ke choice of but one pursuit for your child, and discourage in
him the American tendency to be "jack of all trades." One occupation,
whatever it may be, whether trade or profession, if properly pursued, will
demand all his energies, and give him no time to follow another; and
besides, it will afford him an ample subsistence. There is much truth in
the two old and quaint adages, "jack of all trades, and master of none;"
"he has too many irons in the fire,--some of them must burn!" Show your
children the truth and application of these.

But while this is one extreme, and detrimental to the interests of the
child, its opposite extreme, viz., that of bringing up the child to no
pursuit whatever, is still more injurious. We had better have too many
irons in the fire than none at all. It is a base and cowardly desertion of
duty to shrink from the task of human occupation. Constituted as human
society is, the members of it being mutually dependent upon each other for
support, it is evident that our happiness materially depends upon the
active concurrence of each individual in the general system of social
well-being. He who withholds, therefore, his cooperation and stands aloof
from all employment, destroys a link in that chain of things by which the
fabric of society is kept together and preserved. He is unfaithful to those
sacred obligations which arise out of our relations to the state and the
church, and he abuses those inalienable rights with which God has invested
the social compact. Besides, he fails to meet those conditions upon which
the vigorous development of individual life and character depends.
Indolence is no friend either to physical, mental or moral development. The
body becomes imbecile, the spirit supine and sentimental, the morals
vitiated, and the mind sinks into complete puerility. Activity is a law of
all life, and the condition of its healthy development and maturity.
Without it we resort to jejune amusement, and from amusement we are hurried
on to dissipation, to the card table and dram shop; and from dissipation
we sink to degradation, infamy and wretchedness. Idleness is thus the
fruitful mother of vice and misery. Our lives cannot exist in a state of
neutrality between active good and active evil. It is, therefore, the duty
of the Christian home to prepare her young members for some useful calling
in life, not only as a means of subsistence, but also as a safeguard
against the evils of idleness.