The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1891-11-28
FOR MOTHERS.
The Home End of The Temperance


Boys are-well, boys are boys. They
greatest anxiety. We rejoice when a
man child is born and for brief space
our satisfaction aud enjoyment are con-
summate. But when the dimpling, fas-
cinating darling begins to develop into
the sturdy wilful boy, the awful con
! seriousness and personal responsibility of
the future are brought home to lis.
What shall we do with this soul COM
mtted to our care? 1t is well for the
parents who keep asking themselves
this question and who do not grow tired
indifferent or desperate as the years go
on, for it is only by constant vigilance
that the average boy can be taken to a
safe and healthy moral and physical
manhood. The exceptional boy is so
well equipped by birth that the omission
of The ordinary processes seems to have
very little influence upon his character.
| He would grow TO spended manhood
under the most poverty-stricken and
|
binding and complicated the environ
ment, the higher will his royal soul rise
| i'll the effort to enlarge and simplify it.
| These are the savlors of the race but
they are exceedingly rare. There is
still another exception-tbe boy upon
whose character neither love nor the
discipline of love has the slightest effect.
He is selfish, tyrannicsl, dishonest, and
ultimately breaks his mothers heart.
He drifts to the grog-shops or the gam
bling table, and nine times out of ten
dies as he has lived.
| Many of our foremost thinkers believe
that the actual number of those who
could not have been saved by proper
home training is very small, and that
upon the mothers of this generation
rests the responsibility of temperance
and other reforms. Even the most
radical of our brilliant men and women
who fighting inch by inch for prohibi
tion and for universal suffrage admit
that home influence is the strongest,
both for good and for bad of any known
to men.
The average boy is a social, though
not always a domestic animal. He loves
light and warmth and is never quite
satisfied ''unless something is going on"
This restlessness is usually considered by
parents bad sign. John is never
STILL" they say; "he is enough to drive
one crazy with his perpetual questions
and demands, He never enters a room
that he doesn't upset, although the
qualification of his keenest desire lasts
but moment. 1t is impossible to
to satisfy him."
That is the boy, the growing, fast
developing boy, and although this con-
dition may annoy and perplex the busy
and nervous mother, it is just as health
full as the evolution OF the boy from the
baby. The tendency of mothers is to
repress the activity and suppress the
noise. But unless they can find some
thing that will interest the youngster
while he is keeping still, they are making
a great mistake. This natural steam,
naturally generated, must find vent
| somewhere and somehow, and it is true
that upon the mother devolves most of
responsibility for providing proper
safety valves for the escape of this teem-
ing and wondrous energy. The father
at home mornings, evenings and Sun
days, and not always then, has very
little opportunity to assist in the train
ing of his children. The wise
mother, knowing how superficial
aud unsatisfactory any detailed account
OF her experiences and anxieties
must necessarily be, keeps her own
counsel. Tie disobedience of the morn
ing may have been repented of before
evening, and the relations of love and
peace re established SO of what use to
speak of trouble past? And then the
allowances for peculiar circumstances
and aggravations, which the mother
feels ought to be made, would scarcely
be considered by the father who was
not on the spot to see just how the un-
pleasant scene was brought about. So
it is true that the mothers of the race
are compelled to be chiefly responsible
for the proper education and well. being
of their children. 1t is impossible to
divide this care, though it may be, as it
too often is, cruelty shlrked and Ignored.
The logic of this situation certainly
seems unanswerable. If mothers are in
such large measure accountable for
the moral health of their boys, then the
deduction Is fair that upon them rests,
if not the final solution of the temper
ance question, at least SO great an APP
Proclamation to i: that the rest of the
work eau be easily accomplished by
friends of decency and sobrety outside
the family circle.
Talk was never known to keep a
young man out of liquor saloon yet"
said Abra..am Lincoln, when he was
asked to lecture on the subject. "If
there is more attraction, more warmth,
more light, more good fellowship, more
| liberty, in the liquor saloon than there
| is at home, that is where some young
men will 90, and all the orators and
special pIeaders i'll the world cannot
hinder it,
This is tragically true, and Mr.. Lin
coin might have added that, after
certain point in the history of character
has been reached, not all the love that a
mother can lavish on her child will avail
to turn him from his evil ways. Her
tears make no impression, her anguish
is ignored. She may drag out her
weary days and nights in fruitless en-
deavor to win his affection. 1t is too
late. The time for that was years ago,
when she saw no danger, or
indifferently allowed things to take
their course. The time for this was
when the boyish will first began to
assert itself, and upon the initial exhibi
tions of intellectual restlessness. Then
perhaps she aid impatlently, "Oh, do
stop your noise! If you don't behave l
will shut you up in the closet" or maybe
in her WEAKNESS or i'll temper, she gave
him blow. Perhaps she punished him
severely for an accident or an inattcn-
ton. Boys are always inattentive when
there is something more interesting
going on than the work they are
engaged in. This is not fault. 1t is