The Knoxville independent. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1894-current, 1919-02-08
Kindergarten
Helps for Parents
Articles Issued by the Department
offl,e Interior. Bureau of Education
and THE
National Observation-Disclosures
DAD
BY HENRY TURNER BAILEY.

BY HENRY TURNER BAILEY.
Children's children are the crown of old
men; and the glory of children are their
fathers.-Prov 17:6. t
Shake hands, Dad. How many chill
dren call you that? There are five
who have called me Dad or Pa or Pop
py Excuse me for mentioning it, but
! want you to know that am no mere
theorist in this matter Of being the IA
ther of family.
Now here is some straight stuff: It
is fathers duty to give some time ev-
cry 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 children.
have been to church and Sunday
school with them always, because 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.
Ruhuuy dllClAUOlS We nave AWAY .
taken walk, when the weather per-
mitted, or If too stormy, we have read
story books together, or have made va
rious kinds of scrap books.
Much Time to Nature Study.
In our walks we usually had def
mite objective. We went to see some
body, or to get a particular view, or to
visit our favorite trees, or to look for
some one thing in particular. We
counted birds nests one trip; on an
other we searched for cocoons; on a
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 seed packs of as many kinds
as possible; learned the wild flowers,
the birds, the butterflies and moths,
the ferns, the trees, the mushrooms !;
made collections of colored things
flowers, leaves, insects, pebbles and
so forth, and arranged them in the
spectrum order; followed a brook in
summer with Tennysons Brook as a
guide; followed one in winter with
Lowell's Brook Tin the Vision of Sir
LaunfaD as guide. In a word we
studied Gods great wonderful out
door book in the afternoon, just as dill
gently 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, q mother who is still young and
happy (because she got a little rest on
Sunday during those strenuous years.,
to say nothing of a father who now
thanks God for the privilege of still
being a boy though in his fifties.
Family Interested Own Members.
We shall never forget those long eve
nings in our city home when the girls
came back from seminary and high
school, and the boys from Harvard
anu lCtus anu VIC SAT uIOuuu Tie
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 discovered his own
special field of interest and delved in
to it beyond the limit of the others in
the great realms Of nature and liter
allure that we had begun to enjoy to-
gether when they were little children.
Each one could therefore make his
own particular contribution to the de-
light of all.
Pool rooms, saloons, clubs, stag par
ties? When will short-sighted, self-in-
dulgent, arrogant fathers learn that in
their own wives and children are the
possibilities Of perennial delights and
solid satisfactions compared with
which other things are dust and ashes?