Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 May 1883 — Character in the Family Circle. [ARTICLE]

Character in the Family Circle.

Home life is the sure test of character. Let a husband be cross and surly, and the wife grows cold and unamiable. The children grow up saucy and savage as young bears. The father becomes callous, peevish and hard. The wife bristles in self-defense. They develop an unnatural growth and sharpness of teeth, and the house is haunted by ugliness and domestic brawls. This is not what the family circle should be. If rude to any, let it be to some one he does not love—not to wife, brother or parent. Let one of the loved ones be taken away, and memory recalls a thousand sayings to regret. Death quickens recollection painfully. The grave cannot hide the white faces of those who sleep. The coffin and green ground are cruel magnets. They draw us further than we would go.; They force us to remember. * A man never sees so far into human life as when he looks over a wife’s or a mother’s grave. His eyes get wondrous clear then, andhe sees as never before what it is to love and be loved; what it is to injure the feelings of the loved. It is a pitiable picture of human weakness when those we love best are treated worst.