Home Courtesies by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Oct 10, 1865

Home Courtesies.

By Editor

THE following brief paragraph is weighty with practical truth. It is those little et ceteras in the home circle which make the wheel of life run so smoothly. And prominent among them is “home courtesy.” To the reader, we would say of the following, Ponder and practice.

“In the family, the law of pleasing ought to extend from the highest to the lowest. You are bound to please your children; and your children are bound to please each other; and you are bound to please your servants if you expect them to please you.” Some men are pleasant in the household, and nowhere else. I have known such men. They were good fathers and kind husbands. If you had seen them in their own house, you would have thought that they were angels, almost; but if you had seen them in the street, or in the store, or anywhere else, outside the house, you would have thought them almost demonic. But the opposite is apt to be the case. When we are among our neighbors, or among strangers, we hold ourselves with self-respect and endeavor to act with propriety; but when we get home we say to ourselves, “I have played a part long enough, and am now going to be natural.” So we sit down, and are ugly, and snappish, and blunt, and disagreeable. We lay aside those thousand little courtesies that make the roughest floor smooth, that make the hardest thing like velvet, and that make life pleasant. We expend all our politeness in places where it will be profitable—where it will bring silver or gold.”