TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP. HOME-HABITS. BY REV. M. C. BRIGGS. For character groweth day by day, and all things aid it in unfolding, TUPPER. THANKS to all the stars for this modest little name for great things. Do you see, it is very like a bright, soft curl, that in a spring morning's ramble has strayed down on the brows of beauty. "But what do you propose to write in keeping with the lauded caption?" Ah, you spoiled my reverie. Now I bethink me, it was indeed ill-timed to eulogize my word-mantilla before a thought-form, all grace and symmetry, appeared to put it on. If your graciousnesses will look forgivingly on this confessed indiscretion, I promise you all my interest in the balmy breezes of... of... January. I beg pardon for such a chill paradox; but annuals always suppose themselves to be presented to pretty friends on the first day of the new year, and read, if not ungallantly voluminous, in the two or three days following. Now we beg audience, (I am not a married man, dear readers, but use we only because it falls in with the fashion of editors and other eminent writers ahem!) I say, we beg audience for a New-Years' donation of thoughts concerning that period of little ills and little pleasures — of prank and prattle - Childhood; and that other period, of lofty resolves and faint fulfilments, when all our pathway seems paved with hope-buds just bursting into bloom — Youth. I will come to you amid the violets; I will come to you to learn how much the ever-hoping heart can be mocked with illusive dreams; I will come to you ere that little chair is vacant, and this seat in the home-circle unoccupied; I will come to you ere Ellen is in the broad and beautiful, but far-off West, and Henry in California, and Robert at sea, and Julia in the grave; I will come to you ere your mother's eye is dim with weeping, and your father's locks grow thin and gray; I will come to you now, ere unlovely habitudes are born, to blight the flowers that hang in full, rich clusters about your brows, and to belie the high resolves which heave and swell in hearts that should be always young; I will come to you. With a voice of exhortation I approach, and with a voice of warn ing. Nay, do not flee me. It seems but a short walk along a path of happy, happy hours, back to the time when "I was a boy; My mimic ship sailed gaily down the stream,” as gaily as yours, Horace; and my laugh rang out on the bright air with all of childhood's mirth and music. And mine shall be a child's voice still, though it flows from the lips of early manhood. The year has its seasons; and when spring is past, the awakened sluggard ploughs and sows in vain. A plentiful harvest depends not more on the fact than on the time of sowing. Life has its seasons; and if youth be unproductively expended, our existence in the trial-state is a day without a morning, - a year without a spring. And the stains, and gnarls, and dislocations of character, then acquired, then uncorrected, will go with us, miracles aside, immeasurably beyond life's latest pulse. No after industry, in such case necessarily inefficient, can bridge the chasm of neglected early culture. What occasioned an ugly elbow in that gnarled old tree, too strong for Hercules? Some little thing, perhaps "A dew-drop on the baby plant Hath warped the giant oak for ever." And it is a knotted and crooked old tree, because it was a bent and wounded young tree. Observe that pocket edition of humanity, enthroned in the cradle and sceptred with a teaspoon. He is intent on thrusting the instrument of baby valor into a cavity in the facial contour, vulgarly called the mouth. Now he hits the eyebrow, and then the chin, and then the miniature proboscis; till at length, after many a vexing defeat, with new-born sense of power and victory, by a two-handed effort, he pushes the silver plaything quite against the palate. Why did not the first trial issue in success ? Just because he was not used to it. And there is a toddling little elf, whose utmost skill in locomotion is only adequate to a journey from the back of mother's chair to grandma's extended hands. There must needs be many a tumble before the little wingless cherub can circumambulate the table, just because he is not used to it. It is easy to do what we are accustomed to doing, act we well or wickedly. Practice gives facility for good; and, alas, it also gives terrible facility for evil. If good men by habit speak purely, so base men by habit speak profanely. As I intimated just now, we are all to repeat again, and again, and again, the acts, the attitudes, and words which we have already uttered, performed, assumed, and spoken. Thus, if one long accustomed to urbanity, is polite without effort, one long used to unseemly manners, is rude and coarse in spite of effort. At home our habits, deformed or beautiful, take caste and coloring for all after time. Sit stooping and stupid at the fireside, and you will grow stooping and stupid, and carry your stoop and stupidity into all the circles of after life. Suffer yourself, my youthful friend, to yawn, and lounge, and speak gutturally and ungrammatically at home; let your bearing be inelegant and your temper unamiable, because none but mother, and Sylvester, and Evelyn are there to observe you; and no pains-taking can make you lovely and graceful in spirit and manners when in company. Should you even seem to succeed, the obvious unnaturalness and effort cannot fail to reveal your home-habits and belie your assumed good breeding. Content yourself with unwashed hands till an invitation to a party drives you to the soap and basin, and those useful members of your corporeal sum-total are seen to show the "free-soil," or the severe scrubbing, to all observant eyes. Leave your hair a-towsle all the week, and no drudgery of combing will reduce it to wavy beauty on Sabbath morning. Your "tresses," young ladies, would soon become even more bear than "raven." A coat or bonnet that has lain in the ashes at home, will bear the tell-tale dust and smoke abroad, after all the laboriousness of extra brushing. And so the character. Suffer me to speak of the affections. Love to parents is the eldest born and centre of the circling group of holy loves. If this be diseased with irreverence and unkindness, every member of the group reddens with the plague |