Your ShelfYour Projects

Confidence and Companionship

6%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 8, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 45.

Read the full edition

Confidence and Companionship

HAPPY is the lot of that boy who has found perfect confidence and enjoyable companionship in his mother; and happy indeed is the lot and the prospect of the mother who has brought about that blessed relationship, as the following will illustrate:—
“There’s a tip-top book, Ellis, you can take to read, if you want to. I’ve just read it, and it is a splendid story.”
“Then I should like to read it. I don’t very often get a chance at a new book. But I think books are best of anything, and when I am a man, I mean to have stacks of them. Mother and I read them together, and then we talk over what we have been reading about; so it’s twice as good as if I had read it alone.”
“Is that the way you do?”
“Of course it is. Why shouldn’t I? Mother and I are all the family that is left, and we do everything we can together. I tell you my mother is the best company I ever had. She is just jolly, besides being good as she can be. She goes singing around the house, making a fellow feel rich.”
“Ain’t she old?”
“No; and it wouldn’t make any difference if she was; she’d be my mother all the same.”
“To be sure she would. But if you take this book, you must keep it out of her sight and read it on the sly.”
“Why must I?”
“Because she wouldn’t like it. My mother would make a great fuss if she knew I read such a book.”
“Then what do you read it for? What’s the matter with the book? You said it was splendid.”
“So it is, but your mother wouldn’t think so,”
“Then it ain’t so, for I tell you mother knows. I won’t read anything on the sly. I don’t do business that way. I advise you not to. My mother knows best.”
“If you think so, I don’t suppose it’s of any use to try to make you think differently.”
“No sir, it ain’t.”
You see there was nothing more to say. And this story simply means for you not to do anything on the sly, for be sure your sin will find you out. Don’t read a book or paper your mother would not approve. Don’t look at a picture you would not be willing to show her.
“Evil communications corrupt good manners,” and evil words upon a printed page corrupt both soul and body. Don’t read them.—Round Table.