How to Save Boys by Christian Standard

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

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 26.

How to Save Boys.

By Christian Standard

WOMEN who have sons to rear, and dread demoralizing influences of bad associations, ought to understand the nature of young manhood. It is excessively restless. It is disturbed by vain ambitions, by thirst for action, by longings for excitement, by irrepressible desires to touch life in manifold ways. If you, mothers, rear your sons so that your homes are associated with the repression of natural instincts, you will be sure to throw them in the society that in any measure can supply the need of their hearts. They will not go to the public house, at first, for love of liquor; they go for the animated and hilarious companionship they find there, which they find does much to repress the disturbing restlessness in their breasts. See to it, then, that their homes compete with public places in their attractiveness. Open your blinds by day and light bright fires by night. Illuminate your rooms. Hang pictures upon the wall. Put books and newspapers upon your tables. Banish demons of dullness and apathy that have so long ruled in your household. Invent occupations for your sons. Stimulate their ambitions in worthy directions. While you make home their delight, fill them with higher purposes than mere pleasure. Whether they shall pass happy boyhood, and enter upon manhood with refined tastes and noble ambitions, depends on you. Do not blame miserable bar-keepers if your sons miscarry. Believe it possible that with exertion and right means a mother may have more control of the destiny of her boys than any other influence whatever.—Christian Standard.