A Blowing Up | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 22, 1866

A Blowing Up.

"You deserve a good blowing up," says Mr. Smith to his son for some trifling fault, or little carelessness. "If you do that again you'll get a blowing up; if you don't then I'm mistaken, that's all," exclaims Mrs. Brown, in an excited manner, to her daughter, for having overturned a dish, perhaps heedlessly, but just as people, both old and young, will sometimes do. "I tell you, didn't Tim Jones get a blowing up from the school-mistress to-day," says one of the pupils of Miss Birch, graphically describing a scene in the school-room, in which Miss Birch and Tim Jones were the actors. "We got a pretty nice blowing up from our minister to-day, for not attending the prayer-meeting," says brother Truman, as he walked home from church. And so on indefinitely, through all grades, phases, and conditions of society. A storm of words—a blustering, tempestuous outbreak of blame, abuse, censure or reproof, is a "blowing up." A sudden letting off, or on, of the steam of harsh, stinging words, for some fancied, or real mistake or wrong, usually trifling, is a regular blowing up.

Now this whole "blowing up" business is wrong; it is absurd; it is shameful; it is wicked. It makes a fool of those who do it, and for a time, an enemy of those who receive it. It causes more ill by many times than it cures. It leads no offender to penitence, but to anger and self-justification. Still people keep on blowing up somebody or something. The husband blows up his wife, and the wife not to be behind, blows up her husband. The father blows up his son, and the mother blows up her daughter; and very soon the children make such proficiency that they can "give the old folks as good as they send," and practice the art among themselves generally. The mistress gives her kitchen-girl a "good blowing up" for some fault or misdemeanor, and occasionally finds an adept who can pay back with interest the gust of passion or reproof. Abominable habit! If it would blow into thin air those who indulge the vicious practice, and keep them there till they learn better, it would be a mercy. How it sprinkles with wormwood and gall the sweet intercourse of domestic and social life! How it pours vinegar on the temper and disposition of those who do it! How it snarls up the skein of even temper and amiable disposition, in those who have to suffer it! How it stirs up the sediment of evil passion down at the bottom of the heart, and makes the current of kind household feeling and affection flow dark and turbid! What good does it do to blow up anybody for anything! None whatever; but evil always. It sours, irritates, and makes unhappy both those who do it and those who suffer it.

One may be blamed; one may be reproved. All err sometimes. It will be the duty of some one to call up the fault and endeavor to correct it. But let it all be done calmly, kindly, with seriousness, and most of all with self-control. But never give one a blowing up any sooner than you would a blow on the head with a hammer.—Mothers' Journal.