WIN YOUR BOY'S CONFIDENCE.
By Margaret E. Sangster
WHOEVER does not impress your child, his playmate does, writes Margaret E. Sangster, in Good Housekeeping for November. He is educated in the street, at the game, in the post-office, and in the schoolroom, as certainly as in your household. The next bigger boy whom he adores because he is big and strong takes a hand in the boy's moulding. Every association he forms leaves some trace upon him, for good or for ill. You can not throw him into the gulf and bid him sink or swim. He must be guarded and looked out for, and you must know whom he walks and talks with, whom he plays with, who sits beside him at school. He will not be specially hurt by a lad who eats with his knife, but a lad who is profane, or immodest, or furtive, may do him irreparable injury. Far more than she prizes pearls and diamonds, should a mother prize her boy's confidence. Not merely when he is a little golden-haired cherub should she give him herself at the bedtime hour, for a nightly chat, but when he is older, at fourteen or fifteen, when he has trials and temptations, let him feel that he can tell her everything and that she will not be shocked, nor censorious; that she will understand and advise. His friends of every degree should be encouraged and invited to the home, and as they share the boy's pursuits, the mother may be quietly observant, and see where she can help; she can do much to prevent the ascendancy of an unprincipled lad, and her doors should be shut against one who is unclean in speech and behavior. Under God, the mother holds her boy's life in her hand. Nor is the father free from obligation. A boy's father epitomizes to him the whole story of manhood. A boy reflects his father's opinions, accepts his modes of thought, and aims to be as much like him as he can. A father is as sacredly bound to be his boy's chum and comrade as to be his tutor and governor, and to provide for him food and clothing. If a father keep pace with the boy, suiting his long steps to the shorter ones, there will be small danger that the little fellow will make a serious blunder in choosing his associates.—Sabbath Recorder.