The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, June 19, 1904, Page 13

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY D e s A .6 0. 5 ABOTDIY riIFE HOorTxE - \ KEEPING BAD BOOKS | AWAYFROMCHILDREN | Thirty-Third Telk to Parents by Wm. J. Shearer. matter k d those book: like. If we matter they arn to love those i others reading fau we € ! end in view. Th sk B r d for the moral be heir knowledge, or est books com- t The book of ? ts place. also the book such as may be found t school libraries. More I these for older chil- £ travel, history and s not sufficient to keep bad books n children. The right kind of provided. Any librarian suggestions upon this ecting be it is im- not to con- the age, sex and but also the rt of the coun- es and man erely of the ¢ d the ther similar It is also i ¥ nt r should read son child. w d of the Impor- tance of selecting the right kind of comp ons applies with equal force to the selection of e right kind of books. T n have favorites m r Sometimes It is A hers of the fam- . strangers. Under such « umstances, there is almost certain to be discord and continual jar- ring Who has not known cases where the evil effects of such favor- itism has borne bitter fruit during the whole lives of parents and children? Too much care cannot be taken by parents to see that their decisions are jal. No matter if one child is of re loving disposition and more nother, each must feel equally warm place in ecually prominent ion of the paren they will ever prize that loving regard they will rejoice the parents for and sympathy which they ts each onme without favor, ction has not to rvetain asion cor more te been troubled, or even driven to des; to know what to do with children on Sunday? Even If it has been possible to get them to do just as the parent would have them do, it i hard to know what they should be requiged to do. Any parent who has Micient brute force determination can make children conform to certain def fnite rules, but is that the right thing to do? Certainly not. Of all days. this ie the day that we should strive to get slong by loving kindness. Some pafents make Sundays so un- pleasant that the children dread its approach. No child should be ex- pected to act as parents do on Sun- day. Yet, do not many parents think that children should be amused on Sunday with the same things that emuse themselves? This day should room he child to re lish things by Bible pictures, -school papers and other suit- »me childre will look for- their parents em on that are to have Others, be- privileges whick ause the Arger nc of m on of cake. C se other the love of the parents has prompted. Where this love of parents is apparent t is very ey for the child to pass from the consideration of love of his earthly parents to that of his heavenly father. As the children grow older it is not expected that they will spend much of their time in play. At this stage they will need more attention from their parents that the better training may be .given Many will longer remem- ber with great pleasure the sacred songs sung at a certain hour each Sun- day. Certainly. but few parents are so busy on Sunday that they cannot give some time to the reading or teaching of storles, and in other ways interest their children So far nothing has been said about attending services. Every young child may find pleasure in attending Sunday school. When old enough to take in- terest in and receive benefit from the church services it Is well that chil- dren should get into the habit of at- tending these services. However, pa- rents should remember that it is far harder for the children to remain still any length of time than for adults, nless the services are very interest- ing. Parents, how do your children look forward to Sunday? The true answer to this question will determine whether or not you have given the subject the attention that its import- ahce demands. What about planting faith in chil- dren? You need not do it. It is al- ready there. Children naturally have faith in their parents. All we need to do is to show children why every child should have faith {n God. By faith they may be taught the pro- foundest truths of the Bible. How early the little ones may be taught that God loves good children! How happy they are to learn that their good actions please not only their pa- rents, but their heavenly father as well! The training of a child’s faith is one of our most important duties. The happiness and the usefulness of chil- dren will largely depend upon- their faith. OR every wife who boards there is a husband who is bored, For every wife who does not know how to make coffee there is a husband who forgets how to make / love. The girl who desires tQ retain her feminine fascination from the standpoint of masculine observation had better ‘“‘play at housekeeping” in P e ‘Who can give any good reason why s0 many parents are anxious that their children should be precocious? Precoc- ity means early ripening. The same parents would haye no use for prema- ture peaches. Why, then, should they wish to have their children develop prematurely? Surely nothing but ig- norance can account for gach a