or said anything
that was wrong in the presence of my children," it being forgotten
that children may be present unseen, that they may overhear the
unuttered. But, one is tempted to ask, Did you by any chance or of
design say or do aught in the presence of your child that was
affirmatively and persuasively right?

I can never forget a scene I witnessed many years ago. Shortly after
the passing of his father, a son entered the death chamber, shook his
fist in the face of his dead father and exclaimed with tearless and
yet heartbreaking grief: "You are responsible for the ruin of my
life." Later I learned that the father was a mere accumulator of money
who had believed every paternal duty to have been fulfilled because he
gave and planned to bequeath possessions to his children. Multitudes
of parents there are who during their lifetime should be made
conscious of the lives they are suffering to go to wreck, theirs the
major responsibility. Happily for some parents, most children who
survey the ruin of their lives fail to fix the responsibility where it
properly belongs,--in parental neglect of the obligation to bring to
children moral stimulus and spiritual guidance.

But the important thing for parents is not to guard their speech lest
children overhear them but to guard their souls that children be free
to see all. If Emerson was right with respect to a man's character
uttering itself in every word he speaks, this is truest of all within
the microcosm of the home, wherein children are relentlessly attentive
to parental speech and silence alike, pitiless assessors of omission
as well as commission. What parents are, not what they would have
themselves imagined to be by children, shines through every word and
act, however scrupulous be parental vigilance over speech and conduct.
It may be very important for parents to be watchful of their tongues
as they are rather frequently urged to be. But it is rather more
imperative to be watchful over their lives. We are tempted to forget
that parental duties are positive as well as negative, that it is not
enough for parents not to hurt a child, not to do injury to his moral
and spiritual well-being. For of all beings parents must, paraphrasing
the word of the German poet, be aggressively and resistlessly good,
pervasively beneficent, throughout their contact with a child.

It is a problem whether it be more necessary to counsel children to
honor parents or to bid parents be des