The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1885-02-14
CHARACTER BUILDING.
Some Sugges lions Relating to a Subject An
Which All Mothers Are Intere sted.

Which All Mothers Are Interested.
The true aim of education is the
building up of noble character. George
Washington had not very much
schooling He was not even a per-
feet speller. He knew little or nothing
of Greek and Latin, little of science or
art, but was he uneducated? Abraham
Lincoln had fewer opportunities to
acquire book learning than Washington
had, but his name will go down with
Washington to remotest ages. Neither
Benjamin Franklin nor Horace Greeley
ever went to college, but what two men
have done more for their times than
these two?
The first settlers in any country must
build their houses of the materials
nearest at hand and most readily APP
propriated. Our forefathers. whose
virtues are our boast. lived and died in
log houses plastered with mud, but
they were good, honest. substantial log
houses, well made and proof against
weather. Many Mexican grandee
lives in an adobe house and thinks as
much of himself as though his habita-
ton were of marble And why should
he not? In sight, as we write, is a pala-
tial house building, the materials of
which are boulders gathered from the
adjacent pastures, broken and chiselled
into shape and faced with brick. What
a sermon that house breaches!
In building character as in building
houses the majority of men and women
must take materials nearest at hand and
make the best of them. There is al
ways enough of good material about us
to make noble character. We may take
the stern, homely unpromising facts of
our lives and transform them into step
ping-stones of progress, into edifices OF
utility if not beauty. Now these boys that
this mother is so anxious about; if they
are learning to be honest, self-reiiant,
patient, Industrious, thorough, just, en-
terprising; if they are using all the OPP
portunties they can command to ac-
quire the information most useful to
them in their work, and applying the
information SO acquired to the further
auce of their work, they are getting in
SO far very valuable education. A
mans wits can be sharpened on a great
many different kinds of whetstones. A
mans mind may be stored with great
many kinds of useful information. How
to make the ends meet, how to accom-
plish certain desired results are often
problems more difficult than any that
college students puzzle over in algebra or
calculus. They stimulate and sharpen
the intellectual faculties and give fine
practical results beside. Patient con-
tinuanceo in the humble, monotonous,
apparently inconsequent routine of daily
life appointed to the majority of men
and women may be inspired by aspira-
ton for GLORY and honor and immor-
tality," and have as its reward eternal
life. What greater reward than this
can mortal man receive?
Because these boys can not go to
school they need not be ignorant of the
knowledge that may be gained from
books. We know a youth who is en-
ployed from early morning till dark in
helping support his fathers family, but
who in fragments of leisure has mastered
the principles of chemistry, read all
Shakespeare plays, Bacon's Essays,
text books in several of the sciences,
and is well advanced in algebra. His
plane of thinking is higher, his power
of apprehension and comprehension far
greater than those of youths of his age
who have been always at school. His
mother studies with him, and cOntrives
to keep in advance of him SO she can
help him over hard places and discuss
with him the books he reads. This
enables her to give a high tone to the
family life, to create an atmosphere of
intellectually at the fireside in which
the love of literature and science may
flourish. OF course doing this she must
omit doing a great many things con-
sidered necessary by many mothers.
She has little time for embroideres and
fancy cooking and the superfuous nice
ties of housekeeping.
Among the pyramids Of Egypt at
least one has been found that is built of
bricks made from Nile mud fastened
together with ''stubble instead of
straw" and doubtless the work of the
Israelites when compelled to "get straw
where they could find it, For over
5000 years that structure has stood, a
lHOuuiucIlt vi ptttiCHt, idltuIui tOll, anu
it will doubtless stand as long as its
elder brother Cheops, and in its meas
ure as praiseworthy a structure as that.
Some years ago a man with brains
| and some money bought rocky,
swampy farm, with an unmanageble
stream flowing through it from an
owner whose father had starved on it
and who himself had done likewise.
The new purchaser with the rock built
substantial fences, bridges over the
stream and buildings, drained the
swamps, using the muck from them to
enrich the barren land. ON which he
| planted fruit trees, and in a few years
transformed the waste place into a
beautiful and fruitful Eden and sold it
for double all it had cost him.
We might go on this vein indefinitely.
but it is unnecessary. To be faithful
over the few things. to build well of the
materials furnished us and which we
can command by diligent labor is all
that is required of us. cit is accepted of
man according to that he hath and
not according to that he. hath not. y
~ " Tribune.