p. 179Paternal Authority and Home Education

What principally strikes the observer who studies the civilization of China, and what is in reality its distinctive feature, is the preponderance of paternal authority. Indeed, this authority is the chief tie of the family, the fundamental basis of government and laws, and the very soul of religion itself. It preserves domestic harmony, feeds the spirit of obedience toward the public authorities, and hallows both the memory of ancestors and the popular respect for traditions.

Filial piety is in China, what the love of freedom was in Greece, what love of country was in Rome, and what the religious sentiment was in the Middle Ages.

M. L. Donnat.¹1Ouvriers des Deux Mondes, vol. iv., p. 116.

The mightiest rivers on the surface of the globe have their source in the highest mountain solitudes, most frequently in the vast snow-fields which furnish them perennial waters. The ancient traditions of India will have it that the sacred streams of the Indus and the Ganges rise at the very foot of the mountains that are nearest heaven and the dwelling place of the gods.

So is it with all authority most revered among men, with every institution from which human life and society derive power, happiness, and stability. One has to go back to the cradle of humanity to find their certain origin;—their sanction must come immediately from Heaven itself.

The beginnings of these venerable customs and institutions of the vast Chinese Empire, if traced back conscientiously from century to century, would lead us to the very age of Noe and his sons: the traditions on which repose the ancestral worship of China, the religion and moral life of the nation and of every home within it, are thus found to be anterior to Moses and his law, anterior even to Abraham and that Chaldæan corruption from which the great patriarch fled.

Thus we can appreciate how ancient and universal was the wisdom enunciated by the Son of Sirach:

That fear, full of reverence, submission, and love, which, before the deluge, formed the religion of Seth and Henoch, flowed on through the breasts of Noe and Sem, to be the religion of the renovated human family. It was the law of nature, as immutable as the Eternal God,—that reverence, honor, and love for the Father in Heaven, should be the source of the respect, obedience, and affection which we are bound to show to our parents. Do away with “the fear of the Lord” in the hearts of children, and the home will become a ruin. Let religion and filial piety disappear from the majority of homes of a nation, and you can safely predict its extinction. Just as the vast regions watered by the Indus, the Ganges, the Amazon, and the Mississippi, would soon become a barren and uninhabited wilderness, if their sources in the mountains should fail, because the winds of heaven ceased to bring there either rainfall or snow.

It is then of unspeakable importance that this paternal authority, God-given as it is, fundamental as it must be regarded in human society, should be thoroughly understood and most religiously upheld and reverenced.

Were Christians to forget either its origin or its claims, they would be reminded of both by pagans and Mohammedans. Thank God, there is one great society, one ever-present and unerring authority, which can never cease to reutter the divine precept, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” and to explain its significance and scope to the nations.

Divine Origin of Paternal Authority

It is, then, the sentiment of the Church that the father in the family derives his authority not from the State, but immediately from God himself. The family was before the State, which owes its existence and derives its powers immediately from the people or the association of families and individuals who compose the people, and ultimately only from God.

By no human law or legislator can the authority of the father over his children, and the duties essential to his office, be done away with, confiscated, or superseded. It is the interest of civil society and of its legislators to lend their aid to the divine and natural law in this. Our lawgivers, our magistrates, our voters would only be playing into the hands of the socialists, communists, and levelers, by trenching on the father’s legitimate authority within his own household, instead sanctioning by their enactments its rights and protecting its free exercise.

Let us once more repeat it here,—to abridge in the family the father’s authority over his children, or to weaken in any way the unity and indissolubility of the marriage tie,—is to move the foundations of the earth!

With this warning we dismiss, for the present at least, this portion of our subject, and proceed to show what is the extent of parental jurisdiction, and what is the corresponding obligation of the father, or, in his stead, of the mother. The reader, of course, will understand us to speak here of education.

Education, the Parent’s indefeasible Right

One of the first injunctions laid on the great Christian Society of Ephesus, was, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord; for this is just;”²2Ephesians, vi. 1. and then the Great Apostle rehearses the Mosaic precept, continuing thus:

“And you, fathers, provoke not your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord.”

With regard to the first part of this injunction, we have said what is abundantly sufficient in the preceding chapter. There is no more certain safeguard against a parent’s provoking his children to anger,—to all the rebellious and passionate discontent which an oppressive use of authority creates,—than the wise, gentle, patient, all-embracing love, and firm discipline described there. We have now to insist on the “bringing up in the discipline and correction of the Lord,”—that is, on the duty of education,—Christian education, as is evident from the very words of the apostle.

And now, dear reader, do not be alarmed at this beginning, as if we meant to inflict on your patience a long lecture or sermon on the training of childhood and youth. What we have to say is exceedingly practical, and had better, therefore, be said briefly. It is also exceedingly important, and must be said clearly. At any rate we shall do our best to tell pleasantly a tale so often told, and requiring, nevertheless, perpetual and conscientious repetition.

The object which the great Christian apostle had in view in insisting upon bringing up children “in the discipline and correction of the Lord,”—was, undoubtedly, the formation in them of habits of supernatural virtue,—such virtue having its standard of excellence in the life and teaching of Christ.

