The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1883-11-07
Keep Your Best for Home.

Keep your best fare Tor home. You
will never have any company that will 80
much appreciate the choice things of the
table as your own family. 1t is in ex-
cellent form to place before visitors the
daintiest fare, with all the tasteful fur
nishings at your command; but refined
influence is wholly wanting in that home
where they are put out of sight when
company are gone, where coarse diet
makes the daily fare, and the refinement
that lift eating and drinking into social
enjoyment, is omitted. 1t may not be
economical or desirable to use the best at
all times, but there are many homes
whose choice things are kept in the clos
est seclusion, only brought out on state
occasions, when the children gaze in won
der and awe on the fine linen and china,
and are in state of delight at the pros
pect of "good things" when there is COM
pany. There are farm houses where the
turkeys and chickens are sold, the money
put in the bank, and the children never
know what it is to "keep Christmas"
and birthdays are unmarked in the fam
lily calendar. Children remember such
things long, and happy home with
share in the best the house affords with
out regard to company, educates lad to
the ease of polite society, to a loving re-
spect for his early home that is worth to
him more than bank stock accumulated
by close economy. Keep the best man.
ners for home. 1t is instructive with
most people to put on the best appear
ances when in society. There is woful
ignoring of the simplest rules of etiquette
and common politeness in the several re.
lations of home life. Members of family
will omit morning salutation that
they accord the humblest servant; they
will contradict and deny the assertions
of each other with acrimony they
would be ashamed to use to an infe-
rior, and they refuse favors to one another
that they would not deny a stranger.
There is no place where good manners
and puIctilious etiquette is of more value
than in the home circle. 1t is the moral
agent of good breeding it is the law that
governs the manifestations of kindness
and good feeling, and also the law that
restraints unkind and ignoble traits of hu-
man nature from expression. Keep your
best temper for home. In society, on the
streets, in business, everywhere, it is
easier to control that attribute, if we
guard the hasty word, the peevish tone,
the irritating action in the home circle,
and study to wound none of its inmates.
Keep your best spirits for home. No
where do gloomy and depressed spirits
tell so disastrously as at home. The par
ents may have just cause for anxiety and
care. but it is wrong and unjust to shadow
the young life of children with anxieties
they cannot appreciate, and cares they
cannot understand. The tendency to
brood over trouble or misfortune increases
with its indulgence. So, also, does the
disposition to be cheerful and happy at
all times increase with cultivation. This
is by far the most admirable trait. Those
who are sunshiny and cheerful in charac.
ter always have the most friends, and
where are friends so true and loyal, and
30 desirable to perpetuate as those of
home and familyp The old comparison
of the bent twig is as true in this case as
any other, and children who grow up in
an atmosphere of forboding of the future,
anxietits about the present, and cynical
reflections on the motives and actions OF
people about them, are training a tend.
ency to be miserable and sad, and in their
turn cast shadows, instead of sunshine
on the path of all about them.-Selected.