Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1890-03-28

IN "A& -"
cried: 40 father, / am so glad you nave
come to see me die No" said the
father, you are not going to die; your
mother is waiting for you, and l am
going to take you home; have brousht.
YOU money and everything You need.
NO" said the soldier, they give me
mere every thing that is nice to eat. but
I have no appetite, and l must die:
Then the father took from his knapsack
q loaf of rye bread, such as the PLAIN
people of this country ate, and SAID:
Here is a loaf of bread your mother
made, and l am sure you can eat TINS;
she sent it to you" Then the soldier
frightened up and took the bread and
ate it, and said: 1T is so good the
bread from home, the bread that my
mother made!" No wonder that in a
few DAYS he had recovered. o, young
man, wounded in the battle of life, and
discouraged, given up by yourself, and
given up by others, the old folks at the
country fireside have not given you up.
1 bring you bread from home. 1t may
be plain bread, but it is that bread of
which if q man eat he never again shall
hunger, Bread from home! Bread from
home!
Carrying out the idea Of my text, 1
remark that a reckless or d%issipated son
makes a heavy hearted parent because
it hurts the family pride. 1t is not the
given name or the name which you re-
ceived at the christening that is injured
by your prodigalitv. You cannot hurt
your name of John or George or Henry
or Mary or Frances or Rachel, because
there have been thousands of people,
good and bad, having those names, and
you cannot improve or depreciate the
respectability of those given names.
But it is your last name. your family
name, that is at your mercy. All who
bear that name are bound, before God
and man, not to damage it's happy signi-
ticance. You are charged, by all the
generations of the past and all the gen.
erations to come, to do your share for
integrity of hat name. You have no
right, my young friend, by a bad life to
blot the old family Bible containing the
story of the marriages and. births and
deaths of the years gone by, or to cast a
blot upon the family Bibles whose re-
cords are yet to be opened.
There are in our American city di-
rectories names that always suggest
commercial dishonesty or libertinism OF
cruelty or meanness, just because n
man or woman bearing that name cursed
it forever by miscreancy. Look out how
you stab the family name! 1t is espe-
cially dear to your mother. She was not
born under that name. She was born
under another name, but the years
passed on and she came to young wo-
manhood, and she saw some one with
whom she could trust her happiness. her
life and her immortal destiny; and she
took his name, took it while the orange
hl0ccD,,c y,1,,o E11;,, ~ &Io ~i, xl r-o
grance, took it with joined hands, took
it while the heavens witnessed. She
chose it out of all the family names
since the world stood, chose it for bet
ter OF worse, through sickness and
through health, by cradles and by
graves.
Yes, she put off her old family name
to make the family name you now wear,
and she has done her part to make it an
honorable name. How heavy q trouble
you put upon her when, by misdeeds.
you wrench that name from its high
significance! To haul it down from
your mothers forehead and trample it in
the dust would be criminal. Your
fathers name may not be a distins
gulshed name, but l hope it stands for
something good. 1t may not be famous,
like that of Homer, the father of epic
poetry, or Izaak Walton. the father Of
angling, OF Eschylus, the father of
tragedy, or Ethelwold, the father of
monks, or Herodotus, the father of his
tory, Or Thomas Aquinas, the father of
moral philosophy, or Abraham, the
father of the faithful, but Your father
has q name in a small circle as precious
to him as theirs in q larger circle. Look
out how you tarnish it!
Further, the recklessness and dissi-
patton of a young man are a cause of
parental distress at q time when the
parent is less able to bear it. The
vicissitudes of life have left their i'm
preston upon those parents. The eve
is not as clear as once, nor the hearing
as acute, nor the nerves as steady, nor
the step as strong, and with the. tide of
incoming years comes the weight of un-
flial behavior. You take your parents
at a great disadvantage, for they cannot
stand as much as they once could.
They have not the elasticity of feeling
with which once they could throw of
trouble. That shoulder, now somewhat
bent, cannot bear as heavy a burden as
once it could. At the time when the
machinery is getting worn out you put
upon it the most terrific strain.
At sixty and seventy years the vitality
is not SO strong as at thirty or forty.
Surely they are descending the down
grade of life swiftly enough without
your increasing the momentum. They
will be gone Don enough without your
pushing them away. Call in all the
doctors who ever lived since Hippo
crates raised medicines from a super
stition to a science, and they could not
cure the heartbreak of a mother over
her ruined boy. There may be, as some
suppose, enough herbs on earth, if dis
covered. to cure all tho ailments of the
body; but nothing save a leaf from the
tree OF the heavenly Paradise can cure a
wound made by a foolish son who is the
heaviness of his mother.
Perhaps it is a good thing that cruel
by a child abbreviates O. par
ents life; for what is there desirable in
a fathers life or O mothers life if its
peace is gone? Do you not think death
is something beneticent if it stops the
mothers heart from aching and her ewes
from weeping, and says: You need
not bear the excruciation my longer.
and sleep. will put the defense of
a marble slab between YOU and that
boys outrages. Go now where the
wicked cease from troubling and the
weary are at rest!!" At the departure of
such mothers let the music be an anthem
-A