This,—as being in reality Christian education,—is to be most carefully distinguished from mere instruction in letters or in worldly knowledge. Our remarks, in this chapter, shall apply to both the one and the other,—keeping very distinct before the mind of the reader, the parent’s office in forming the character and molding the soul to Christ-like goodness, from the function of training the mind to the acquisition of knowledge and science.

The author, during many years of his life, has been occupied in the duty of teaching; he is, therefore, deeply impressed with the importance of the teacher’s functions at all times, and especially in his own age and country. He has also been all his life a keen student, seeking to complete the early knowledge given him in one of the foremost institutions in America, by serious studies undertaken in advanced manhood—undertaken, too, with the purpose of benefiting American youth. He will not, then, be suspected of undervaluing modern methods or their results, or of holding cheap the science of the age, the ripest fruits of which he has sought so laboriously in the best schools of both hemispheres.

Of scientific and literary studies he will treat after he has said here what a long experience and deep conviction urge him to say on education proper, as distinguished from instruction.

What Education is

Under the Christian religion, man, regenerated by baptism, is taught that the entire race is called in Christ to a supernatural destiny, through the profession of a supernatural faith, the practice of supernatural virtues, and the use of divine ordinances, that are supernatural in their aims and effects. It is the sacred and indispensable duty of every Christian father to live up to this belief himself, and to see to it that his children are educated up to it.

On this point the Church has spoken clearly, emphatically, definitely: so, there is no room for questioning her mind and purpose thereon. We only insist on it here, because, in our own country, as elsewhere, the right and duty of the parent are made to conflict with what is called the right of the State. Let it suffice that the same St. Paul has said elsewhere:³31 Timothy, v. 8. “If any man have not care of his own, and especially of those of his house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” Is it not a confirmation of the charge given so many ages before that to the fathers in Israel, “Lay up these my words in your hearts and minds, and hang them for a sign on your hands, and place them between your eyes. Teach your children that they meditate on them”?⁴4Deuteronomy, xi. 19. And again, at a period much nearer the Christian era, “Hast thou children? Instruct them, and bow down their [neck] from their childhood.”⁵5Ecclesiasticus, vii. 25. The Christian generation of the nineteenth century believe and affirm that it is their right and their duty to form their children from infancy to the knowledge of “the truth as it is in Christ Jesus,” and to the perfect imitation of his virtues. The injunctions of the apostle, and the Divine Will revealed and declared through him, they believe to be addressed not to the State or the civil magistrate, but to every father in his place and office as head and master in his household. The obligation of seeing to it that parents do comply with this duty, has been imposed on those whom “the Holy Ghost hath placed... bishops, to rule the church of God,” and in a special manner on him who is, under Christ, Shepherd of the whole flock, and whose office it is to feed both the lambs and the sheep. The maintenance and development of Christian life, as such, is the care of the Christian Society, the Church,—not of the Civil Society, only in so far as the Church requires and accepts its cooperation.

So much for the duty of the parent in Christian education,—as well as its correlative, the right to educate. As to its exercise, we need not say much. It is the province of the mother to train and to form,—it is that of the father to sustain and aid her with the whole weight of his authority and sympathy. Where both parents are true practical Christians, united in mind and heart in this the most essential part of their work,—though they may not have much of worldly learning or worldly means,—they will be sure to bring up their children well.

As, however, we devote a special chapter to “Education in the home of the laboring man and the unlettered,”—we must now give some practical advice on parental duty in directing or superintending the education of children both in the home or in institutions outside the home.

I. Home Education

Where the atmosphere of the home is pure and healthful to soul and body,—though it may be neither the abode of wealth nor that of culture,—its influence on the spiritual growth of the child is most salutary. For both the interior and the exterior man may grow to all goodness and loveliness even in the cottage of the field-laborer, the shepherd, or the peasant, as we read of David growing up beneath the roof of Jesse, of the Blessed Peter Favre developing all his most amiable and most admirable qualities of soul while pasturing the flocks of his father and uncle on the mountains of Savoy,—like the exquisite and sweet-scented flowers of his native Alpine solitudes, unfolding all their loveliness amid barren crags and perpetual snows.⁶6See in “The Life of the Blessed Peter Favre” (London, 1873), the early training of one of the greatest men of the sixteenth century.

Nothing can ever wholly take the place of the blessed and manifold influences which the daily words and actions of father and mother, their very bearing and manners, and the mysterious but all-powerful action of the very air that good people breathe, exercise on the children that grow up around them. The earth retains throughout the longest and severest winter, even when all is covered with deep snow, some portion of the vital heat received from the sun in summer; and we know that, even after the sun has set and during all the hours of the darkest night, the air retains the most precious qualities of what is called diffused light; and thus beneath the frost and the snow will the germs of all the earth’s beauty and wealth continue to bide the return of spring; thus, too, through the midnight darkness all living things in field and forest will continue to grow till dawn once more brings back the sun.

We have, at the moment we write, one of these obscure, laborious, but most blessed homes quite near us, where the children, amid the silent, gentle, but most powerful influence of their parents’ and grand-parents’ homely virtues and example, all grow up to that upright, innocent, and honorable type of manhood and womanhood, that so vividly brings before us the dear homes of another land. Yes, yes,---there is a teaching more eloquent than the lessons of the most accomplished masters and mistresses, an education more congenial to man’s higher nature, more beneficial to the growth of every faculty of soul and every power of body, than all the book-learning and all the scientific gymnastics of the schools.

