A Lesson for Parents
Recently a woman in a large city committed suicide. The
brief news item chronicled the happening. The incident excited a moment’s
comment and was forgotten. Who has much interest in one woman who gave up the
fight simply because of the want of moral courage to continue the struggle!
A serious lesson is bound up in the happening. It would be
well for parents to ponder the situation, because the parents of this woman
were more responsible than she was.
The parents were wealthy and gave their children everything
that they thought would serve her as a member of a wealthy family. On her
education and on her wardrobe, large sums of money were cheerfully spent. Thus
the child grew up into a woman with no other idea than to spend money and enjoy
life. Not a word had ever been taught her about the possibility of a turn in
the tide of fortune and in that case of taking care of herself. Not a really
useful thing had ever been taught her.
But she got along swimmingly for a while. Like a butterfly
she flitted here, there and everywhere. And, she was envied by other women who
did not have her supposed advantages. In the course of time she married; a
supposedly wealthy man with decided sporting proclivities, of course, and for a
year or two they had a very grand time. But suddenly things did not go
right—took a turn. Fortune decamped and left the poor miseducated woman
stranded. Her father’s fortune was gone and her husband dead, she found herself
in want and no experience to be summoned to her aid. For 10 years she made the
best of the fight as she could and was very miserable all of the time. One
night a mood of despondence caught her in the right frame of mind to commit
suicide and in a moment it was all over.
Today thousands of children are growing up to believe their
fortune is already made and that they need not take a thought to the contrary.
Parents who fail to train them to meet the requirements of life, in whatever
guise they may come, gamble with their children’s future. Often the more
amiable and willing children they are, the harder is the denouement when
fortune takes a turn for the worst. One man may spend the thousands upon
thousands of dollars on his child, and the mother may exercise every material
care to insure its happiness and health, only to handicap it the more in the
years that are to come.
Wealth and personal comfort are delightful as slaves, but
fiends as masters. This is a fact that every child should be taught from the
cradle up.
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