Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1871 — Winter Evenings. [ARTICLE]

Winter Evenings.

These long winter evenings in the country may be made, of all pleasant times, the most delightful to the children of any family. Try it, dear overworked mother; forget that you are growing old, and for at least an hour after supper, make one in your children’s amusements. Try and remember some games of your childhood, and teach them how to play them. Join in their mirth, and chide not if they*grow noisy. If you can read aloud well, read them some pleasant sketch or story in the last magazine or paper. Be sure they will enter into the spirit of it—even if it seems -to you beyond their comprehension. Encourage them to talk to you of the trials and pleasures of the day at school, and send them to bed with the happy feeling that there is no place so pleeasant as home, and no woman on earth like t heir mother. It takes but little to please children. Simple pleasures are their delight, and the greatest safeguard amid the temptations that will beset every one of them at school and as they go out into the world is the memory of the happy fireside that awaits them at home. We visited, not long since, where a family of little ones, from twelve years old, down to the wee one of three, were hushed into silence on their scats for an hour or two after supper, and then marched to bed on tue tip toe, lest “ father ” should be annoyed while he read in his arm-chair the evening paper. We were not surprised when ten o’clock came, to see two elder boys come in from the street, where they had been learning lessons they will never forget. We did not think it strange that they found no attractions in a home like that I But if music and cheerful games and entertaining reading had been the order of the evening around the fireside, they would have preferred to stay there. Think of It, mothers and sisters, and strive to make the winter evenings delightful to all who dwell with you—even if at first it requires some sac-rifice.—Bee-Keepers' Journal.