It is not that we do not prize the latter at its very highest worth, but that we consider the influence and training of a father and a mother in whom the Spirit of God dwells, and who bring up their dear ones according to the instincts of that Spirit, to be the sole mighty agency of nature, mightily seconded by nature’s God, for the unfolding of all that is noblest in the human soul.

The Home-Formation prepares the Substance of the Soul

This first education of the child in the paternal home, is one that lays the foundation of all future greatness; just as the neglect of such education, or a perverse and vicious one, is the source of all the failures, the misery, the guilt, and ruin of after-life. This first formation (creation the old Catholic language termed it) gives to the soul its “grit,” as well its shape: it never loses either the mold or the temper then imparted to it. Like the magnificent Japanese vases seen at our Centennial Exposition, the exquisite designs, wrought, after the casting of the vase, into its substance, or the no less marvelously beautiful scenes inlaid on the bronze itself in gold or silver or color, are the work of an artist other than the potter. Thus the first formation of the soul and the character in the home and by the creative influence of the parents and of the whole atmosphere around them,---is like the casting of the vase. It gets its form, its molding in these early years;---the second education of the schools, and the final education in the world amid professional business and the battle of life, may be compared to the designing, the inlaying, the enameling, the chasing, and the coloring bestowed on the molded form to make it in every way perfect and admirable. This extraordinary wealth of ornamentation, however, is only lavished on vessels made of the best materials. Where the metal is base, or where there is a flaw, the artist will not attempt to carry out elaborate and costly designs, for the imperfect or unworthy vessel will not bear them.

At any rate, the action of virtuous and intelligent parents, during this first process of education, may be most aptly likened to the hidden, slow, but wonderful action of nature in forming the most precious marbles or the rarest gems; the marbles of Paros and Carrara, out of which Art has fashioned its masterpieces, are composed of the same substance as the commonest limestone, just as the diamond is identical in composition with pure coal or charcoal. By the action of laws, whose secret is known to the Divine Author of all things,---the beautiful marble is prepared by the hand of nature and made ready for the hand of the sculptor, just as the diamond is crystallized in Nature’s own secret laboratory, where no human eye has ever witnessed the process, and laid up for the skill of the jeweler to polish and to set it.

We repeat it, the influence and the action of the best of parents in forming the soul and life of their dear ones, is in accordance with the laws of nature, with His will who is its creator and lawgiver; it is therefore strictly natural; and even in following the higher impulses of supernatural grace, this formation does not cease to be natural in the full and comprehensive sense in which the Christian philosopher understands it.

This formation makes the marble marble, and not lime; makes the diamond diamond, and not coal-dust. The soul of the child receives therefrom its quality and its form; the education which follows only gives polish, design, ornament, and setting.

Infinite Reverence due to Children

Hence, parents cannot be too careful and wary in all that relates to the early training of their children. There is not an action, a word, a tone, a look, that is not observed by these wonderfully attentive little eyes; and not a thing observed that is not remembered for a time at least. Everything in the parents influences these sensitive plants; everything in the home,—its comfort or discomfort, its cleanliness or uncleanness; the pictures on the walls, the very furniture and its arrangement, all exercise a subtle but most undoubted action on the senses of these tender ones. Like the self-registering instruments of our observatories, they receive and retain impressions made by all the phenomena of earth and air; and because these impressions act upon the secret springs of nature in the soul, life’s center, the action produces results that are permanent, sometimes everlasting.

Indeed, it is because the soul of man partakes of the nature of the Infinite and Eternal, that parents should be so solicitous about every teaching and every impression given to their infant children. It is ascertained that there are trees in our American forests that live for upward of a thousand years; the English yew tree lives longer than this, and we know not but others may be endowed with still greater longevity. Thus the impression made on one of these saplings, the twist given to it, the mark set upon it, will remain forever on the tree’s substance, and outlive in duration kingdoms and empires.

Your child’s soul is destined to outlive the sun in the heavens, to live with God, sharing His life, His glory, His bliss throughout all the unimagined countless cycles of eternity. This is elementary Christian truth. There is not an impression you make on the soul of your babe,—for good or for evil,—that is not of itself destined to be everlasting. There is not a direction or inclination your teaching or your neglect gives to that tender soul, but will persist beyond the grave. There is no lesson of yours, no matter how imparted,—by words, or actions, or the influence of your life and your home,—but is of infinite importance to your child’s welfare, of eternal consequence to its greatness here and hereafter. We say “hereafter,”—for it is only in the Eternal City that man attains to the full perfection of manhood. Eternal life is the autumn of humanity, the golden season of maturity and perpetual fruition.

What Seeds should be sown in Young Hearts

When, therefore, you, O Father, encourage and aid your wife, in every way that your countenance, cooperation, and sympathy can, in sowing in your child’s heart the first seeds of generosity, self-denial, devotion to the welfare and happiness of others,—the early love and fear of God, the sense of duty and inflexible honor, the horror of all that is untruthful, hypocritical, and time-serving; you are sowing seeds of immortality.

