Staunton Spectator

MAKE HOME PLEASANT,

The following article of the Washington Telegraph contains views worthy the consideration of parents. We venture to say that waywardness, dissipation and crime very often, and perhaps generally, result from austere dominion in the family circle, and from forbidding to the young those innocent pleasures which are suited to their time of life. A cheerful and happy home is the strongest citadel which Virtue possesses in this world. The Telegraph justly says:

"Home should be made attractive. Parents have no right to complain of the desires of their children to wander abroad when they fail to think of this duty devolving upon themselves. Frowning fathers and mothers; who despise the gratification of the tastes of their children, and refuse to render their home cheerful and pleasant by everything that is proper and within their means, fail to fulfil their duty, and take upon themselves the responsibility of the waywardness that may be developed in their offspring.

"Many youths, of both sexes, dress in most exquisite taste abroad, whose homes possess no attractions, and are not even comfortable, nor fit to receive the friends they acquire in their intercourse with the world. What is the consequence? Obviously that the affections, at least of the young and the thoughtless, are withdrawn from home, and that its dreariness is magnified by the absence of those whose gladness should be its choicest light.

"Ivy upon the outer walls; carefully cherished exotic plants at its doors and windows; a musical instrument in the little parlor ; books, magazines, and newspapers in convenient places; arm-chairs for the aged, and the tobacco pipe, too, if desired—these, with as good furniture as can be procured, and all neatly and tastefully arranged, will, with kind words and sympathy from parents, render the humblest cottage more attractive to their children than are all the glitter and display of fashion and dissipation that can be presented to them.

"We never hear a parent complain of the indifference of a son or a daughter, without pondering as to whether these things have been thought of as a pleasure and duty, or shunned as troubles to be avoided; and the latter course has very generally been apparent.

"To have the associates of one's children around the door and within the house, may often, no doubt, prove an inconvenience; but what is it to the reflection, in such a city as this, that your children are abroad in the way to be tempted by the thousands of snares that are ever in their path? Were we to go forth upon a mission of love, we think it would be to urge the securing to each family an humble homestead, and the adornment of that homestead by every means that can render it indeed a 'sweet, sweet home,' and the chosen refuge of families who, in their security, would not despise it for its plainness and simplicity, but together cultivate the virtues of economy, industry, affection, and contentment that should adorn it."