The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-12-28
CUT THIS OUT,
PARENTS AND THE CHILDREN.

Gelf-Denial Does Not Mean Nor Include
Self-Enacement.
That parents should deny themselves
superfuities for the sake of their chill
dren 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 the
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 opportu-
nifty and of privilege. The self-denial
of parents is the tribute the race de-
mands; it is not especially notable nor
particularly praiseworthy, because it is
the appointed 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 self-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 acquaintance with
the Greek poets; the music her daugh-
ter plays may be Chinese puzzle to
her comprehension; but she does know
a whole world of science, not neces-
sarily in books. to which her daughter
can gain no clew in the classroom,
since life must be the teacher. The
father may speak less ornate vernac-
ular than his boys vocabulary, but
he has the shrewdness, the acquaint-
ance 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 regard
of those whom they have brought up.
One finds it oftener in comparative
ly new country than in the more con-
ventiona4 life of our 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, re-
signedly accepting privstion and toll
and loneliness to give their girls
chance. If the girls are noble, sweet
natured and true, they will hold the
dear mother in the greatest esteem be-
cause of all that she has done for them.
Far from entertaining feeling of pride
or of complacency, they will repay the
beautiful self-deniai of their parents
by devotion which never knows
shade of diminution 1t is an ignoble
nature alone which is capable of feel
ing ashamed of those who belong to
ones kith and kin on account of any
simplicity or plainness Of speech. Self
denial must not become self-efface.
ment
A few years ago It was not uncom.
mon to find the parents of young peo-
pie rather crowded out of the way, the
drawing rooms given up to the youth
full daughters and their friends, while
the mother and father sat by them
selves in basement dining room or
their own chamber. A better state of
things obtains now, and young people
have learned that society is crude and
r
not their fitting place.-Harper's Bazar.