The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1893-11-22
The Self.Denial of Parents.

That parents should deny them
selves superhuities for the sake of their
children is not in the least TO their
credit; it is meet, right, and their
bounden duty. That they should give
their children better advantages than
they have had themselves is equally, in
nature of things, their proper line Of
conduct. Each generation owes to the
one in advance all that it can bestow Of
preparation, of culture, of opportunity,
and of privilege. The selt-denia of
parents is the tribute the race demands;
it is not especially notable nor partlcu-
larry praiseworthy, because it is the APP
pointed and expected role which is
given to people when they take upon
them the obligations of parenthood.
But self-denial on the part Of parents is
one thing, and -effacement quite
another. The plain man and the plain
woman who have scrimped and stinted
and saved, contrived, managed, risen
early and sat up late, to send their sons
and daughters to college, to educate
them literally, to place them well in
the world, are not to be set aside as of
small account when their children ar
rive at maturity. They are wrong to
allow themselves to be pushed to the
wall, set in the background, as they
sometimes are. The mother may not
know Euclid, or have The faintest ac-
quaintance with the Greek poets; the
music her daughter plays may be a
Chinese puzzle to her comprehension;
but she does know whole world of
science, not necessarily in books, to
which hpr no11phtar yot n M r. 10 IN,
the classroom, since life must be the
teacher. The father may speak less
ornate vernacular than bis boys vocab-
ulary, but he has the shrewdness. the
acquaintance with men, which come
only by intercourse with ones fellows,
by Joy and sorrow, and the different
phases through which all pass who live
long enough. 1t should be no part Of
the self.denial Of parents TO do without
the Difference, The tenderness, the re.
gard, Of those whom they have brought
up. One finds it oftener in a compare
lively new country than in the more
conventional life Of cur cities, state
of things in which parents seem to have
been outgrown by their children. There
are farm-houses in our frontier states
where women, not yet middle-aged,
have put on gray hairs and wrinkles,
lost the beauty and elasticity Of youth,
years before their time, resgnedly ac-
cepting privation and toll and loneli-
ness to give their girls a chance. II
the girls are noble, sweet-natured, and
true, they will hold the dear mother in
the greatest esteem because of all
that she has done for them. Far from
entertaining feeling of pride or of
complacency, they will repay the beau
tiful self-denial of their parents by a
devotion which never knows a shade Of
diminution. 1t is an ignoble nature
alone which is capable of feeling
ashamed of those who belong to one's
kith and kin on account Of any simpli-
city of manner or plainness of speech.
Self-denial must not become self-eiface-
ment. A few years ago it was not IN
common to find the parents of young
people rather crowded out of the way,
the drawing-rOoms given up to the
youthful daughters and their friends,
while the mother and father sat by
themselves in a basement dining room,
or in their chamber. A better state of
things obtains now, and young people
have learned that society is crude and
unsatisfactory in which parents have
not their fitting place. -Hayper'S Ba@ar.