sense- less desire. The present 'civilization tends to hasten unduly the developing human being. Much care must there- fore be taken by parents in this re- epect. It is a grand, good thing that very few of those supposed to be prececious are really so. Most parents are only too willing to believe that their chil- dren are a little brighter than those of their neighbors. This is but natural. None but the foolish, vain or ignorant would urge their children forward in the hope that they might appear pre- cocious. History falls to furnish ex- amples of great men or great women who were really precocious in youth. On the contrary, the patient plodders are the ones who generally win life's victories. History Js full of examples of great men who were considered far below the average ability while in school. What good reason, then, Is there for parents Insisting upon their children being hurried in their develop- ment? Why do we do that which will result in so unduly awakening self-es- teem and self-assertion as to make the poor victims almost unbearable? The child’s mind is bound to be active. This is natural. The injury comes from ovgrtaxing it with matters which are beyond its comprehension or keeping it under strain for too many hours. Great care should be taken that a child's mind does not develop at the expense of its body. As has been sald before, the most important thing is to a tent than to board in the smartest apartment hotel that charges $5 a day and keeps its bellboys in gliit braid and brass buttons. This is not the fault of thé board- ing-houses. They are better to-day than they ever have been., It is the fault of the modern woman herseif. It is just as easy to make a “home" out of “two rooms and bath"” as it Is to make it out of fourteen rooms and a private stable; but somehow the woman who boards forgets this. In fact, she forgets every one of the lit- tle graces that once charmed her sweetheart and might keep her hus- band still charmed—a much more dif- Ycult task. She forgets how to use a chafing dish or a samovar; she for- gets how to wear a fancy apron and wield a feather duster; she forgets how te train.a window box or make a cretan curtain. She even forgets how to den a pretty negligee or set a vase of roses where it will show best. Go into the room of the average woman * build up a healthy body. The signs of brain fag should be watched for and the warning should be noted promptly. If the child’s head is hot, if the ex- pression becomes one of anxious de- pression, if the forehead {8 wrinkled and the hands frequently put to the head, if the sleep is disturbed and the appetite impaired there s serious trouble somewhere, 1t I8 the parents’ duty to see where the trouble is. On the other hand, the parents must not be too ready to permit the trouble to be blamed on study. Probably not more than one case out of twenty reported can be shown to be the result of too much school work. Very frequently it is lack of sleep, music lessons, parties and other affairs which make it im- possible for the child to have the proper rest which the growing body demands. It will generally be found that the doctors who complain most of the over- pressure of work in school are those CALL. 13 who boards and you will feel a fit of the blues coming over you at once, without knowing why. The furniture and appointments are in perfect har- mony;- the mald has left things in n state of faultless neatness, and the woman herself i1s gowned to the queen's taste in a stiff Paris frock; but—the husband has gone out to his club and you do not wonder that he has. There is nothing in the place to keep him at home. The room and the woman are like a music box without musie, @ violin without strings. Yet there are lots of women who must board. Homes are an expensive luxury to-day—even apartinent-house homes. A maid costs as much per month as a Purls (rock.” and she Is much more easily spalied. Between the servant problem and. the rent problem we are driven to the comfort and economy of boarding-houses and apartment hotels, where we can save something for bon buns and theater tickets and to meet our Insurance dues. Br HILY EWEd)D. How to keep our husbands home and to prevent ourselves from degenerat- ing into mere automatons, sexless, zest- less creatures, with nothing to do but fancy work and gossiping, is now the problem. There are some women who have solved it. There are, in fact, some women who could make a home a “home”, out of a stall in a nice, clean —_— who have the reputation of giving this reason, when they do not know how else to diagnose the case. Therefore, the parents should watch carefully themselves and, where they find the child Is studying too hard, should in- sist on the work being lessened. stable; who could string the hay and the corn cobs around so attractively that the average man would consider that particular stall a wonderful place. There are some women who can enter the most cheerless room in a cheap boarding house, fling a frock or two over a worn chair, light a fire {ir the grate, pin up a few photographs, spread their silver over the dressing- table and in flve minutés make the