o the mouth, must be avoided.

CHAPTER XXXVI

EVERY-DAY MANNERS AT HOME

Just as no chain is stronger than its weakest link, no manners can be
expected to stand a strain beyond their daily test at home.

Those who are used to losing their temper in the bosom of their family
will sooner or later lose it in public. Families which exert neither
courtesy nor charm when alone, can no more deceive other people into
believing that either attribute belongs to them than they could hope to
make painted faces look like "real" complexions.

A mother should exact precisely the same behavior at home and every day,
that she would like her children to display in public, and she herself, if
she expects them to take good manners seriously, must show the same
manners to them alone that she shows to "company."

A really charming woman exerts her charm nowhere more than upon her
husband and children, and a noble nature through daily though unconscious
example is of course the greatest influence for good that there is in the
world. No preacher, no matter how saint-like his precept or golden his
voice, can equal the home influence of admirable parents.

It is not merely in such matters as getting up when their mother or other
older relatives enter a room, answering civilly and having good table
manners, but in forming habits of admirable living and thinking that a
parent's example makes or mars.

If children see temper uncontrolled, hear gossip, uncharitableness and
suspicion of neighbors, witness arrogant sharp-dealing or lax honor, their
own characters can scarcely escape perversion. In the same way others can
not easily fail to be thoroughbred who have never seen or heard their
parents do or say an ignoble thing.

No child will ever accept a maxim that is preached but not followed by the
preacher. It is a waste of breath for the father to order his Sons to keep
their temper, to behave like gentlemen, or to be good sportsmen, if he
does or is himself none of these things.

In the present day of rush and hurry, there is little time for "home"
example. To the over-busy or gaily fashionable, "home" might as well be a
railroad station, and members of a family passengers who see each other
only for a few hurried minutes before taking trains in opposite
directions. The days are gone when the family sat in the evening around
the fire, or a "table with a lamp," when it was customary to read aloud or
to talk. Few people "talk well