The hearthstone; or, Life at home

From this and similar biographies, parents, and especially fathers, should learn the caution that they must take care of the example they set their children, and that a far truer saying than " Never too late to mend " is " Never too young to learn," Mental and moral no less than physical disease may be cured if taken in time. But the time is not when the habits are formed and have become a second nature ; when the character is set and hardened, and cannot be bent and inclined at another angle. Reader, if you are a father or a mother, and are looking with love and joy upon the face of your infant who as yet can neither speak nor choose his future lot, remember as you love your own solils that upon you, and not on circum- Stances external to the Home, depends mainly the awful issue of what it shall be and what shall become of it. It is you, not what you call ■ a hard, unfeeling world, that will make or mar your child. It is for you to determine whether its tongue shall speak vanity, and its right hand be a right hand of falsehood. It depends upon you whether your sons shall be as " plants grown up in their youth," and your daughters become as " corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace." The white unwritten page of your child's life and character is open for you to write upon. The impressions made upon it by the parents are indelible. The first sights and sounds that are reflected upon a child's remembrance are ineffaceable. Nature will assist you in this work, but she will not do it for you. She gives the material for you to work upon. You might as well expect the grass and plants to grow without moisture as the soul to grow without culture. Nature provides the limbs, but exercise develops them and gives them strength and symmetry. Yet many parents seem to think that their children will love the beautiful and do the good by mere instinct, and that the mere process of living will insure their living rightly and worthily. One might as well expect reading and writing to come by nature. But God says to the parent, as Pharaoh's daughter said to the nurse to whom she intrusted the infant who was to become the law-giver of a great race : " Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay thee thy wages," or I will reward thee. What reward can be greater than to see one's heavengiven babe awakening more and more to a perception of light and beauty, and loving " whatsoever things are lovely " and true and noble ? Do not be content with vegetation for your child ; teach it to live. How many parents, who neglect this duty through selfish indolence or ignorance, live to wish that their child had never been born ! — while those who " train up a child in the way that he should go " verify the proverb that " when he is old he will not depart from it." This is no miracle ; it is the course of nature and experience. Habits become laws ; good habits mean happiness and honor; evil habits mean misery and degradation. It depends upon home influ- •JO THE hearthstone; OR, LIFE AT HOME.