The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1870-12-17

SOrJ OF GcQll OF Uno Lamp, du POoOAo oOA
want, rather than the omnipotent Lord. Tha
which q man wants he learns to expect, ano
if his expectations be not met, he is swift tC
put the blame on to the one innocent cause
"What have l done that l should be treated
thus Life owes one living" Life doesnt
owe you anything of the sort. The obligation
is the other way. You are debtor to life, and
only by wisdom and effort can you keep your
side of the sheet balanced. You can only have
that art of life which you yourself extract ou'
| of it. By that should you limit expectation
] for by that is return limited. 1t is the mosl
foolish thing % soul can do to live in this world
as il pettt child lives in its hone, expecting
every whim to be gratified. The too weak
parent responds, allows dictate to be law, the
child to be the masoCr. But God doesn't dc
that way. Life is not going to grow after thai
fashio.. Your unreasor BILE expectations are
not going to influence him or decide the issues
of life. Be reasonable in expectation; remem-
Der that results are from antecedent causes
that you reap as you sow; that life is toe
| grand thing to be kept to worldly pleasure
| or profit, and that its best issues, these God
looks to and prefers, are in the things of heart
and life which ilake the man. That is wha.
| God wants us to make out of life, that should
| be one of our grand expectation from it, and
| when we have made that out of it, He will
| take care that the man shall in right time bf
| crowned as Saint.
| WndC is True OF lie DIS d WnOl6 Is GTu0 dlSO VI
| life in its parts. We expect too much of our
brains, of our stomachs; of our pleasures, Of
| our passions; of our affections, of our money
of our gift, of our attainment. We are as
exacting as the old Egyptians, the tale OF brick
without giving the straw. 1t was the caprice
of Petre De Medici that he ordered Michael
| Angelo to carve statue out of snow. 1t was
! done-a splendid work of art, part of the best
/ of a mans life, to wilt at the first glances OF
the sun. 1t is just such capricious despots that
we are of ourselves, setting up something OF
| the Imagination which the reality never touh-
| es, and in the nature of things cannot touch,
| a thing to wilt before the sun OF reality, a
mocking will o the wisp which will ever
| dance just before us and keep us at reckless
| chase, but which we reach only to find that it
does not exist. The expectation of flavor he
has never tasted is eternally beckoning, goad-
ing the drunkard, the sensualst, the gambler,
| the speculator, the miser, the man of ambition,
or lone of notoriety, or of adventure. Disap-
| pointment in the past does not suggest that
the thing hoped, sought may be impossible, a
mere phantom of the brain, but hope tells its
old "fattening tale" till it proves true in
these directions what the past asserts as a
universal fact "man never IS, but ever to be
blessed" One cannot but admire the sort of
indomitable pluck of those who are always
just on the heads of the thing that has led
them luckless life chase and would fain
gladly accept it alway as the prophecy of de-
layed success. Yet it more often happens that
this is the sanguine dream, without base, than
the real courage and hope of the man whose
every step so far has been onward and secure,
who has the right therefore to expect success
Thorcan says-"If you have built castles in
the air, your work need not be lost; that is
when they should be. Noa0patt the foundations
u1lder hema'' J.! There is the rub. The wise con-
clusion overlook. Lo our castles, wave
c.s D. .o1to IL. IL.
ported, nothing to sit down on F.! Put the foundt-
tien under i! Let them rest solidly on solid
bages! Let them be mingled product of earth
and heaven, of reality and hope Dreams are
not bad only we remember they are dreams.
Expectation is healthy only it be wise, ouch
ing the ground, held there as q vine is while
it mounts and grows toward fruition Let it
be one of lifes earliest duties to study out what
shall be the just and legitimate yield of the
separate faculties, what one NAV RIGHTLY de-
mand of every attainment, to what each ad-
vancing step may legitimately tend, give us
the best satisfaction, the highest award the
surest peace?
We expect too much of children. I wish
could sayjust what wantto say about
l mean, wish 1 kLew how to put into word
just what feel ought to be said about them.
