p. 220 | Wrong Home Influences by Leslie Grey

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 8, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 14.

Wrong Home Influences.

By Leslie Grey

“WHY, the stamp on this letter has not been canceled,” said Mr. Martin Moore, taking up an envelope which had been postmarked with pen from a country post-office. “You can remove the stamp carefully to use again as well as not.”

“But I shall do no such thing,” replied the person thus addressed, to whom the letter had been sent.

“Oh, well, then I can do it for you, and when you get out of stamps I’ll lend you one,” was Mr. Moore’s laughing reply. “You don’t suppose Uncle Sam will ever miss a two cent stamp, do you?”

“It is the principle of the thing,” said the other speaker; “and we have no more right to steal two cents from the Government than a larger amount, and I will never touch that stamp again.”

This conversation occurred in the home circle, where the children listened to the father’s plausible reasoning, and how could they help being influenced by it? And if in after years, the father, whose opinion the bright-eyed boy respects, finds him practicing larger frauds, will the parent call to mind this and similar lessons taught, indirectly it may be, in the home circle?

Here is another case in which both deceit and dishonesty are instilled into the young mind. Little Robbie writes a letter to Uncle Robert, and in it, boy-like, states that he has saved a dollar, and is going to put it into the savings-bank. Now Robbie made figures to represent the money, and Uncle Robert read it ten dollars instead of one. “Well, well,” he remarks, “the boy is doing well to save so much.” Now the uncle is of a thrifty disposition and approves of boys saving their pennies and dimes. So he writes to Robbie’s mother that if her little son has ten dollars to put into the bank, he will send another ten soon to add to the sum for a snug nest-egg.

“But I didn’t write ten dollars,” said Robbie, when he read the letter. “Uncle made a mistake in my figures.”

“Well, never mind now,” replied the mother. “Uncle Robert can spare ten dollars as well as not, so we need not say anything about the mistake when we write.”

Thus the child’s better and more honorable impulses are checked, and a lesson is early learned in greed and actual dishonesty. Does this mother, a professed Christian, anxious for the moral and religious welfare of her children, consider what tares she herself is sowing in the young mind?

Said a lady to her guest, “We will take the first train after dinner, and go to call on cousin Alice.” At the station, when the visitor speaks of getting her ticket, the hostess replies, “No matter about it now.” So the matter is left to be arranged later. But, as no fare is paid on the car, the subject is referred to again by the guest after returning home. “Oh! the conductor does not call for our tickets half the time on these short trips,” replied the lady; “when he does, we pass him the change, and when not we save our fare.”

“But I would much rather pay my fare than to save it in this way,” said the visitor. “Oh, well, if conductors do not have time to take up the tickets, that is their lookout, not ours,” is the careless rejoinder; “besides, we go so often we ought to have some free rides.”

And this is said before the children, who, doubtless, are accustomed to getting free rides when they can, and are thus learning dishonest practices in little things which cannot fail to blunt the moral sensibilities in reference to larger dealings with mankind.

Thus, in a thousand trifling ways, are petty deceits and peccadilloes practiced by people who would scorn to be thought dishonest, and who never seem to think what their influence may be in the family and among those with whom they have business relations. Is it a wonder that from such lessons learned in the home circle larger defalcations come, that the love of greed is made subservient to bitter ends? Strict integrity is a principle which needs to be inculcated, both by precept and example, in the home, the counting-house, the workshop, and in all the affairs of life.—Leslie Grey, in the Congregationalist.