We have seen gardeners in France, where common wine is so plenty, employ it to water certain favorite plants, because the generous liquid imparts to the flowers a richer hue. We have heard of persons in tropical climates injecting the living tree with some deep coloring matter, in order that such precious woods as mahogany might by this process receive a deeper and more beautiful tint. Indeed, modern chemistry has found means of injecting the veins of wood employed in certain important constructions with a liquid that will prevent the wood from decaying and crumbling away.

All these industries of the gardener, the merchant, and the mechanic, will help a thoughtful parent to understand what undying and varied beauty, what priceless qualities of mind and heart, what immortal vigor and virtue,—can be imparted to the soul of a child by the careful and conscientious culture of father and mother,—by HOME-EDUCATION.

Special Advice to Fathers

We must not repeat here the instructions given to mothers on this important subject.⁸8See “The Mirror of True Womanhood.” As, however, the father’s authority is paramount in the family, and as he before all and above all is responsible for the vicious education given in the household, we are bound to direct his attention to some few points of no little moment.

Let him see to it that there be in the house neither pictures, statues, nor books, unworthy of meeting the eye of innocent childhood and chaste-souled youth. Parents too often need to be reminded that the first and incomparably the most essential purity, is that of the soul—of the mind, memory, and imagination. So many young people of both sexes grow up around us to beautiful manhood and womanhood without ever having had a thought or a suspicion of evil cross their mind or fancy! One feels, in presence of these spotless souls, as if one beheld an angel descended from Paradise, surrounded with an atmosphere of heavenly light and fragrance.

There is no father, who in his heart of hearts does not most devoutly wish that his little sons and daughters may grow up in this ignorance of all that can stain soul or body, as well as in the knowledge and practice of all the virtues and graces, that can make innocence itself tenfold attractive and powerful for good. Innocence is the virgin gold without alloy or blemish; the added virtues and graces are the exquisite form given to the gold, the chaste designs and enameling that embellish, and the gems that enrich it. The soul thus kept pure, and then perfected by every manly or womanly virtue, and further adorned by all the graces and accomplishments of education,—is a vessel into which God may pour His Spirit, and which He may use for all His most gracious purposes.

No Vile Pictures or Books in the Home

It behooves, therefore, every enlightened father, to banish from his house the vile pictures and the still more vile literature of the day. It is one of the deep schemes of the atheistical and social revolutionists of our times, to publish in the cheapest and most attractive forms books of every description aiming at implanting corruption both in the mind and in the heart of the popular masses,—of boys and girls, particularly.

There are works of fiction written in the most enchanting form, every one of which is based on some theory hostile to religion, subversive of conjugal fidelity, of filial piety and parental authority, and illustrated by romantic incidents that are as sure to deaden or to kill innocence in the soul, as slow doses of arsenic or strychnine are certain to destroy within a given time the life of the body.

The revolutionists of Europe showed a diabolical skill in conveying into the homes of the people whom they wished to dechristianize and corrupt before they made them ripe for insurrection, these antichristian and antisocial romances at a mere nominal price, and these cheap and exquisitely illustrated works in which all that was most sacred was caricatured, and all that had hitherto been deemed pure and chaste was profaned and defiled.

Deadly Influence of Bad Books in France

We remember, at Laval and Amiens, in France, to have watched on Saturday evenings, young working-men and women forming long files before some cheap book-store, where these productions were sold or lent for a mere trifle, to be taken home and fed upon for several days or the entire ensuing week,—filling the whole soul with the intoxicating fumes of the rankest impiety and the most unblushing licentiousness. We knew then what fruits would come of this devil’s husbandry; and has not France reaped them? and are they not, at this moment, preparing to gather another harvest of civil strife, social convulsion, and antichristian hatred, such as, perhaps, the world has never yet seen?

French Novels the Soul’s Poison

Is it not notorious that French novels, and indeed, the whole of the lighter literature of France, breathe a spirit deadly to the souls of the readers and to all the virtues on which, in our midst till now, family happiness and purity were founded? One thing of late has filled us with equal astonishment and alarm,—that our most distinguished publishing houses should so far forget their own high position, the esteem in which they were held by the public, and the reverence they owed both to the religion they profess and the morality of Christian families,—as to translate and circulate the infinitely dangerous productions of Georges Sand and the most seductive French and German novelists. Surely this is worse than the crime attributed, rightly or wrongly, to a fanatical partisan during our late civil war, who purchased abroad in every center of pestilential disease, the garments of the dead victims, imported and scattered them among our most populous cities, that a multiplicity of plagues might effect what armies could not on the battle-field;—the ruin of our people.

Guilt incurred in Circulating them

These publishing houses themselves are loud in condemning our “Dime Novels” and filthy illustrated papers. But we do not hesitate to affirm, that beneath the enchanting style of the pestilential works of fiction which they popularize in our midst, a worse poison is prepared for the unsuspecting mind of youth,—than in the worst of “Dime Novels.” Each is a curse to our people; the French novel a tenfold curse to our American homes with their traditional beliefs and noble ancestral virtues. And will the propagation of this curse among the Christian families and chaste youth of America, bring a blessing on the publishers, or on those who lend their pens to the vile work of translation?

