Little Foxes by MRS. E. E. BACKUS

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 20, 1916

Little Foxes

By MRS. E. E. BACKUS

MRS. E. E. BACKUS

A consecrated mother once asked Sister E. G. White how to train boys. Among other things the aged servant of the Lord advised, “Keep the boys with you, sister, keep them with you. Teach them to bear the real burdens of the home with you, while they are young.”

Along this same line the book by Mrs. S. M. I. Henry, entitled “Unanswered Prayer,” contains some very helpful suggestions; and hoping that they may be appreciated by other mothers who are facing unsolved home problems, I pass on the following paragraphs:—

“In looking over the ground of parental failure, I have found it to lie chiefly in the little things. In nearly all homes the great evils which threaten the purity of childhood are forestalled. The barricades are up against the giants, and yet we are not safe; we must fence against the ‘little foxes.’”

“We must consider trifles, things too insignificant to be often noticed, and yet so mighty in their results as to make it the only wisdom to search for them, as the scientist with his microscope searches for the disease germ which is too minute to be recognized except through the most powerful instruments. Our cause, like his, is one of life or death.”

“Prominent in the list of minute evils is the exposure of the child to the creatures of the dusk. The little one has come into a busy home. Father and mother are both intent upon making a place for him in the big world; he must have as good a chance for an education, and a start in life for himself, by and by, as any boy ever had. . . . So the child, after being duly welcomed and installed in the most approved way, public and private, is turned loose and allowed to run, finding his own sweet way over the threshold, into the yard, out to the street or alley, where he finds others of the same sort, some older, some younger; one or two as innocent as he, but many have already become proficient in street lore. Intimacies spring up, attractions crowd upon the little novice. At first the shades of evening drive him in, through God’s agent, the child’s natural fear of the dark, according to the wisely foreordained plan for his preservation. But he is taught indoors, as well as out, that it is not manly to be afraid of the dark. So the divine precaution is circumvented by human wisdom, and the natural barriers to evil broken down, he goes out boldly, and lingers; and the cover of the dark is none too heavy to hide him and his associates, as they practice the things which make them adept in vice before they have learned the meaning of virtue.”

“The instinct of fear planted in the human mind, is just as truly of God as is the life itself. He intended that by this the little feet should be sent flying into the light and shelter and safety of the home, from the unclean things that hide and breed under cover of the dark. It is not ‘manly’ to be afraid of the dark, but the babe is not yet a man; and the things that wait for him out there are so evil that the stoutest parent has reason to fear them for his child.”

“If this page falls open in the hand of any father or mother whose child is not afraid, and goes out ‘bravely anywhere, after dark,’ and often has to be sought and brought home, allow just a personal suggestion. If you have never thought about it, and can see no cause for alarm in this trifling thing, it will be well for you to follow the little fellow at your earliest convenience, and surprise him and his associates at their pastimes; and if you do not find that which will cause your cheeks to burn and your ears to tingle, your experience will be different from that of many parents who have tried the experiment. The child who has come to enjoy the associations of the world outside his own home after dark has already taken lessons in those things which will make a clean memory an impossibility forever. And an impure memory is something which even the blood of Jesus does not cleanse.”

“Anything which takes children out in the evening is dangerous. . . . The habit of coming in and sitting down for the evening at home should be so early fixed in children that they will know no other way to do. There is no place like home and the shelter of mother love for a child under any and all circumstances. There is danger in the broadest daylight in the gathering together of little folks to amuse themselves alone. However it may have been in past generations, it is true in this, that the ordinary associations of children in neighborhoods where they play without the oversight of some careful guardian—not nurse girl, but mother, aunt, or elder sister—are dangerous.”

“So widespread and terrible is the disease of impurity among the children of even ‘good’ church homes, that there seems to be no remedy but by a vigorous process of ‘stamping out,’ by each mother keeping her own carefully under her own eye.”

“‘But,’ you say, ‘I must do my work; I can’t give the time to follow my child about.’ Then draw your child after you. I believe that God intended that the mother should be the best and most delightful companion of her little ones; and if she is taught of him, she will find the secret of this. The child should share in the real life and work of the mother, and, in this primary school of its life, receive the preparation for the broader circuit of the father’s activities and the enterprise of the world. The training of the hands, feet, and tongue can best begin in the round of common household service; and the mother who finds no place for these beginnings in her housekeeping, who can’t be bothered with the hinderings, but, despising the day of small helpings, sends the restless feet and hands that only need to be taught how, out into the street or alley or to a neighbor’s house, misses the very best out of her life as a mother.”

“More than twenty years ago I knew a little maid of four years who with her tiny housekeeping things helped in all the work of her mother. Her little broom and duster, scrubber, dish pans on a low table, with soft cloths, always kept company with the taller and larger appliances of the woman. When the beds were to be made, she went to one side for her part. Was a pail of water needed from the well, she took her tiny pail and brought it back full. Was fruit to be gathered and prepared, she had her share in it all, and the work actually accomplished by this little one, increasing by month and year, came to be an important factor in the economy of the home. As

the work was mutually shared, so was the leisure; the afternoon nap, the hour for reading, the rides, the calling, everything that was done by daylight; and when other children came, the same policy was continued with sons as well as daughters; and one thing has always been noticed in after-life to this day, that their home was attractive enough to hold them, and draw their friends to them within its doors that had never shut them out.”

“But, you say, ‘children should have the association of children outside the home.’ Certainly, for a fractional portion of the day—a small fraction. Childhood is, however, too important a period in a human life to be wasted; and except it is spent among conditions which produce the best and highest development, there is loss which cannot be afforded. All their associations with each other should be presided over by adults. Children are not safe teachers of each other. It will not cost so much time, labor, or money to create safe and culturing conditions about the child as it will to rescue him from pollution.”

“That the necessary opportunity for sport and contact with others of their kind may be afforded to the little people, let the mothers in a neighborhood or a given social circle, combine for the purpose, each mother taking her turn in playing hostess to the flock for an hour or two in the morning, giving herself up to the task of directing the recreation of the children.”