Beware of the First Wrong Concession.
By M. W. Howard
THE time-honored custom of teachers' boarding around, made me for a season an inmate of a physician's family. They moved in the first circles of society, for the husband and father stood at the head of his profession, while the wife was genteel and well educated,38and withal devoutly pious. Their lovely girls gave evidence of the mother's gentle influence; while two wayward boys as clearly evidenced that tho father and mother were not in harmony. Indeed, one only needed to be a member of the family to realize that he who was the stern doctor when abroad, brought enough of that sternness into the home circle to spread over all an irksome restraint. He was a communicant in the Episcopal church; the mother and oldest daughter were members of the Methodist church. When we arose from the breakfast table it was usually to kneel at the family altar, when sometimes the father, but oftener the mother, led in devotion, closing with our Lord's prayer in which each member of the household audibly joined. But, shall I record it? sometimes the father would arise from the table, where he had moodily sat, and abruptly leave the house and proceed to his business; the baneful example would spread, till one after another all were gone, and the sad consciousness of a day illy begun would fall like a pall over us all. On one such occasion the mother remarked to me, that family prayer had been more neglected since her husband professed religion (which had not been many years), than in all the time previous, since she professed religion. This fact, with another which I knew from observation, though no remark was made of it, made me almost venerate her Christian example, and caused me to look in great amazement at her subsequent fall. After tea on Sunday afternoon it was her custom to retire to an upper room with her children, where she instructed them religiously, and then could be heard from my adjoining room each one's voice, as they one after the other prayed. Years afterward, on removing among strangers, she yielded to her husband's will her religious preferences sufficiently to attend as a family the services of an Episcopal church. I had years before heard her remark that if she ever became an Episcopalian it would be because she was a Roman Catholic. Prophetic words! Ere long she became a widow. Next she married a man who had gone over to Romanism. Soon herself and youngest daughter performed a journey to Montreal for confirmation in a Romish cathedral! Thus one wrong concession followed another. More than a score of years have elapsed since I was an inmate of their family, and I have never seen them since; yet associated with their memory is the old love I cherished for them, as the exemplary Christian mother, and the sweet confiding pupil. And often have I longed to meet them that I might ask them to tell the gradations through which they passed in their downward course to Catholicism. Beware of the first wrong concession!
M. W. HOWARD.
Malone, N. Y.