It is for fathers of families,—the God-fearing men whom this book will reach,—to exclude these poisonous and pestilential books from their homes. This rigorous exclusion becomes, at present, more than ever necessary. For it has of late become the fashion to issue in the cheapest form the most attractive books in the whole range of English literature. Of these “Libraries,” as they are designated, some may be more free from objection than others; but, for indiscriminate use, in the hands of young people, of children especially, all are most objectionable.

Keep them out of your children’s hands,—keep them out of your homes.

Some of our Catholic publishers, anxious to provide an antidote as cheap and as attractive to the taste as the poisonous intellectual food of these “libraries,”—are publishing popular and cheap editions of the masterpieces of Catholic writers. May God prosper their enterprise, and increase a hundred-fold their own means of doing good!

Danger of promiscuous Newspaper reading

The same precautions and watchfulness should be used by Christian parents, in a very great measure, in the choice of newspapers and periodicals. We are not afraid that any truly enlightened journalist shall take us to task upon this subject. No parent,—we would venture to affirm,—could be more strict in excluding from his home and from the hands of his children, both the vile literature we have been describing, and the indiscriminate use of the daily and periodical productions of the Press,—than several distinguished journalists well known to us. Newspapers are only for men engaged in the active business of the world. They take from the columns of the daily journal what is to their own immediate purpose, and let the rest go. Third or fourth-rate politicians alone find in editorial disquisitions the intellectual food they crave for. But children and young people are not politicians. And may their good angels long keep them out of the miry paths of politics!

Besides,—there is no worse school for the mind than our daily papers. The cheap and very imperfect knowledge to be found there on such a multiplicity of subjects, only taxes the memory, without exercising the intellect and the judgment. The superficial learning thus easily acquired, will prevent a man from applying himself seriously to methodical study. What such learners gain in surface they lose in depth. They never attain to real science on any subject. There is a worse injury done to the mind than this,—it is to unfix its firmest beliefs and notions, to leave it without strong convictions or lofty principles. For, it is very hard for a young man to read, day after day, misrepresentations of his baptismal faith and the dearest objects of his veneration; to see the principles he has been taught to consider as immovable as the foundations of the earth, laughed at as superannuated, or absurd, or illusory, without finding all firm ground of respect and belief swept from beneath him.

Let parents believe us, then,—the later in life their sons betake them to reading much of the newspapers, the better for their minds, their hearts, and their fortune, as well!

Be your Sons’ Companions

This is the proper place for recommending to fathers to make themselves the companions of their grown-up sons. Of the watchfulness to be exercised by a good mother in order to keep her boys from dangerous associations, the author has written at length in another work,⁹9See “The Mirror of True Womanhood,” chapters xiv. and xv., pages 217-290. and he earnestly requests fathers to ponder seriously the advice there given. It is so desirable that both parents should be guided in this vital matter, by the same rules! As we have already said, it must be the father’s delight as well as his duty to make the mother’s will the supreme law in this respect.

But we find it impossible to turn our back on this part of our subject, without again beseeching every father who takes up this book, to make every effort, every sacrifice of his own rest, and comfort, in order to make his sons and daughters find at home all the amusement and recreation they need, and in order, as well, to share all the out-door amusements of his grown-up children.

Dearest reader, whoever you are, we suppose you to have nothing in this world so much at heart, as the making of your own home the sweet paradise to which you long to come back, whenever business or duty keeps you away for a time, and out of which you never go without regretting the necessity that impels you. Is it not to have one such a sweet spot on earth that you have labored late and early? Is not the creation of such a true home—a true heart-rest—the reward you most covet for all your labors and trials on this side of the grave? Then do your utmost to make your home to be for your sons and daughters what it is for you, the center of all their thoughts, affections, and longings.

Beware of Bad Companions

One poor young man’s terrible fate brings, after many years, before our mind the blissful interior of such a home, and the tragic consequences of slighting a parent’s admonitions about loose companions.

The victim in this sad domestic tragedy was in his twenty-first year,—the son of a man who had begun by being a hod-carrier, then a journeyman mason, then a builder on his own account, and finally a most successful speculator in real estate, but in every stage of his business a man fearing God, self-reliant, of equal integrity and business capacity, honored and trusted by all who knew him, and ever the modest, unobtrusive man he had been from his early youth.

He had made for himself and his five children just such a little home-paradise as you would expect the true Christian, without pretension or love of display, but with abundant means and natural good taste, to create for himself. No one knew how much of comfort, of goodness, of happiness, and native refinement there was in that “nest of a house,” but those who partook of its hospitality, and they were not many.

The two oldest sons had been successively associated with the father in his own thriving business, had been most happily married, and had gone forth from beneath the parental roof to found homes in every way most like their mother’s, coming back weekly to her to spend the Sunday’s rest in the sunshine of her own delighted smile and her husband’s proud affection. The youngest boy,—perhaps over-petted by his parents because he was the youngest, had asked to be sent to college, and had finished with credit his collegiate course. On returning to his parents, he seemed to weary of the quiet of their home-life,—and, if the truth must be told,—of the companionship of his parents and of his brothers and sisters. He had formed a friendship with a college companion, belonging to a family much superior to his own in social position,—and, in spite of the anxious entreaties of his mother and the indignant remonstrances of his father, he spent most of his free time in this friend’s company, and accepted even an invitation to pass several weeks with him on a shooting excursion.

