The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1889-12-02
TEACHING POL ..zNESS,

Duty Which is Neglected by Many 9th
erwise Good Parents.
The chiEdrenIwhd see and theyi are
wonderfully quick and sure to Soc
that the politeness, of their parents is
but a veneering of company man.
ners," put on for show, will be little
liklE TO trouble themselves to obtain
even hfis fnfniteGimal degree of it, and
their parents are almost sure to be ex-
posed, at the moment when they would
least desire it, by the i'll manners Of
their children.
The e1ataaat terrible is in general only
the inopportune spokesman of his pa
rents ill-breeding. If the child says
will won't; you shall, you shan't;
give me some of that, I want some of
the other; tie up my shoe! You're
fool! You lie! or uses other amiable
expressions of the sort, we may be
quite sure that he is in the habit Of
hearing them at home. and no amount
of shocked looks and deprecatory ex-
pressions of astonishment on the part
OF his parents, will, or should, alter
this opinion.
1t Is true that parents are sometimes
themselves unconscious Of the training
that their own example is giving their
children. We remember an instance
where father had determined that his
son should not grow up with the habit
of swearing, and was numerically
whipping the poor little fellow for using
profane language, and at the same time
accompanying his blows with the most
blOod-curdling oaths, and this-so in
bred was the evil habit-without the
least consciousness of the words he was
uttering. He deplored the habit in
himself; he honestly desired to make
his boy better man than he was him
self, yet his example was at that mo-
ment doing more harm in every way to
the unfortunate little fellow, and doing
more to confirm him in every evil way
than any amount of preccpt could
undo.
We suppose that all parents must de-
sire that their children shall be moral,
Intelligent and polite, but there are
infer the contrary, even among those
who are themselves what we should
suppose they would wish their children
to be, for they give no training until it
is so late as to be of little value They
would not wish their children to refrain
from learning to walk until they were
four or five years old, yet they think
this a full early age to begin to train
them in those habits of gentleness and
consideration for others, which are the
essential foundation of what our grand
fathers used to call ga polite educa-
ton" A foundation which must be
laid in babyhood, or it will not be laid
at all
Let no parent console himself for tie
boisterous rudeness of his child by the
thought that he "will know better by
and by" For, though friction with
the world will undoubtedly in time
teach an offending youngster that peo-
pie will not always submit to having
their clothes used as foot mats, or
to receiving other similarly agreeable
attentions, yet the worlds friction will
never bring more than an exterior
polish. 1t should be our end and aim
not to have our children's hearts and
minds like the marble on which fric-
ton has bestowed brilliant surface;
Tor within the marble is rough and I'M
coUth still. Rather should we wish
them to be like precious stones, shining
with an inner light which no mishap
ian destroy. Ladies' Home Journal.