Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1904-01-25
ARE YOU DOING YOUR DUTY BY YOUR
CHILDREN?
To Al Nh Friends in Vermont:

cred it so good that begged the loan
of it from the pastor that / might
copy it. am anxious that everyone
at home should read it. IF the reader
can picture to himself or herself a
crowded church, on a beautiful Sab
bath morning, a beloved pastor speak
ing on the open platform entirely
without notes, a man who though but
forty-two years of age, has years ago
established an enviable reputation for
earnestness and ability in his chosen
work, and whose eye when lighted
with the enthusiasm of his subject
flashes with the fire that for years
chained the attention of his audiences
in an eastern city, then, perhaps you
can understand something of the
earnestness that caused these dead
words to fairly live.
Very sincerely yours,
f. ALMoN LEONARD.
Santa Fe, Nel1 Merico, Dec. s, 1903
TExT-PRoVERBs XXI, i-'THE WORDS
THATHIs MOTHER TAUGHT HIM
No country boy ever forgets the
old homestead. The work of after
years may take him far from the hal
lowed place, but memory does not let
him go, it leads him back full often
to the old freside and the farm. Be-
meath the arbor he plays again as if he
were once more boy, and under the
shade of the friendly naples in the
lane, with mimic pomp, he receives
his neighbor visitors. In the barn he
tumbles through the hay and straw at
hide and-seek. By the brook he
fishes, and, in it's shallow waters,
learns to swim. In the hollow he
cuts the elder for his pop gun and in
the woods little higher up, the pop
lar branch for his whistle. At even
tide he drives home the COWS and the
sheep, and when the darkness of the
night has fallen, he rests his tired
head upon the pillows of his trundle-
bed and sweetly dreams away the
hours until the morning. l pity boys
who have never known the exhilara-
ton of farm life and country life, who
have lived in exile all the days of
youth amid the tame scenes of the
city.
"How dear to my heart are the scenes of my
childhood,
When fond recollection presents them to
view;
The orchard, the m eadows, the deep tangled
wildwood
And every loved spot that my infancy knew"
But of all the things of which memory
is tenacious, of all the things which
full grown man holds sacred from the
days of his childhood, those most ten
derby treasured are "the words that
his mother taught him''-the "Now l
lay me" that she helped him to say
when his eyelids we're heavy with
sleep, the"Be good boy"that accom-
panied the morning kiss; the wise and
loving counsels that were part Of
every day of infancy and youth, these
ring in memory like a sweet melody
as the shoulders broaden for their
burdens and the snowfakes of time
whiten the hairs of the head.
am sure l speak to both men and
women this morning who can recall
the words that their mothers taught
them, only with moistened eyes.
And it would not be strange if in this
audience there were some who have
wandered farther than they intended
from the ways of rectitude and have
forgotten the words that their moth
ers taught them. Anyhow it can do
no harm to any of us to travel back
this morning to the day of youth and
maidenhood and infancy and for one
brief balf-hour put ourselves again
under mothers Christening influence.
Backward, turn backward, o Time in your
flight,
Make me child again, just for tonight"
~Just after the ceremonies had been
completed that made Napoleon Bona
parte emperor of France, turning to
his mother, half playfully, half
gravely, he offered her his hand to
kiss. She flung it back to him indig-
nantly, saying in the presence of his
courtiers, at is your duty to kiss the
hand other who gave you life" She
knew if the naughty emperor did
not, how much he owed to her AS
letters cut in the bark of the tree,
grow and widen with the growth OF
the tree, so with the growth of the
child the ideas which the mother i'm
plants in its receptive mind. Sir
Walter Scott listened to the stories
which his mother told him of the wild
adventures of the Scottish border,
and, when he grew to manhood, hs
wrote Rob Roy, ""The Heart of Md
lothian" "The Lady of the Lake.
and other like thrilling tales. A
gentleman after an interview with