This young gentleman, the other, of course, invited to his father’s house on their return. The beautiful young daughter of the house, the twin-sister of our collegian, struck the fancy of the fashionable and well-born friend, and the latter at once resolved to make a conquest of her. He was handsome, witty, accustomed to the best society, and played and sang charmingly. The artless girl was smitten by all these accomplishments as well as by the marked attention the young visitor paid her. This happened on the very first night. But both parents, warned by their secret instincts, did not invite their son’s friend to return, and lost no time in telling their son with all due precaution and tenderness,—that the young gentleman’s companionship was one they did not wish for him, and that his intimacy in the family was most undesirable. Had there been no other reason for this than the patronizing airs of their late visitor, the honorable self-respect of the parents would not submit to be looked down upon by anybody. Besides, the young man was known to be fast, and that was a sufficient motive to cut off their family from all intercourse with him.

Unfortunately their son was blind to all these reasons, and deaf to their entreaties, and he had already begun to turn his sister’s head about the conquest she had made of his wealthy and much-admired friend. The latter, presuming on this friendship, renewed his visits as well as his attentions to the now conscious and fascinated girl; and the visits became so frequent and the attention so marked that the father felt himself bound to tell his visitor, that he could not permit him to continue his intercourse with a family so much inferior to his own in social position. He therefore requested him to abstain from anything like attention to his daughter, since an alliance between the families was not to be thought of.

The other was not to be put off in this way. The father had spoken plainly to him, and he resented his interference as an insult to his own family pride, resolving to punish the parent in the child. He had a zealous ally in the girl’s brother, and through him kept up a clandestine correspondence with her. The girl’s infatuation was natural enough, beset as she was by secret professions of love on the part of the false friend, and by the guilty persuasions of her brother. She had a conscience, however; and deemed herself bound to tell all to her mother, laying before her the letters she had received. Thereupon the honest mason sought the young gentleman’s father and laid the whole matter before him. He had no desire, he said, that any of his children should wed outside of their own condition. He was anxious to secure for his daughter, the virtuous and industrious son of a man like himself, who had been the architect of his own fortunes and belonged to his own Church. Any other would only create division, discomfort, and unhappiness in his family.

Meanwhile, the two young men had gone out fishing together, in order to console each other on the untoward opposition their plans met with, and to devise some means of thwarting it. They drank freely all day, and were returning homeward at dusk, when some ill-natured allusion of the half-tipsy lover to the insolence of wealthy shoe-blacks and hod-carriers, stirred up his companion’s blood. Hot words were bandied, and blows were exchanged, and in the scuffle the boat was upset, but not before the mason’s son had received in falling a blow on the temple which rendered him insensible. Neither of the young men could swim; the senseless man sank to the bottom; while the other barely saved his own life by clinging to the rudder of the upset boat till fishermen at a short distance came to the rescue. But the unfortunate companion, in the interval, had sunk and come to the surface repeatedly, and now was to be found no more. When, after much exertion, the body was recovered, all life had been long extinct.

And so, into that family which had never known sorrow or sin, late at night, the fishermen carried the dead undutiful son, destroyed in the full flower of his youth, because he would choose his own companions, and be wiser, better than the parents who had so tenderly,—all too tenderly, it may be,—reared him. On the grief of the mother,—the heart-rending remorse of the twin-sister, we mercifully drop the veil.

On this matter, as well as on many others, which regard domestic education, we must refer our readers to “The Mirror of True Womanhood,” and the Mother’s office in the household.¹⁰10See, in particular, chapters xii., xiii., xiv., xv.

Training of the Mind

With respect to intellectual education, it must be further added, that the father cannot be too watchful and firm in preventing his sons from acquiring loose habits of learning, thinking, and studying. It is most essential to the welfare of every boy that he be forced to be orderly and methodical in acquiring knowledge, as well as in using it. Do not give a child too much to do, but make him do well whatever you give him. This thoroughness and accuracy may be a little irksome to him in the beginning; but if you are firm and persistent, the boy will soon see the benefit of working in this way. A mind must be very ill constituted, that does not take a great natural delight in acquiring knowledge, and in making a sensible progress in it. We are so framed by our all-wise Creator, that the soul rejoices as much at mastering a problem of algebra or geometry, at learning to draw a classic head or a beautiful tree in a landscape, as in being the first at base-ball or cricket. We feel a joy and a pride in cultivating and displaying our powers,—a deeper joy and loftier pride at excelling in exercises of the mind than in those of the body.

