A Lucid Direction

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 27, 1866

A Lucid Direction.

The late Dr. Henry Ware, when once asked by a parent to draw up a set of rules for the government of children, replied by an anecdote.

“Dr. Hitchcock,” he said, “was settled in Sandwich; and when he made his first exchange with the Plymouth minister, he must need pass through the Plymouth Woods, a nine miles' wilderness, where travelers almost always got lost, and frequently came out at the point they started from. Dr. H., on entering this much-dreaded labyrinth, met an old woman, and asked her to give him some directions for getting through the woods so as to fetch up at Plymouth rather than Sandwich.”

“ ‘Certainly,’ she said, ‘I will tell you all about it, with the greatest pleasure. You will just keep right on till you get some ways into the woods, and you will come to a place where several roads branch off. Then you must stop and consider, and take the one that seems to you most likely to bring you out right.’”

“He did so, and came out right.” Dr. Ware added, “I have followed the worthy and sensible old lady's advice in bringing up my children. I do not think anybody can do better; at any rate I cannot.” Good common sense, doubtless, is often better than all set rules; but the things is to have it.