ONE HOUR A DAY | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jul 12, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 28.

ONE HOUR A DAY.

A MAN well known in this country and Europe as a profound scholar and linguist, made a resolution in the first years of his married life to give one hour each day absolutely to his children. During that time his whole thoughts and attention were devoted to understanding their characters and influencing them in the right direction. Business, invitations, visitors, whatever would interfere with that hour was put aside. "I have an engagement," was the inexorable answer.

His daughters grew to maidenhood. Their mother was dead, and they had no friend so near as their father. All their little school troubles, their plans and pleasures, they brought eagerly to him, and were always sure of his sympathy. His boys became young men; they, too, had their ambitions, their downfalls, their successes—most of all, their temptations. They were never afraid to go to him with any of them, as to an elder brother.

A friend met him walking down the street one day with one of his boys. "How do you become so intimate with your sons?" he inquired afterward; "I used to see mine as babies about the house, and now they are men—but almost strangers to me!"

"I gave them a little time each day, got down to their level as children, and so grew up with them."

"O! I'm too busy grubbing all day to earn something to leave them. I have no time for such idleness."

The two men separated. One bequeathed to his undisciplined children wealth, which they speedily squandered; the other gave to his, not so much money, to be sure, but firm, controlled characters, every point of which had been influenced by his experience, his Christian faith and love.—Selected.