You must act upon this natural love of progress and excellence, and accustom your boys, in whatever they do, to do it accurately, heartily, and well. For well they can scarcely do it unless they do it with a will. One indispensable condition toward doing everything well is, not only to put their heart in it, but to put their whole mind to it. Attention to one thing at a time, undivided attention to what one is doing here and now,—are golden rules for success. Inattention weakens the mind and prevents it from grasping the subject or taking in the knowledge of what is just before it. It is like the attempt one would make to grasp with the hand, at one and the same time, three different balls, each of which is quite large enough to fill it. “One thing at a time,” must be the rule. We have known men, gifted with more than fair abilities, who have succeeded only in becoming “confused” in every subject they would fain study, comprehend, or discuss. Because their mind never had been trained to these habits of accuracy and close attention. Place before their mind’s eye the simplest proposition, and, instead of looking at it simply as it is, they will puzzle themselves by seeing, alongside of it, another proposition which is both like and unlike the first,—so that they do not know which is which. These men become the most troublesome of logicians, because they never seize accurately what you say to them, nor see clearly what they mean themselves.

Grammar-School Education

Happy the children blessed with a home in which they can receive a complete education, moral and intellectual, fitting them for all the duties of after-life! We fear that such homes are very rare among us,—rare, at least, as compared with the immense majority of families less privileged in culture or in means. In Ireland and England during the dark centuries of persecution, home-education was the exclusive mode of training the children alike of rich and poor Catholics. The very necessity of rearing them in the knowledge and practice of their ancestral faith, as well as in all such branches of learning as became their station, made the parents themselves uncommonly careful in acquiring the necessary accomplishments and the methods by which these should be taught to others. Thus were brought up many a generation of devoted men and women,—true to all that we hold as most sacred and praiseworthy. College education was only to be had abroad, or,—in the case of children of the lower classes,—to be got in scraps from itinerant masters, who taught at the risk of their own lives, while the peril of their pupils and of the pupils’ parents was little less.

These days have passed in the Sister Islands,—and the dark cloud which there so long oppressed Catholic homes, now rests on more than one continental country;—how long,—is the secret of God’s providence. But no man who has read in local history of the trials and heroism of our Catholic ancestors, and who is acquainted with the robust faith, the solid and varied learning, as well as the unshaken attachment to principle of the men and women who have gone forth from these homes,—can feel surprise at the zeal of their descendants for the religious training of the young.

It is far from our purpose,—even could we do so here with advantage or propriety,—to enter into a discussion of principles concerning religious teaching in the schools maintained at the public expense and placed under the control of the State.

We simply affirm the sacred and indefeasible right of the parent to see to it that his child, by whomsoever or wheresoever educated, be not only safe from all teaching and influence calculated to weaken his faith or stain his purity, but also trained in the knowledge and practice of the true religion. It is the parent’s imperative and indispensable duty to take care that his children are so brought up at home: the masters to whom he trusts his boys outside of his home, either for elementary instruction or for college or university education, only represent him, and possess over his children that portion of the parental authority that he devolves on them.

If the college or the school cannot or will not give his boys such religious and moral training as is the parent’s right and duty to obtain for them, then his conscience will induce him to seek elsewhere such educators as may fulfill the obligation of forming the mind and heart of youth in accordance with the dictates of the divine law.

The Foremost Duty of a Parent

The religious and moral training of the children, is foremost among parental duties. No matter in whose hands the boy is placed, and how safe soever the guidance of his teachers may be, the father must see to it that the teacher does his duty thoroughly.

It cannot, from this point of view of simple and unavoidable duty, be a matter of surprise that Catholic parents everywhere show themselves so jealous of the purity of the religious doctrines taught their children, and of the irreproachable morality of both masters and companions. Nor, where the atmosphere and teaching of a school is judged pernicious by the parents themselves or their trusted religious guides,—can it be a matter of reproach to such parents, if they use every endeavor and make every sacrifice to secure schools and teachers, safe in point of doctrine and morality, and equal or superior in point of ability to the more privileged or patronized.

This Conscientious Spirit not Aggressive

Between the imperative sense of conscientious duty impelling both parents and their religious teachers to secure truly Christian schools, and the aggressive spirit that denounces what is wrong and defective without ever building up anything,—there is assuredly a wide difference.

We are for allowing other religious denominations to secure and maintain for their children educational institutions in every way suited to their views of parental duty. But the right we should vindicate for others, we must unhesitatingly and unflinchingly assert and pursue in our own behalf.

Yes,—a thoroughly Christian, thoroughly Catholic system of education for our boys,—is the first and most pressing need of our age and country. The Church has again and again declared it so; and, even in the absence of any such recent and solemn declaration, the voice of authority in the past has spoken loudly and repeatedly, while the clearly expressed voice of God in His revealed word, leaves no doubt as to the duty of parents and the obligation of pastors.

Most blessed of God, therefore, and approved of all true men is the generosity manifested by all rich and poor in this needful work of creating and supporting Christian schools. And, above all, most blessed will be the day when our Hierarchy can spare, from the many pressing wants of their struggling institutions, the means necessary for creating Normal Schools,—the nurseries of accomplished teachers of both sexes!

With these remarks on the greatest need of the century, we pass to the superintendence which the father ought to exercise on his boys daily after their return from school.

This superintendence is but a part of the parent’s necessary cooperation in the work which the teacher is doing during school hours. Are we doing parents injustice when we say, that very many, if not most of them, seem not to be aware of the great importance of their helping forward by every means in their own power, the efforts of masters, professors, and all others engaged in educating their children?

