Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1846-01-15
PARENTS Department.,
For tie Green Mountain Freeman.
Jan. LIST. A Word 10 Fathers.


What provision are you making for the mental
cultivation of your wife and children ? You
labor hard (many of you at least) to provide
food, and clothing, and fuel, to make your fam
lbs comfortable. But is this all immortal and
accountable beings need? Does not the mind
med food? Good reading is cheap, and album
dlnt at the present day; and suppose tits as
much your duty to provide a suitable supply
Gr your families, as it is to furnish them with
bead. Certainly no family should think of
living without a good Newspaper. Poor families
in particular, as it is a matter Of economy as
wei as luxury. 1t is very necessary that chill
drea in poor families should be prudent and in
d%u5trious. Then by all means render them
intelligent. Perhaps there is no way that you
'caa get so much for a small sum, as by laying it
1g6r- a good weekly Newspaper. lou car
have a large, neatly printed, nell filled, sheet
every week for a year, for the small sum of one
dollar and fifty cents, Every dollar laid out for
reading may be multiplied by the number of
readers in the family. The father may avail him
self of the whole contents of the paper, and yet
leave it undlminished for the son, and so on, so
that in a family Of ten readers you actually get
the worth of Gften dollars for the one dollar
and fifty cents YOU pay Tor the paper.
But while | write, there is one thought which
is very unpleasant. How shall get this subject
before the mind of those fathers who take no
paper! All they know not what they lose by
this neglect. There may be much going on
that is interesting; the papers may teen with in
|teresting news and valuable information, but
they know it not; their neighbors are feasting,
but they are furnishing. Their neighbor's boys
are getting useful knowledge, which will render
them useful and happy when they come to be
men; but their boys are growing up in ignorance,
which will render them contemplate in their
own eyes and the eyes of all around them. Their
neighbours daughters are receiving an education
which will make them the pride of the circle in
which they move; but theirs, with their ignorant
fathers and brothers, will be fit companions only
Of the scum of society. Oh | pity the child who
is poorly supplied with reading; and [ pity the
father who is so regardless of the responsibilities
that rest upon him.
A word to mothers. Eighteen hundred and
f%orty-dve is gOne-gone, and with all our OPP
p~ortunities for doing good to our children and
others. Do we feel satisfied with what we ac-
complished for the improvement of our children
last year? | presume many of us may say, in
ruth, we did but little. Well then, let us CON-
mence anew this Ncto Year and see what we
can do in 1916, should our lives be spared
Every mother needs counsel, Next to the Bi.
bic is the Mothers Magazine. 1t contains 80
pages each month, of excellent reading, with .
beautiful steel engraving once a quarter; making
at the send ofthe year, a valuable volume of 385
pages. We MUST labor more and pray more fol
the conversion of our children, or they will in all
probability take the downward road and finally
be lost. PRS.