Live Up to The Mottoes.
By Housekeeper
THERE is no use in putting up the motto, "God bless our home," if the father is a cross old bear, and the spirit of discourtesy and rudeness is taught by parents to children, and by the older to the younger. There is no use in putting up the motto, "The Lord will provide," while the father is shiftless, the boys refuse to work, and the girls busy themselves over gewgaws and finery. There is no use putting up the motto, "The greatest of these is charity," while the tongue of the backbiter wags in the family, and silly gossip is dispensed at the tea table. There is no use in placing up conspicuously the motto, "The liberal man deviseth liberal things," while the money chinks in the pockets of the "head of the household," groaning to get out and see the light of day, and there are dollars and dimes for wine, tobacco, and other luxuries, but positively not one cent for the church. In how many homes are these mottoes standing—let us say hanging—sarcasms which serve only to point a jest and adorn a satire! The beauty of quiet lives, of trustful, hopeful, and free-handed, free-hearted, charitable lives, is one of surpassing loveliness, and those lives shed their own incomparable fragrance, and the world knows where to find them. And they still remain fresh and fadeless when the colors of the pigment and the floss have faded, and the frames have rotted away from their joints.—Housekeeper.