Education the joint Work of both Parents and Teachers

This is a matter not to be passed over lightly. For, after many years spent in Canada and the United States, in the labors of a professorship, and after a serious study of college and university life abroad, the author is bound to say,—that one of the chief reasons,—if not, indeed, the chief reason of the ill success of college education in the case of so many boys, lies at the door of the parents.

The parents at home and the masters and directors in school or college, are bound to work together in educating the boy. The work for which they join hands, is always and necessarily the work of the parents. If, at school or in college, those who undertake to educate youth fail in doing their full duty, they sin, in doing so, against God, against the parents, and against the child, especially. But, meanwhile, the parents are not relieved from their obligation of watching with a scrupulous care over the progress of their boys both in learning and in virtue. When the school or the college fails to do its work, or does it wrongly,—then it becomes incumbent on the father to have the wrong repaired, and to use a twofold diligence in making up for lost time.

The great bulk of fathers and mothers,—even of the better educated,—think, or act as if they thought,—that they have done their full duty, when they have sent their children to the Sunday school for religious instruction, and to school or college for secular instruction, or the completion of their entire course of education.

This is a great mistake. You must moreover make sure that your boy reaches the Sunday school in good time, that he is there properly and thoroughly taught;—and it will be both your interest and your duty, if you attend yourself occasionally in the catechism class, and, after catechism hours, question closely the boy about what he has learned. But, will not this be too great a hardship for the child as well as for the parent? So far as the child is concerned, there will be no hardship, provided that you study to make him love to learn his catechism, as you should make him do all else,—by a generous sense of duty.

We remember well, while yet a very young priest in the dear old city of Quebec, that hard-working men would walk for miles to Sunday school with their boys, making the road pleasant for these by lively and entertaining conversation, and, when catechism and prayers were ended, returning to their homes with redoubled joy to share with their children all the sweet and innocent recreation of the Sunday evening. Indeed, the Sunday-school seemed to be the great work of the Lord’s day for all the most distinguished men of the place. The then Provincial Secretary, the Right Honorable Sir Dominick Daly, was at the head of the Christian Doctrine Society, and taught his own catechism class, and so did every one of our foremost merchants and young men,—the non-commissioned officers of the garrison also deeming it an honor to take a hand in this divine work.

And thus we were reminded of our own native home, where the gentlest and the best devoted several hours of the blessed Sabbath repose to the religious instruction of the young.

No, no! Do not say it is a hardship either for fathers or for their sons to gather, on the Lord’s day, this sweet manna of divine truth;—doubly and tenfold sweet the God of the Sabbath knows how to make it to men of good will.

We say nothing of the means employed by zealous and enlightened priests to render the exercises of the Sunday school interesting, attractive, and delightful,—such as choral singing, recitations, and appropriate rewards from time to time.

In like manner you will see to it that your boys do their duty at school, and that they study after school hours the matters given them by their teachers. Omit no effort to excite and sustain your boys’ emulation; if their masters are really zealous to push them forward, do you second this zeal by every means in your power. See their teachers often; show them that you are most anxious to cooperate with them. Without being either obtrusive or unduly inquisitive, you can easily ascertain what methods are used in the school, and what pains taken by the masters in furthering the progress of their pupils.

Respect, Love, and Sustain your Children’s Teachers

But, above all things, beware of the too common and most hurtful custom of certain parents (and uneducated parents are not the sole offenders in this respect),—of considering their children’s teachers, and treating them, as if they were natural enemies to be watched, abused, and thwarted at every turn. There are parents, who take the part of their unruly and untruthful children against their teachers, who look upon every punishment inflicted on the latter as an injustice which calls for immediate redress. There are others again who keep their children away from school on the slightest pretext, or who are utterly careless of sending them punctually at the appointed hours; and having thus broken in upon their boys’ studies and seriously hindered their progress,—they will blame and abuse the masters for the backwardness, the insubordination, and all the irregular and idle habits of which they,—the parents,——are themselves the sole cause!

Never,—unless you have carefully and calmly ascertained the fact,—never sustain your boys against the teacher’s authority; and, especially, never, when your boys complain of the latter, allow yourself to utter one word of censure or blame. Always lean to the side of authority. You have given the teacher yours in the school; make your boys respect it invariably.

Take a lively and continual interest in your boys’ studies. Let them feel that you are more pleased with their daily progress, than if they brought you home gold or some precious object at the end of each day’s schooling.

If you are forced to choose another school for your children,—or, when you have not made your first choice,—we should advise you to peruse slowly the following beautiful lines, full of that love of innocence and child-life, which was so dear to the Master.

Yes,—that is what parents and teachers, the most advanced in years and in learning, the reverend guides and eminent governors of peoples, can do every day they live, in spite of the longest and widest experience,

“To learn, as well as teach, the way to know.”

The oldest of us, the most learned, the wisest,—as they look back over their dealings with the young, would wish to undo much that they did, to unlearn much of what they thought they knew, and to begin again with childhood, and “learn the way to know,”—the way to know child-nature, in particular, the sweet and love-lit way to children’s souls.

Above all, O fathers, be sure,—whether your dear ones are “schooled” inside your home or outside of it,—that their souls are not narrowed down and straightened by the methods followed in teaching them, and that their hearts retain all the freshness, the candor, the simplicity of childhood. Keep them children as long as ever you can!