Pike County press. (Milford, Pa.) 1895-1925, 1895-11-22


pathos and solid learning. No pen
can do justice to the inimitable
manners of the speaker, and the
audience was alternately convulsed
with laughter and moved to silent
tears. His subject was filial obedi-
ence and the duty parents owed to
their children to give them an
education. His stories of the min
listers, the twins, the forlorn ap-
plicants sitting on the root of an oak
tree, the rag carpet, the man who
tried to make tapestry carpet and
failed until he hung his sample up
to the sunlight, boarding around and
teaching for 500 per month will all
be remembered with pleasure and
will cheer many hearts and homes as
they are recalled in the school room
and by the fire side.
If Prof. Houck lives in years as
his memory will in the minds of his
hearers he will be a patriarch indeed
Thursday was filled with routine
work by the several instructors pres
ent, and the reading of papers on
educational topics by some Of the
teachers.
In the evening, Rev. Anne Venema,
of Port Jervis, delivered a lecture
replete with wisdom and couched in
scholarly and beautiful language He
said on being introduced by Supt.
Sawyer that the audience had been
raised very high during the week and
it would now be his province to let
them down easy. He was glad the
chandelier had fallen, for now with
out seeing the audience he could be-
leive he was speaking to fathers and
mothers. There was a time to be
born, a time to die, and time for
all development between the cradle
and the grave, but of recent years
the active middle age of life had
received the most applause, but he
proposed to deal with childhood
Paul drew a lesson from childhood,
when he was a child he spoke as a
child. The period of childhood in
these days is made entirely too short.
The boy as soon as he puts on short
pants is out on the streets putting a
cigarette. The girl as soon as she can
fairly talk is put in society aping her
elders and crowded into full woman
hood at fifteen. Parents seem anxi-
Gus for their children to mature,
and frequently so an order that they
may take place in shop or store
to make pecuniary gains.
No period in life is free from trou-
BILE and care as childhood, and no
season of the life is attempted to be
so curtailed.
The period of childhood of Jesus
was over thirty years during which
he was obedient to his humble par
ents. Teachers should remember that
they were once children themselves,
and should have sympathy with
children, and while there should be
sympathy in all their sports and
recreations, they should also be
taught cheerful obedience. So long
as a child is incapable of supporting
itself, so long is it incapable of self
government. A child is like steam,
uncontrolled, except by the mind of
man, its possibilities great but with
out control useless. Controlled it
becomes the power which moves the
commerce of the world.
Children have a three-fold nature,
body, mind, and soul, their spirits
are necessary to their happiness.
They have a thirst for knowledge,
their minds are like sponges, un-
bounded in capacity and their cease
less questionings of who, what and
when must be answered with great
patience.
1t is said as a fact that one-sixth
of all the voters in this country can
not read or write, send the children
to the schools.
Habits of vice, and habits of good
are just as easily formed and here
the home comes in to keep the child
pure.
A noted divine says that only three
out of twenty homes are happy, be-
cause they fail in demonstration
The conquerlng power is love, and
that mnst be demOnstrative, and it,
not fear, must be the power that
impels obedience. AS soon as a child
is old enouth to love then is the time
to instil Christian principles. If a
child is old enough to love it's par