The Russellville Democrat., 1890-03-27

Q young man, wounded in the battle of life and discouraged, given up by your self and given up by others, tho old folks at the country firoside have not given you up. bring you bread from home. It may be plain bread. but it is that bread of which if man eat he never again shall hunger Broad from homei Bread from homel
 Carrying out tho idea of my text, l remark that reckless or dissipated son makes heavy-hcarted parent be- cause 1t hurts the family pride. It is not the given name, or tho name which you received at the christening, that is injured by your prodsgality. You can not 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 can not improve or de- preciate the responsibility of those given names, Butit is your last name, your family name, that is at your mercy. All who bear that namecare bound, be- fore God and man, not to damage it's happy significance. You are charged, by all the generations of tho past and all the generations to como. to do your share for the protection and the honor and the integrity of thatname. You have no right my young friend, by bad life to blot the old family Bible contain ing the story of the marriages and births and deaths of the years gone by, or to cast a blot on the family Bibles whose records are yet to be opened. There are in our American directories names that always suggest commercial dishon- esty or libertinism or cruelty or mean ness, just because one man or woman bearing that name cursed 1t forever by miscreancy. Look out how you stab the family namel It is especially dear to your mother She was not born under that name. She was born under an other 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 life, and her immortal destiny, and she took his name, took it while the orange blossoms were filling the air with fragrance, took it with joined hands, took 1t while the heavens witnessed She chose 1t out of all the family names since the world stood, chose it for better or worse, through sickness, through health, by cradles and by graves. Yes. she put of her old family name to take the fam fly name you now wear, and she has done her part to make 1t an honorable name. How heavy q trouble you put up on her when, by misdeeds, vou wrench that name from it's high signiiicance! To haul 1t down from your mothers forehead aud trample it in the dust would be criminal. Your fathers name may not be . distinguished name, but I hope it stands for something good. It may not be famous, like that of Homer, the father of epic poetry, or Izaak Wal ton, the father of an gling; or Kschylus, the father of tragedy; or Ethelwold, the father of monks; or Thomas Aquinas, the father of moral philosophy; or Abra- ham, tho father of the faithful, but your father has q name in small circle as precious to him as theirs in a larger cir ele. Look out how you tarnish it
 Further, tho recklessness and dissipa- tion of a young man are cause of par ental distress at time when the parent
 
 of life have left their impression upon those parents The eye is not so 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 untilial be- havior. You take your parents at great disadvantage, for they can not stand as much as they once could, They have not the elasticity of feeling with which once they could throw off trouble. That shoulder. now some what bent can not bear as heavy burden as once 1t 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 with out your increasing the momentum. They will be gone soon enough without your pushing them away. Call in all the doctors W ho over lived since Hippo crates raised medicine from super sttion to science, and they could not cure the heart-break of mother over her ruined boy. There may be, as some suppose, enough herbs on earth, If discovered. to cure all the ailments of the body; but nothing save leaf from the tree of tho 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 treatment by child abbreviates par ont -laf ta q f,l fathers life or a mothers life if it's peace is gonee Do you not think death is something beneficent if it stops the mothers heart from aching and her eyes from weeping. and says; ''You need not bear the excruciation any longer. Go and sleep. l will put the defense of marble slab between you and that boy's outrages Co now where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest?" At the departure of such mothers let the music be an an them instead of dirge. While you and l hear no sound, yet there are at this moment tens of thousands of par ental hearts breaking All care was taken with the boys schooling, all good counsels given, and the equipment for sober and earnest and useful life was provided, but it has all gone, and the foolish son has become the heasires of his mother.
 Much of thepoignaney of the parental grief arises from the ingratitude of such behavior. What an undertaking 1t is to conduct a family through tho ailments and exposures of early lifel Talk about the skill demanded of sea captain commanding a ship across the ocean. That requires less skill than to navl- gate a young soul in safety across the infantile and boyhood years. The sick ncsses that assault, the temptations that entrap the anxieties that are ex- citedl Young man, you will never know what your mother has suffered for you. You will never know how your father has toiled for you. You have been in all their thoughts, in all their plans, in all their prayers, from the time vour first breath was drawn t0 this