Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1883 — THE FAMILY CIRCLE. [ARTICLE]

THE FAMILY CIRCLE.

Punishment and Percept.— Parents should train, aqd, when necessary, so punish a child that the reason of tho child itself would approve of that action if it were mature. If parents would always ask themselves this question: Would the reason of my child, supposing it could see what was best for it, approve of what I am doing? Then they could never go wrong. You must train yourself in order to train your children. Ob, fathers and mothors! bo ye considerate toward one another in your daily lives ahd you will not need to tdach one precept of love to your little ones. They have keen eves, those children. Nature has gifted them with the power of penetrating all veils and masks and of tearing aside all dissimulation. You must be genuine, in the presence of those ajtgus-eyed Prof. Adler iritmmL Herald. The PETTED ofeic.—Look in many households will fipd men—-keen-witted jtiuHKkpwe taste in ail other best” of the fatal mistake they made in marriage, but believing with ail their souls in their coarse-grained, frivalous, selfish wives, adoring them, gratefully accepting a pretty trick of expression, a kind word now and then, in place of the noble, womanly heart, the self-sac-rifice, the devotion whioh never were and never will be theirs. This peculiar sort of blindness, too, does not belong' alone to love or married life. In every family it is the selfish, cynical member that calls it forth. He is most tenderly cared for; his rare words of affection are remembered and cherished; young women make a hero of him wherever he goes; at home the fatted calf is kept ready to kill, and the gold chain burnished In hope that this unrepenting prodigal may take it into his head to comeback, while the plodding, unselfish brother is set down for commonplace fellow, and gets scant than,ks for spending his life for others. Horrors op the Kissing Gauntlet. —lt is a common thing to have a baby brought into a room and—spite of kicking and whimpering—his way of saying “you are doing an impertinent thing,” passed around to bo kissed. Oftener the victim selected for this sort of holocaust is a little girl, say two or three years old, at what the mother calls the “cutest” age. This little victim is not coaxed by unfulfilled promises of fabulous amounts of candy and nuts, but is commanded to kiss, it may be three or four strangers, bearded creatures, with tobacco juice on their lips. Some . sixteen years later—should we suspect her of this sort of promiscuous gathering of sweets, we would reprove her most severely, insisting that the relation must be very near and tender, indeed, between kisser and kissed. Of one of the most horrible recollections of my childhood, is that of an old woman who used to come to our house. And she had a big hooked nose. And she used snuff. And her big hooked nose wasn*t big enough to hold all the snuff she tried to get into it. Afid I had to kiss her. The way I did it, was, I pressed my lips tightly together; held my breath as long as I could; made a dab at her—something in the way a hen pecks at a grain of corn—and walked quickly away,furtively wiping mv mouth on my little calico apron, jfow our folks didn’t mean to be cruel, yet none of them ever kissed that snuffy old woman. It was only that the household gods called for a sacrifice, and it was so easy to offer up a child.— Hetty A. Morrison in Indianapolis Herald. Be Sympathetic. —The expression of sympathy lias many forms, but the simplest are generally the most impressive. A pitying look, or a mere exclamation, are the ordinary and most natural forms in which sympathy is shown. A tearful eye in a visit to the afflicted is often a benediction, when words would appear almost a mockery of sorrow. But in some way, it is the duty of all to show themselves tenderly pitiful toward those in any kind of trouble. We recently heard this good story of a little boy the son of a minister, who, having biiuised his finger, ran into his father’s study and, with an expression of suffering, said, “Look, pa, how I hurt it ” The father, interrupted in the middle of a sentence, glanced hastily at him, aijd with just the slightest tone of patienfle, said, “I can’t help it, sonny.” £he little fellows eyes grew bigger, and as he tamed to go out, he said in a low voice, fYes, you could; you might liaye said ‘Oh l 1 ” — Baptist Weekly.