TAKE them to church, of course," says one. Now, I don't think it is "of course," when I look about, and see little things of four and six years old, and sometimes younger, fidgetting and squirming in their out-door wrappings, in a hot, crowded, badly ventilated church, to whom the services are a dead language, and who prevent those around them from worship, through pity for their evident uncomfortableness. I don't think it is "of course" when I see this. To be sure, there are mothers whose pockets contain alleviations for this juvenile restlessness, in the shape of sugar-plums, or picture-books; but all the time they are being applied, the mother's eye must be on the child instead of the clergymen, lest sticky fingers intrude upon silk or velvet, or a too hasty rattling of leaves in reading the book drown the sound of the preacher's voice. "They should be taught to behave," gravely asserts some person, who, perhaps, has forgotten his own childhood, or has never been a parent. That is true: we only differ as to the question whether church is the place to pursue that education. "Well, suppose you keep a child of that age at home?" asks another. "Of course he ought not to There are those who might think it "wicked" to do this. The wickedness, to me, consists in making Sunday, which should be a delight, such a tedium, that, in after years, whenever the word strikes upon the ear, or the day returns, the first impulse is to shun and evade it. Oh, let Sunday be what the memory of "mother's room" is to us all—radiant with perfume of flowers and sunshine. The bright spot to look back upon, when old age sits in the chimney-corner, with the sweet psalm from voices hushed by death, or far removed, still sounding in the ears; with the memory of happy faces over the Sunday meal; the glad "Good-morning" and the soft "Good-night." Surely the God who opens the flowers on Sunday, and lets the birds sing, did not mean that we should close our eyes to the one or our ears to the other, or that we should throw a pall over the little children. |