116
Counsels on Health
God; but to keep the mind constantly strained upon business affairs
will injure the health of both mind and body.
Let the evenings be spent as happily as possible. Let home be a
place where cheerfulness, courtesy, and love exist. This will make
it attractive to the children. If the parents are continually borrowing
trouble, are irritable and faultfinding, the children partake of the same
spirit of dissatisfaction and contention, and home is the most miserable
place in the world. The children find more pleasure among strangers,
in reckless company, or in the streets, than at home. All this might
be avoided if temperance in all things were practiced, and patience
cultivated. Self-control on the part of all the members of the family
will make home almost a paradise. Make your rooms as cheerful as
possible. Let the children find home the most attractive place on earth.
Throw about them such influences that they will not seek for street
companions, nor think of the haunts of vice except with horror. If the
home life is what it should be, the habits formed there will be a strong
defense against the assaults of temptation when the young shall leave
the shelter of home for the world.
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