place more attractive than an after- noon tea party. They are the women who have an instinct for putting thelr personality into every place and into everything they touch, a talent which every truly feminine woman possesses if she would but cultivate it. The little “bluff” at housekeeping, the “playing at domesticity,” which is easy and inexpensive and more truly fas- cinating than doing your own house- work or striving with the hired girl, seems to be, therefore, the only solu- tion of the boarding-house problem. If you cannot own a house and lot, you can at least always possess a potted plant and a coffee urn, a feather dus- ter and a tea-table. One of the things that a man admires most Is to see a4 woman fussing abuvut & table, arranging flowers, stirring something in the chafing dish, lighting the fire over a samover or pouring tea. Any one of these things makes her seem wonderful and fascinating to him—as wonderful and fascinating as she did when they were tots and he watched her mix mud pies and pat them down In & fluted tin plate. ‘What makes the society girl so fond of giving chafing-dish parties and mix- ing punch or brewing afternoon tea? It i{s the coquette in her that understands the attractiveness in the ruffle of a dalnty swiss apron. She knows that the road to a man's heart does not reall- lie through his stomach, but through his eyes; and that it is not actually the taste of her rarebits that touches his affections, but the fact that he has watched her mixing them and that she has thereby beem enthroned on the little domestic hearth of his imagination. Whether your amateur home be in a summer camp, in a tiny bachelor flat, or in the third-story back of a third- rate boarding house, it is around a little table, covered with a white clgth, that you must build, it. There Is no stage setting so fascinat- Ing as a breakfast table d Worth never made a frock as attractive as a shirt waist suit with a little white apron tied about it. Even the woman who boards can have her chafing-dish, her samovar and’ her teapot, can use them and the thousand and one little tricks of coquetry that go with them effe ively and can thereby make a little “home™ of her eight by ten stall. But the wise woman will have her little make-belleve home outside a boarding house, tucked away somewhere all to herself, where a man can feel like the lord and master of his domestic prin- - cipality, and where no Mary Jane of all work can interrupt her -tete across the breakfast table. The greatest thing which the woman who boards misses is the be flowers in which the woman w her own home 80 t revel. In the 1 cheerless room ther: books and flowerpois. She cannot a window box without Incurring th wrath of the landlady, who declares sh is ruining the sill or staining e win dows underneath. Her books are stored away on the top s her jardiniere i palm as cold and boarding not know the fasc brush or a wat, average man, fna that to most wo! feather duster ar space no pla unrespc 8 bed. She does nation which a dust g pot holds for the she never comes in and most fascinating « with her ha and her dain from beneath e is alwa slippers peeping out illy petticoats. correctly frocked, stiff ly laced and pe omed. In the apartment hotel rter and the sea side ho alike, she sits op- posite him array with a conv e and a con in_conventional ional smile on he remark on her Joy of that in the library or when she might bring him fee with her dainty s cigarette with a would shock the aner moment the boudoi his after-d hands and | look In her eyes th hotel diners and make the waiter won- der if they were bride and groom. He misses the quiet little supper eater and the little mrti‘:londjt':‘; ::: breakfast table. He never knows the Joy of “kicking” because his chops are burnt or his eggs too soft. His wife Is to him like one of those automatic dolls in the shop windows, who look 8o eom. Dlete and beautiful in all their dainty ?rn-rky, bu:hv;mch never ctange their ocks or their expres: - g S | pression and are only The woman who boards has nlenty of ease, plerly of leisure and plenty of mechanical comfort in these days of modern convenicnces; she has hours to davote to her ccmplexion, hours to give to the arrangement of her coiffure, days to spend at the dressmaker’s and money to spend at the beauty special- ist’s. But she lacks the one charm that makes her worth while to the man who loves har—the charm of femininity. She is like a beautiful jewel in an ugly set- ting. She need not wonder if her hus- band spends most of his time at the club. A man Is like a cat; he goes where he is made most comfortable and where things are most interesting and attractive. If you want him to curl up beside you and purr, remember that to him any sort of make-shift “home” is more attractive than life in the mcst expensive hotel apartment, just as a simple white muslin frock is prettier in his eyes than a Paris crea- tion—and just as a woman who can make good coffee or a pretty sofa pil- low is more fascinating and lovable than one who can write an essay on protoplasm or solve all the problemns in Euclid. PRy LIKES 5 B A WOrIRY FUISING REOUYE? A ZABLE