Home Life in Our Training-Schools
By Helen C. Conard
“It is the nicest work ever assumed by men and women to deal with youthful minds.” This would be true in the individual home, with children of common parents, and surrounded by common influences; but how the statement is intensified as we view the work before us! Here are brought together a community of young people from homes widely separated, not in miles merely, but in conditions—in surroundings. Side by side we have the child of luxury and the child of penury; the pampered, self-centered one whose every wish has been anticipated, and who imagines the thing must go on forever; and the one who has been inured to plainness and bareness until he is almost too timid to reach out and take the privileges we offer. Between these extremes are nearly all shades and degrees of environment. We have the child of refinement, whose manners are well-nigh perfect, whose every movement is graceful, and from whose lips correct words fall in natural and easy flow; and we have others who lack everything that looks toward symmetry of mind or body. Here they are clustered,—elbow to elbow and face to face. The picture is one you never can get in its completeness until you have been there personally to deal with the situation. But whatever they are, from whatsoever quarter they come, they have one common want,—the thing that of all things on earth they most need, that is at their age indispensable to their proper development,—the influence of a Christian home. This given, there is hope; this lacking, there must be “a certain fearful looking for” of failure and possible disaster. The true Christian private home must ever be the basis of our ideal in the institution home, and how to approximate most nearly to this ideal is the question. In either case the building is for eternity, and foundations should be laid broad and deep. We all recognize that the atmosphere of a Christian home must be the all-pervading one of love. Every service rendered must be the outgrowth of love; every favor asked the manifestation of loving confidence. “And this is the confidence21that we have in him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us.” 1 John 5:14. If we are Christians, we shall not desire anything not according to God’s will; and what God is to us, we should be to our children, and what we are to our Heavenly Father, our children should be to us. But there is one thing in God’s granting that we, even as Christian parents, do not all, and at all times, appreciate. God grants freely; he gives liberally and upbraids not. I can remember a parent whose permissions were always given so grudgingly, and with such upbraidings, that the thing desired was despoiled of all its pleasure, and became an actual task instead of the joy it should have been. On the other hand, I call to mind a parent whose refusals were accompanied with such tact and grace that the young pleader went away feeling that he had been granted a favor, and it became a delight to give up his cherished plans. I have heard girls in a school home say of their preceptress, “When she grants us a favor, it seems to give her much pleasure, so we know that when she denies us, it must be for the best, or she could not do it.” Perhaps the most important element in a home is that represented by parental supervision. The pitying love and tender care of the father and mother are taken to illustrate the loving-kindness of our Heavenly Parent to us his wayward children. This godlike characteristic is a necessity to those in charge of our school homes. The position places us in the parents’ stead to the youth under our care; and, if along with the parental responsibility we do not have also the forbearing gentleness and long-suffering patience possessed by the true parent, we shall find our work moving hard indeed. Naturally we do not love the unlovable, and we are prone to become discouraged when our friendly advances go unrecognized day after day and week after week. But of our Saviour it was written, “He shall not fail nor be discouraged.” “Christ has borne with the erring through all their perversity and rebellion.” By opening our hearts heavenward, it is possible for us not only to absorb those traits that enabled him to bear with the erring, but also to partake of that divine courage that kept him from failing.