The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-03-16
THE DAUGHTER IN THE HOME.
BY ARoHDEAcoN F. W. FARRAR. D. d.

In that most touching apologize by
which the prophet awoke to life the dor
mant conscience of King David. when
he lay under the paralyzing glamor of
an unrepented sin. Nathan said: "The
poor man had nothing save one little eve
lamb. which he had bought and nourish-
ed up: and it grew up together with him
and his children, and it did eat of his
own morsel, and drink of his own cup,
and lay in his bosom, and was unto him
as daughter"
The seer evidently chose those words
to express the most tender of all family
relations; the sweetest of all family af-
fections.
The daughter of house is pre-emi-
nenty the child of home. 1t is true that
il she marries she passes into another
home; but up to the time of her mar
riage she is far more deeply under her
fathers influence, and under her moth
er's care Most daughters, even in these
days when the education of women has
been so largely developed, receive their
chief moral and intellectual training at
home. When once boy has passed
often at the age of eight or nine years
into private school, he only spends his
holidays at home, and during the greater
part of his life. usually for three-fourths
Of the year. he is away from the pater
nal roof. The spell of home affection
can only be kept alive by the weekly
letter, which, in the case of boys. is often
but brief and hasty scrawl. If girl
is sent to school, it is at later age, and
for a briefer period of her life. The
home, which may be the chief home of
all her future years, constitutes more
intense and integral part of her moral,
spiritual and intellectual life than, in
any ordinary case, it can be to boy. 1t
will, think. be the experience of most
parents that, as a rule. the letters of
daughters are fuller, more frequent and
more loving than those of sons; and that
daughters cling to them with more
complete and tender dependence.
Happily such conflicts of interests is
among the rarer contingencies of life;
and the married daughter. as rule, with
her husband and her children, is the
most welcome of guests in her fathers
house. Tennyson beautifully dwels. in
the "In Memoriam," on the fact that
death means separation, and the mar
riage of daughter does not:
LAY me- the difference discernl
How often shall her old fireside
Be cheered with tidings of the bride;
How often she herself return.
And tell them all they would have told,
And bring her baby, and make her boast,
Till even those that miss'd her most
Shall count new things dear as old
And thus, even when they are married,
our daughters still "are to us as daugh-
ters." But when daughter is not mar
ried, how sweet and how deep may be
the range of her influence! AS years
grow upon the father, how may she
cu6Tl5u ululs anu duNi W hio SOhIlOA = anu
happiness, and relieve him OF all such
burdens as she can undertake for him,
and brighten his evening and his home!
AS years grow upon the mother, how
much the daughter can do to tighten the
burden of domestic management, to
soothe the sorrows, and tenderly to
nurse the sickness of her to whom she
owes so much! The daughter of
widowed father, or of widowed mother,
If she is still living in the old home, may
be the chief center of all the varied
family life which has grown up in the
course of years. Beranger wrote for the
inscription on the tomb of lady who
died unmarried: "She was never
mother. yet many sons arose and called
her blessed" The epitaph illustrates in
a most striking way how false is the no.
ton that the life OF an unmarried daugh-
ter is doomed to Intellectually or USE
leesness. On the contrary, to her father
and mother, to her brothers and sisters,
to her little nephews and nieces. she may
be the greatest OF blessings. and may
find in her own family relations field