Sympathy at Home
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field which the fire has passed over, destroying all verdure, and leaving
it dry, blackened, and crisped.
You have a diseased imagination and deserve pity. Yet no one can
help you as well as yourself. If you want faith, talk faith; talk hopefully,
cheerfully. May God help you to see the sinfulness of your course.
You need help in this matter, the help of your daughter and your wife.
If you suffer Satan to control your thoughts as you have done, you
will become a special subject for him to use and will ruin your own
soul and the happiness of your family. What a terrible influence has
your daughter had! The mother, not receiving love and sympathy from
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you, has centered her affections upon the daughter and has idolized
her. She has been a petted, indulged, and nearly spoiled child through
the exercise of injudicious affection. Her education has been sadly
neglected. Had she been instructed in household duties, taught to bear
her share of the family burdens, she would now be more healthy and
happy. It is the duty of every mother to teach her children to act their
part in life, to share her burdens, and not be useless machines.
Your daughter’s health would have been better had she been ed-
ucated to physical labor. Her muscles and nerves are weak, lax, and
feeble. How can they be otherwise when they have so little use? This
child has but little power of endurance. A small amount of physical
exercise wearies her and endangers health. There is not elasticity in
muscles and nerves. Her physical powers have so long lain dormant
that her life is nearly useless. Mistaken mother! know you not that in
giving your daughter so many privileges of learning the sciences, and
not educating her to usefulness and household labor, you do her a great
injury? This exercise would have hardened, or confirmed, her consti-
tution and improved her health. Instead of this tenderness proving a
blessing, it will prove a terrible curse. Had the family burdens been
shared with the daughter, the mother would not have overdone, and
might have saved herself much suffering and benefited the daughter
all the time. She should not now commence to labor all at once and
bear the burdens which one at her age could bear, but she can educate
herself to perform physical labor to a much greater extent than she has
ever done in her life.
Sister C has a diseased imagination. She has secluded herself from
the air until she cannot endure it without inconvenience. The heat of
her room is very injurious to health. Her circulation is depressed. She