EARLY IMPRESSIONS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 4, 1897

EARLY IMPRESSIONS.

“Papa, I am walking right in your footsteps,” shouted a child in high glee. The father turned with alarm, for he was traveling over a dangerous bog in order to shorten his journey. Unconsciously he had led his own boy into a place of danger. He caught the little fellow in his arms, and hastened back to take a roundabout path, but one in which the child would be safe if it again followed him.

It is often the undesigned examples that leave the most lasting influences. The moods and manners that lead us when we know it not; the stinging words that spring to the lips without forethought; the angry looks that grow upon the face unbidden; the unkind deeds that were not planned—these make impressions that eternity can not efface.

I stood in the cell of a murderer, who on the next day was to suffer the penalty of his crime. Speaking of his reckless career, he said:—

“How could it be otherwise when I had such bad training? I was taught these things from my youth. When only four years old my mother poured whisky down my throat to see how I would act.”

On the morning of his execution I saw the wretched mother bid good-by to the son whom her influence had helped to that shameful end.

On the other hand, kind words and holy deeds dropped casually by the way leave a holy fragrance that can never be lost.

One of the grandest women I have ever known, now nearing threescore years and ten, said to me, not long ago:—

“My mother once blamed me for a thing which I did not do. I went to my room, and had a good cry over the matter, and, while I was there, mother came in and said, ‘Perhaps I was wrong; I hope you will forgive me.’ That made me love my mother twenty times more than before, and I often think to this day how sweet she was to me.”

That good mother’s influence is still bearing holy fruit, and the daughter’s life is helped by sweet memories of the childhood days.

Children have a way of finding out what father and mother are. Outsiders may be deceived, but not the children in the home. Parental influence is remembered in after years, and the children are better or worse for the memories.—The Pacific.