t your care, then, to train up mothers who
shall know how to educate their children.'"--AIME MARTIN.

"Lord! with what care hast Thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us. Then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws. They send us bound
To rules of reason."--GEORGE HERBERT.

HOME is the first and most important school of character. It is there
that every human being receives his best moral training, or his worst;
for it is there that he imbibes those principles of conduct which endure
through manhood, and cease only with life.

It is a common saying that "Manners make the man;" and there is a
second, that "Mind makes the man;" but truer than either is a third,
that "Home makes the man." For the home-training includes not only
manners and mind, but character. It is mainly in the home that the
heart is opened, the habits are formed, the intellect is awakened, and
character moulded for good or for evil.

From that source, be it pure or impure, issue the principles and maxims
that govern society. Law itself is but the reflex of homes. The tiniest
bits of opinion sown in the minds of children in private life afterwards
issue forth to the world, and become its public opinion; for nations
are gathered out of nurseries, and they who hold the leading-strings
of children may even exercise a greater power than those who wield the
reins of government. [111]

It is in the order of nature that domestic life should be preparatory
to social, and that the mind and character should first be formed in the
home. There the individuals who afterwards form society are dealt with
in detail, and fashioned one by one. From the family they enter life,
and advance from boyhood to citizenship. Thus the home may be regarded
as the most influential school of civilisation. For, after all,
civilisation mainly resolves itself into a question of individual
training; and according as the respective members of society are well
or ill-trained in youth, so will the community which they constitute be
more or less humanised and civilised.

The training of any man, even the wisest, cannot fail to be powerfully
influenced by the moral surroundings of his early years. He comes into
the world helpless, and absolutely dependent upon those about him for
nurture and culture. From the very first breath that he draws, his
education begins. When a mother once asked a clergyman when she should
begin the education of her c