The Power of Example

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 3, 1914

The Power of Example

I WONDERED in my childish way how it was that father never suspected me of doing what he so openly and in my presence accused mother of doing. It was the same with mother. If she ever missed change from her purse, she suspected the wash woman, or the iceman, or the errand boy — any one and every one but her daughter. I suppose she never realized that in teaching me to deceive father, she was teaching me to deceive not only him, but herself and others as well, and that, in letting me know how she took money from father without his knowledge, she was giving me a lesson in dishonesty that I could hardly fail to learn.

Like many parents, mine were not alive to the fact that every word and action I heard or saw in my home was just so much training along the right or wrong line of life. Father and mother gave me good housing, dressed me seasonably, sent me to school, punished me when it satisfied them to do so; but it was all without the slightest perception of the truth that when womanhood was reached I should be what they, in their wisdom or lack of it, had made me. Outsiders thought I was well brought up, and would have pitied my parents — certainly not blamed them — had I been found straying into any path of vice. But in this apparently good upbringing I was never taught the lesson of self-control that every child needs. I was not even taught to be industrious. When, as a child, I tried in my busy little way to help mother, I was told that I was more bother than my assistance was worth. Later, when mother wanted me to set the table, wash the dishes, or make my bed, I did it unwillingly, or got out of it altogether.— The Mother’s Magazine.