erving as far as they may be of
the honor of children. Years ago a great teacher of the nation pleaded
as men commonly plead for reverence and honor on the part of children
toward parents. But in truth we have no right to plead for reverence
filial unless to that plea there be added solemn entreaty to the
elders to make it possible for the young to do them reverence and
honor. When we, the elders of this day, bemoan the want of unity
between our children and ourselves, let us not be so sure of our
children's unworthiness but rather ask ourselves whether we are worthy
of that which our parents enjoyed at our hands, the reverence and
honor which must needs underlie unity in the home.

Honor, in a word, must lie in the daily living of parents ere they may
await it at the hands of children. The father, who is nothing more
than a cash register or coupon-scissors, is undeserving of honor from
children, however many and goodly be his gifts to them. And the
mother, whose life is given to the trivialities and inanities of every
season's mandate, merits not her children's reverence despite all
Biblical injunction. Children cannot be expected to do more than
outward and perfunctory obeisance to fathers who care solely for the
things of this world, success however achieved, money however gained
and used, power whatever its roots and purposes, nor do honor to
mothers whose passion is for the lesser and the least things of life.

I remember to have estranged a dear friend by urging in the pulpit that,
unless parents strive as earnestly to merit honor as children should
seek to yield it, they will not have it nor yet have been deserving of
it. Let us for a moment get a nearer glimpse of how the matter works out
from day to day. How can a mother whose life is spent in pursuit of the
worthless expect reverence, though the time may come when she will yearn
for it and rue her failure to have won it? The disease of incessant
card-playing has laid low multitudes of wives and mothers, that
card-gambling which has been described by former President Eliot as an
extraordinarily unintelligent form of pleasurable excitement.

There was a time when, in the speech of the Apocryphal teacher of
wisdom men strove for the prizes that were undefiled. But the prizes
of the card table are not only defiled but defiling. They fill the
lives of women not a few with mentally hurtful and morally enervating
excitement. The substitution of the delirium of the