o keep him at the top of
his working power. _Many a child may properly complain that he has had
no childhood_, that all the time he was being repressed and never
allowed to express himself in his own way. He may not realize at the
time that anything is wrong in the treatment that his father gives him,
but the time comes when he will know and understand. Right there is a
fact that every father ought to know and realize so thoroughly that he
will never lose sight of it. _Yes, some time every boy will know just
what kind of a father he has had and just how worthy of respect and
veneration that father has been._ A little boy is credulity itself and
everything tends to make him believe in his father. But as he grows
older he will surely know. Woe be it to the parent who when
disillusionment comes falls below the standard the child has set. Some
time the boy will know. If he has never had the pleasure that was his
due, if he has never had the fun in his home that he had a right to
expect, his estimate of his parent will be appallingly low.

Through play in the home in the evening after the day's work is ended
has many a father laid the foundation for an influence that controlled
when other ties seemed strained to the breaking point. It is in this
playtime that the boy expresses himself most fully. Every animal has its
playtime, and the most savage of the beasts play with their little ones
to educate them to succeed in the struggle for existence. If play is a
natural expression of the child's mind and body, anything that represses
play is a hindrance to development. In the cheery home where to have fun
and lots of it is a daily habit every child grows and matures as
perfectly as a plant where there are just the right amounts of sun and
moisture and where the soil is perfectly adapted to growth. A little
less light, a little less moisture, and the plant will wither and fail.
A little less play and more repression and the child will become morose
and fail to keep pace with his mates. To repress is so easy, to
reconstruct so difficult!

After the play comes the work, but the work may be made as interesting
as the play and may proceed in the same spirit of jollity and freedom
that marked the time given up wholly to amusement. The work is the
second factor in the father's influence--something on the plane of the
child's own mind, not too difficult, not too long continued. Closely
related, too, it must be with things that the child