CHILDREN

NEARER to glory they stand than we, in this world and the next! It was a gentle and not unholy fancy that made the Portuguese artist Siquina, in one of his sweet pictures, form of infant faces the floor of heaven, dividing it thus from the fiery vault beneath, with its groups of the lost. For how many women had this image been realized!  How many have been saved from despair or sin by the voice and smile of these unconscious little ones! The woman who is a mother dwells in the immediate presence of guardian angels. She will bear on for her children’s sake. She will toil for them, live for them, which is sometimes harder still. The neglected, miserable, maltreated wife has still one bright spot in her home; in that darkness a watch-light burns; she has her children’s love, she will strive for her children. The woman tempted by passion has still one safeguard stronger than all with which you would surround her; she will not leave her children. The angry and outraged man sees in those tiny features a pleading more eloquent than words; her wrath against her husband melts in the sunshine of their eyes.

There is not in this world a more lovable than a young child —its fair brow unshadowed by care, its clear eye undimmed by tears, its pure heart untainted by passion. Its every word, look end action bespeak its guilelessness.  Its smiles—its affectionate endearments —its unstinted confidence—its artless, winning ways, knit to your heart with ties cable strong. Heaven help the childless! Without childhood’s ringing laugh and bird-like music, how desolate the household.  A child is the brightest ray in the sunshine of a parent’s heart.

Give them your sympathies—show them kindness—teach them to love yun—to confide in you—and see how, like flowers to the sun, they will open their little hearts to you. “Suffer little children to come unto you, and forbid them not,” for there is a blessing in their presence; a charm in their association which refreshes the world heart and softens the asperities of life.

The man is to be pitied who has no love for children—who frowns upon their sportiveness and rebukes their caresses. We would not carry such a cold turbid heart under our vest for the wealth of the Indies.

Says Douglas Jerrold: “Blessed be the hand that prepares a pleasure for a child, for there is no saying when and where it may again bloom forth. Does not almost everybody remember some kind-hearted man who showed him a kindness in the dulcet days of his childhood?  The writer of this recollects himself at this moment, a bare-footed lad, standing at the wooden fence of a poor little garden in his native village, while with longing eyes he gazed on the flowers which were blooming there quietly in the brightness of a Sabbath morning. The possessor came forth from his little cottage; he was a wood-cutter by trade, and spent the whole week at work in the woods. He had come into the garden to gather flowers to stick in his coat when he went to church. He saw the boy, and breaking off the most beautiful of his carnations—it was streaked with red and white—he gave it to him. Neither the giver nor the receiver spoke a word, and with bounding steps the boy ran home. And now here, at a vast distance from that home, after so many events of so many years, the feeling of gratitude which agitated the breast of that boy expresses itself on paper. The carnation has long since faded, but it now blooms afresh.

Children should if possible, be joyous and happy. If childhood does not blossom, manhood will he likely to bear no fruit. Hard be his fate who makes not childhood happy; it is so easy. It does not require wealth, or position, or fame; only a little kindness, and the tact which it inspires. Give a child a chance to love, to play, to exercise his imagination and his affections, and he will be happy. Give him the conditions of health—simple food, air, exercise, and a little variety in his occupations—and he will be happy and expand in happiness. Childhood is like a mirror, catching and reflecting images all around it. Remember that an impious, profane or vulgar thought may operate upon a young heart like a careless spray of water thrown upon polished steel, staining it with rust that no after efforts can efface.