They are the least known class in the COM
munity, the class we take the least pains to
know,-and that is telling dark ana fearful
truth Shareholders used to tell those who
were trying to break up slavery tina sthey we're
the oaly people who. s.zsisssz fss-..--=- --iAx
such false. In the great upheaval it has
prov d that nobody knew the negro so little as
the slave-master, his prophecies have noG
stood in to-day's fulflment. Living with
people and holding the lash over tnem dos
not help to a knowledge of them. Under
such circumstances the art is to conceal the
self that other circumstanc tempt one to
reveal, and except through self-revealipg there
is no knowledge of any. A man or woman has
a child, family. "Of course they know their
children! Of course they doft!! To have
brought up child, to have it on your knee;
to have made it your plaything and then your
plague; to have sent 1t to school and paid It's
oils; to put it to store or to marry it Off
why all that don't make you know your child,
not though it never has b IN absent from your
breakfast table and has said its prayers to you
every nioht There is no ''ofcourSe" about the
things of life. child is as much a study as
geometry is, as yourself is, and the child can't
grow up by your sidt -madly as you may love
It-and yet be known TO you, except as it is
studied by you. and you manaTe 10 get at and
into it at every step, your krowledge of It
growing with its growing powers. You don't
know your children, and so you ale all the time
exacting too much, expecting too much, e.
pecting things in the wrong direction, exp :
ting impossible things, disappointing yourself
and worrying them. You lay down the line of
work here, nature lays it there; you place the
limit here, nature places it there. Expectancy
with you is rude and chaotic; cSp .bility with
nature is definite and surely. Children can do
some things and they can't do others This
one can work freely and well here; that one
there. Of this so much in certain direction
is to be reasonably exp, 3ted; OF that SO much,
less or more than the other, in another, while
it may be that of that asked rirhtly of the one,
nothing can rightly be demant ed of the other.
think in homes, even more than in schools,
we are constantly putting children into wrong
places, getting our expectations all be iuggled,
We are sque ezing our children all into the
same world. So high, so long, so broad, so
heavy, we look to make them, not growing,
struggling, healthy plants but like these clip
oed trees in the ucle gardens, the horribly de-
.ormed monotonous beauty which English
gardeners a century or two ago impaired from
the Dutch to eclipse the glorious vitality and
variety of God. What is this petulance of
parents and of elders over the waywardness
Of children, the folly of young people, so much
of which they have done their very best to
create and foster, but because of unreasonable
exp citation, the forgetting of their own youth
and childhood? 1t seems a stale sort of truism
but very important one, that children must
be children, and that boys not only aotH, but
must be, boys. Don't overlook nature. Don't
consider yourselves too wise, especially as what
you III wisdom is tco ait II be but the proof
of your Ignorance. S.Jt yyOa c1,ldIen-Anow
childhood. Limit yoor expecta. ons not so
much to what childhood can be as to what it
had better be- and do with your children just
what you would DO wioh the pet flowers o. vour
chamber or conservatofy-give them the right,
the proper heart, the just amount of water and
training, each after It's kind, and lei them 90.
Yes-thaS is it; give children principles with
moral light and heart, and lei themg 90 That is
what Coo does. You will have children then.
not spubbed pieces of premature Ore 'ision, not
disagreeable upstairs of precoclous opinion
but real, glowing, growing children, each irs
own honest self, just as you have carnations
and facksias and heliotropes. Dear me! how
ones heart aches, not only in the st. Is and
in the novels bat in the broad homes, 70 see TIE
pinched and squeezed deformity, the hapIe;s
face and cnildlike movement bow one
shrink from the cursed look Of children OF
whom too much IS arpected. just as patient In
the darling mamma parades at The plona for
the applause of the morning caller, or skins
into an comfortable millinery, as IN the scared
back dirty, draggled of the beggar child who
has fa sled to oring in from the street the
amount set as IFS Gays stint. Don't misur-
derstand me- What aver is reasonable after its
kind, expect and exact God does that the
annie of the apple Lree, the date of the palm,
and of the fig tree, the fig. He never changes
or reveises. The gardener in Scripture wanted
to cut down the tree, the Christ cursed the fig
tree not because it did not bear something else,
hut because it cid not bear what he had a right
70 enDect ETact a0hat yOu haze he1ight to erpect.
Childhood like every thing else will bear that,
will be better for that, and you will so help to
make into glorv that whose ordained beauty,