The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1893-11-14
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
ioounden duty. That they should give
&heir children better advantages than
>hey 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 opportunity and OF privilege. The
self-denial of parents is the tribute
the race demands; it is not especially
notable nor particularly praiseworthy,
because it is the appointed and ex-
pected role which is given to people
when they take upon them the obliga-
tions of parenthood.
But self-denial on the part of par
ents is one thing, and elf-effacement
quite another. The plain man and
the plain woman who have scrimped
and stinted and saved, contrived, man
aged, risen early and sat up late, to
send their sons and daughters to COL
(ege, to educate them literally, to
place them well in the world, are not
60 be set aside as Of small account
when their children arrive at maturity.
They are wrong 20 allow themselves
background, as they sometimes are.
The mother may not know Euclid, or
have the faintest acquaintance with
the Greek poets; the music her
daughter plays may be- Chinese puz-
zle to her comprehe1sion; but she
does know q whole wGrld of science,
not necessarily in boo,IS, to which her
daughter can gain no clew in the
classroom since life must be the
teacher. The father may speak less
ornate vernacular than his boy'a
vocabulary, but he has the shrewd-
ness, 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 defer
ence. the tenderness, the regard, of
those whom they have brought up
One finds it ofteper in compare
lively new country than in the more
conventional life of our cities, a 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, los1 Che beauty and elastici-
ty of youth, years before their time.
resignedly accepting prIvation and
toll and loneliness to give their girls
a chance. If 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 a feel
ing of pride or complacency, they will
repay the beautiful 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 wko be-
long to ones kith and kin on account
of any simplicity of manner or plain
ness of speech. Selfdenial must not
become self-effacement
j. J. Ssw years ago it was not uncom-
mcHa 70 find the parents of young peo-
pie rather crowded out of the way,
the drawing rooms given up to the
youthful daughters and their friends,
while their mother and father sat by
themselves in a basement dining
room, or their own chamber. A bet
ter state of things obtains now, and
young people have learned that socie-
ty is crude and unsatisfactory in
which parents have not their fitting
places. es.-Harper' BaZar.