GIVE THE CHILDREN YOUR COMPANIONSHIP.
PARENTS do not, as a rule, sufficiently appreciate the value of their own personal companionship as a factor in the bringing up of their growing girls and boys. A parent is apt, while giving his children a great deal of many other things, to give them but little of himself. But the little girl who is so favored through the years as to have her mamma for friend, playmate, and companion, rarely, if ever, goes wrong when she grows up. And the boy feeling the subtle tie of the camaraderie between his parents and himself is "grappled" to home, and its pure and ennobling associations, as with "hooks of steel." John Habberton, in a late article, relates the following incident of a preacher, who, when consulted by a father about a bad son over whom he had expended great agonies of prayer, but whom otherwise he had left to his own devices, said: "My friend, your prayers won't do that boy any good unless you give him a good bit of your own companionship. Make yourself actively his friend, taking an interest in all his affairs, and he won't ask for bad company."—Annals of Hygiene.