cobwebs, and your most careful training will only produce a character
estimable in many respects, but for the most part without noble
aspirations, without high ideals, with no great enthusiasms--a
character, to use Saint Beuve's expressive phrase, "tout en façade sur
la rue," whose moral judgments are no better than street cries; the type
of man that accepts the degradation of women with blank alacrity as a
necessity of civilization, and would have it regulated, like any other
commodity for the market; that very common type of character which,
whatever its good qualities, spreads an atmosphere of blight around it,
stunting all upward growing things and flattening down our life to the
dead level of desert sands.

If you would not be satisfied at your boy rising no higher than this,
then, again I say, guard the springs of reverence. Do not let your pride
in your child's smartness or any momentary sense of humor make you pass
over any little speech that savors of irreverence; check it instantly.
Exact respect for yourself and for the boy's father, the respect which
is no enemy, but the reverse, to the uttermost of fondness. Insist upon
good manners and respectful attention to the guests of your house. Do
not despise the good old fashion of family prayers because they do not
rise to all that we might wish them to be. At least they form a daily
recognition of "Him in whom the families of the earth are blessed"--a
daily recognition which that keen observer of English life, the late
American Ambassador, Mr. Bayard, pointed out as one of the great secrets
of England's greatness, and which forms a valuable school for habits of
reverence and discipline for the children of the family. Insist upon
the boys being down in time for the worship of God, and do not allow
them to get into the habit indulged in by so many young men of "sloping"
down with slippered feet long after breakfast is done and prayers are
over.