards, and cards of authors or of birds and animals, which combine exciting pleasure with some instruction. There is scarcely any limit to the number of innocent games from which to make selection for evening amusements. Charades furnish genuine enjoyment. Reading clubs may be so conducted as to yield both pleasure and instruction.
It needs only a heart in full sympathy with youthful feelings, a little skill in arranging and preparing these pleasures, a small expense in furnishing the simple games and other requisites, and interests enough in the matter to devote a little time and pains to it. There is no parent of ordinary intelligence who may not make his home life so bright and sunny that no one will ever care to go outside to seek amusement amid the senseless frivolities or the debasing pleasures that the world offers. Homes that are made thus in all these ways so bright and happy acquire a resistless power over those who live within their doors, which will hold them under its subtle influence wherever they go in all their after years.
There is one experience that comes sooner or later in the life of every home – the experience of sorrow. There may be years of unbroken gladness, but in the end grief is sure to come. The stream that has flowed so long with merry ripple through the green fields and amid the flowers in the bright sunshine, sweeps into the deep shadows, plunges into the dark, sunless gorge, or is hurled over the waterfall. We press our children to our bosom today, and love builds up a thousand brilliant hopes for them in our hearts; then tomorrow death comes and they lie silent and still amid the flowers. Or we watch over them and see them grow up into nobleness and beauty, when, just as our dreams and hopes seem about to be realized, the fatal touch is upon them and they are taken away.
There is no need to describe this experience; memory needs no reminder in such cases. The most helpful thing that can be done in these pages is to point out a few of the comforts which should come to every Christian home in such hours.
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