Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1890-03-19
DR.. TALMAGE's SERMON LAST SUNDAY.
Don't be querulous. Don't be Snappy.
DON'T STAB YOUR FAMILY NAME.

Don't be querulous. Don't be Snappy.
| DON'T STAB YOUR FAMILY NAME.
DR.. Tslmage preached sermon to chill
dren, with incidental advice to parents, a
the Brooklyn Academy of Music last Sun
day morning before the usual large assem-
blage which always Graves to hear him.
| "a foolish son Is the heaviness of hi
mother" was the preachers text, and il
the course of his remarks he said:-
| GAIL parents want their children to turr
out we'll. However poorly father and moth
er may have done themselves. they wan
their sons and daughters to do splendidly
Up to forty years of age parents may have
ambitions for themselves, after that theil
chief ambitions are for their children. Some
of the old time names indicate this. The
name of Abner indicates Ibis fathers lamp.
The name Abigail means her fathers Joy.
And what parental delight was Solomon
to David, and Samuel to Hannah, and
Joseph to Jacob! The best earthly staff
that father has to lean on is a good son
and the strongest arm mother has to help
her down the steep of years is that of a
grateful child.
DIsAGREEABLE OLD PEOPLE.
'sBut it is not rare thing to find people
unfilial, and often the parents are them
selves to blame. Aged persons sometimes
become querulous and snappy and the
children have their hands full with the old
folks. There are old people so disagreeable
that they have nearly broken up some
homes. The young married man with
whom the aged one lives stands it because
he has been used to it all his life, but the
young wife, coming in from another house.
hold, can hardly endure it and sometimes
almost cries her eyes out.
'Aud when little children gather in the
house they are afraid of the venerable
patriarch, who has forgotten that he ever
was child himself, and cannot understand
why children should ever want to play hide
and seek or roll hoop or fly kite, and he be-
comes impatient at the sound from the
nursery and shouts with an expenditure of
voice that keeps him coughing for fifteen
minutes afterward, Boys! stop that racket
as though any boy that ever amounted to
anything in the world did not begin life by
making racket! ILaughter.]
HENRY WILSON'S FATHER.
'Indeed, there are children who owe MOTH
ing to their parents, for those parents have
been profigates. My lamented friend, good
Christian Henry Wilson, Vice Presi-
dent of the United States, in early life
changed his name. Henry Wilson was not
his original name. He dropped his fathers
name because TINT father was drunkard
and disgrace and the son did not feel call
ed upon to carry such q carcass all his life.
While children must always be dutiful, l
sympathize with all ysung people who have
disagseeable or unprincipled old folks
around the house, Some eff us, drawing
out of our memories, know that it is posi-
BILE after sixty or seventy or eighty or nine
ty years of age for the old to be kind and
genial; and the grandest adornment Of a
home is an aged father and an aged mother,
if the process of years has mellowed them.
GUARD YOUR FAMILY NAME.
"You cannot hurt your name of John or
George or Henry or Mary or Frances or Ra.
chel, because there have been thousands of
people, good and bad, having those names,
and you cannot improve or depreoiate the
responsibility of those given names. But it
is your last name, your family name, that
is at your mercy. All who hear that name
are bound, before God and man, not to
damage its happy Significance. You are
charged, by all the generations of the past
and all the generations to come, to do your
share for tho protection and the honor and
the integrity of that name.
"You have no right, my young friend, by
bad life to blot the old family Bible con-
tanning the story of the marriages and
births and deaths of the years gone by, or
to cast blot upon the family Bibles whose
records are yet to be opened.
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
"There are in our American city 6ireo-
tories names that always suggest CONNER
cial dishonesty or libertinism or cruelty or
meanpess, just because one man or woman
bearing that name cursed it forever BY mis-
creaucy. Look out how you stab the fsmi-
ly name. 1t is especially 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 womanhood, and she saw some one
with whom she could trust her happiness,
her lifs and her immortal destiny, aud she
took bis name, took it while the orange
blossoms we've filling the air with fragrance,
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 better or worse, through sick
less and through health, by cradles and by
graves. Yea. she put off her old family
name to taxa the family name you now
wear, and she has done her part to make it
an honorable name. How heavy trouble
you put upon her when, by misdeeds, you
wrench that name from its high signifcaL ce!
To haul 1t down from your mothers fore
head and trsmple it in the dust would be
criminal.
"Your fathers name may not be dis
tinguished name, but l hope it stands for
something good. 1t may not be famous,
~, or Izsak Walton, the father of angling,
or E,chy lus, the father of tragedy, or Ethel
void, the father of monks, or Herodotus,
the father of history, or Thomas .Aquinas,
the father of moral philosophy, or Abra-
ham, the father of the faithful, but your
father has a name in small circle as pre-.
oious to him as theirs in a larger CIRCLE
Look ont now YOU tarnish it'll"