ion. You console yourself for your own imperfections in
reflecting that he is not conscious of them.

The defects of children are almost always harrowed from their father;
they are the consequences of a too literal copy. Provide, then, against
them. Yes, no doubt, but I ask you what strength of mind is not needed
by a poor man to undeceive his baby, to destroy, with a word, his
innocent confidence, by saying to him: "My child, I am not perfect, and
I have faults to be avoided?"

This species of devotion on the part of the baby for his father reminds
me of the charming remark of one of my little friends. Crossing the
road, the little fellow caught sight of a policeman. He examined him
with respect, and then turning to me, after a moment's reflection, said,
with an air of conviction: "Papa is stronger than all the policemen,
isn't he?"

If I had answered "No," our intimacy would have been broken off short.

Was it not charming? One can truly say, "Like baby, like papa." Our life
is the threshold of his. It is with our eyes that he has first seen.

Profit, young fathers, by the first moments of candor on the part of
your dear baby, seek to enter his heart when this little heart opens,
and establish yourself in it so thoroughly, that at the moment when the
child is able to judge you, he will love you too well to be severe or to
cease loving. Win his, affection, it is worth the trouble.

To be loved all your life by a being you love--that is the problem to
be solved, and toward the solution of which all your efforts should be
directed. To make yourself loved, is to store up treasures of happiness
for the winter. Each year will take away a scrap of your life, contract
the circle of interests and pleasures in which you live; your mind by
degrees will lose its vigor, and ask for rest, and as you live less
and less by the mind, you will live more and more by the heart. The
affection of others which was only a pleasant whet will become a
necessary food, and whatever you may have been, statesmen or artists,
soldiers or bankers, when your heads are white, you will no longer be
anything but fathers.

But filial love is not born all at once, nor is it necessary it should
be. The voice of nature is a voice rather poetical than truthful. The
affection of children is earned and deserved; it is a consequence, not
a cause, and gratitude is its commencement. At any cost, therefore, your
baby must be made grateful. Do not reckon that