Omaha daily bee., 1919-05-24
Do Any Riddles
Shake Hands
With You?
How Many7

How Many1
By HENRY TURNER BAILEY.
Children's children are tho crown
OF old men; and the glory of chill
drer are their fathers. Prov. 17:o.
Shake hands, dad. How many
children call you thati There are
five who have called me dad or pa
or poppy. Excuse me for mention
ing Il, but want you to know
that ! am no mere theorist in this
matter matter OF being the father Of a
Now here Il some straight stuff:
1t ID fathers duty 10 give some
time every week to his boys and
girls. The only time I have been
able to give to mine Is Sunday. My
Sundays have belonged to the chill
dren.
have been to church and Sun
day school with them always, be-
cause in the light of some hundreds
OF years of history, there is nothing
that yields better returns, in the
long run, than habitual reverence
for God. "Only those who believe
in God do good In private" say the
French.
! Sunday afternoons We have al
ways taken walk, when the wealth
q permitted, or II too stormy, we
have read story books together, or
have made various kinds Of scrap
books.
IN our walks We usually had a
definite objective. We went to see
somebody, OF to get 4 particular
view, or to visit our favorite trees,
or 70 look for some new thing in
particular. We counted birds nests
one trip; on another we searched
for socoons; on, . third, dug into
old stumps to. see what we could
discover; or looked under pieces of
wood and bark; found the smallest
growing things; collected leaves or
see packs of as many kinds as pos
sible; learned the wild flowers, the
birds, the butterflies and moths. the
ferns, the trees, the mushrooms;
made collections OF eolored things
flowers, leaves, insects, pebbles
and 20 forth, and arranged them in
the spectrum order; followed a
brook in summer with "Tennyson's
Brook" - I guide; followed one in
winter with 'Lowell's Brook Tin the
Vision of Sir LaunfaD as a guide.
in Z word we studied Gods great
wonderful outdoor book in the
after, just as diligently as we
studied the best literature in the
morning.
And what results! Five open
eyed, open minded, intelligent young
men and women, devoted to their
parents and grateful for what their
Heavenly Father and His children
have done for them, 4 mother who
is still young and happy because
she got little rest on Sunday
during those strenuous years., to
say nothing Of father who now
thanks God for the privilege of still
being 4 boy though in his fifties.
We shall never forget those long
evenings in our city home when the
girls came back from seminary and
high school, and the boys from,
Harvard and "Tcch." and we sat
around the dinner table together,
forgetful Of time. We were all more
entertaining to each other than any
show ever staged, because by this
time each Of the children had dis
covered his own special field of in
terest and delved into it beyond the
limit Of the others in the great
realms of nature and literature that
we had begun to enjoy together
when they were little children.
Each one could, therefore, make his
own particular contribution to the
delight of oil.
Pool rooms, saloons, clubs, stag
partiesl When will short-sighted,
sel-indulgent, arrogant fathers learn
that in their own wives and chill
dren arc the possibilities of peren-
NAL delights and solid satisfactions
compared with which other things
are dust and ashes.