CABBAGE-HEADS AND SOMETHING ELSE. BY ТИЕ EDITOR. IF you wish to raise a head of cabbage a great deal depends upon where you locate the plant from which it is to grow. Plant it near the gate, where persons going out and in are likely to tramp the ground hard around it, and you will probably have a feeble growth and no head at all. Plant it in a somewhat dry bed, where it has a hard gravel soil, and you will have a long spindling stem and a small worthless head. Plant it in among hills of corn, and it will grow like a stalk of salad, ali leaves and no head. Put it in the right place, and you may feed ten men on the enormous head which it will produce! What a difference! Yet, as philosophers say, in either case the plant contained a large head in possibility. The difference in the growth is owing to the location and the surroundings of the plant. All this is plain. Now, having begun with cabbage-heads, let us not end there. The reader of The Guardian takes it for granted that this is a parable; and he is right. Hear then the lesson of the cabbage-head. If a young man or a young woman wishes to come to anything in life that is worth attaining, a great deal depends upon location and surroundings. The company you keep makes you one thing or another, according as the company itself is good or bad. If, as is often the case, you must grow up among strangers, a great deal depends upon the family in which you live. If you go to learn a trade, much depends upon the person with whom you learn, or the kind of trade you select; for this determines your surroundings-it locates you, and fixes your daily associates. Your temptations and dangers, as well as your safety and benefit depend on what trade you learn, where and with whom you learn it—whether in a town or in the country, whether in a christian family or in the house of a careless worldling. Moreover, the kind of business you select for life has much to do with your destiny. An ostler will be as ostlers are. A stage-driver will be as they are. A clerk will be as a clerk. A farmer as a farmer. True, men in all professions differ, some being good and others bad; but it cannot be denied that the calling one selects brings him into a certain strata of life, which has much to do in shaping his character; because it, to a great extent, fixes his daily communications, and the surroundings which mould him. We lately read an advertisement in a newspaper which ran thus: "Wanted-A boy 16 years of age, to attend at a Liquor Store." We leaned back on our chair and began to meditate; and the more we reflected, the more we felt like saying to all boys of that age, "Don't go!" Why this wish? For this reason, namely: The boy must wait around the liquor store day by day. He must carry demijohns day by day. Whither? To taverns, groceries, groggeries; and his daily life 1858.] Vespers. 49 will be in contact with all kinds of characters which in such places "do congregate." Will he not gradually learn to taste what he hourly smells; and gradually learn to love what he sees so precious to others that they are willing to sell their all for its enjoyment? Verily the danger is great. Besides, what a life for a noble boy of sixteen! We would have him move in a better current. Therefore we feel like crying aloud: "Boys dont go!" We give this only as an instance and illustration of what we mean by a right and a wrong location. We feel sure every reflecting mind will see that a great deal depends upon our surroundings. If cabbage-heads do not flourish everywhere alike well, neither do boys, nor girls. Lay up the lesson of this parable, young friends. See that you are planted right; and you will be sure to grow to honor and usefulness in society. This thing is worth attending to For if one who plants cabbage has respect to the soil, saying of one place, This will do,' of another, 'This will not do;' how much more important is it rightly to locate a human spirit that must live forever. Surely, one such is of more value than many cabbages! Yet we fear there are parents who spend less thought on the right location of their children than they do of their cabbage; for are there not some who think not on it at all. Are there not also young persons who locate themselves thoughtlessly, following the beck of the merest incident or accident! This might do had we no facts before us from which to learn lessons, and no God above us from whom to seek direction in believing prayer. VESPERS . A row of little faces by the bed- A gentle mother leads them in their praise, No lovelier sight this side of heaven is seen, There floats the fragrance of an infant's tongue. Then, tumbling headlong into waiting beds, All dressed like angels in their gowns of white, WHERE ARE THE BOYS AND GIRLS? BY NATHAN. "By sports like these are all their cares Leguiled-- WHERE are the boys and girls? In all conscience, thou grave and fatherly Guardian where are they? Thou speakest to young men and ladies, but pray what are young men and ladies before they are young men and ladies? From my young days upward I have been passionately fond of boys and girls. Foud to see them play, romp, laugh, prattle and make merrie. But I feel as if I had indulged in a ten-year nap, and now, alas, upon awaking find the country without boys and girls all turned into half grown gentlemen aud ladies. But two classes of persons in this great country, infants and grown people. Terribly stiff, dry business, where there are no boys and girls. The fact is, my dear friend Guardian, I desire advice. I am greatly put to when I meet this important class of man-and woman-kind. Must I get down over the curb-stone on a muddy day when I meet two inflated premature ladies sailing along, taking with a single sweep all before them? How shall one address them? I meet a crowd of them walking to school, must I say; good morning, ladies? They are girls. I would like to say a word to my sabbath-school occasionally. May I address them boys and girls? Or little young men and ladies? In the good old days of our grandmothers, boys and girls played and enjoyed themselves as only boys and girls can. But now, the little things are grave, formal, terribly in earnest, prematurely fledged, unboyish and ungirlish. In those good old days, boys used to crowd together, play ball and engage in other sports. Now they must take a walk when they meet, or engage in manly sports. The boys I am now seeking. Little girls used to group together in merry plays, they would skip through lots and lanes. Now they make "calls," and they "return calls," and they "receive calls," and they "refuse calls," little misses still living and moving in parties. My neighbor Smith must give a party to his little Louisa. Well, regular full-grown cards are distributed, and a host of lilliputian ladies and gentlemen are invited. The party comes off most gravely, very finely, not with girls' and boys' amusements, but plays for grown folks. You know, friend Guardian, you were a young man once, what those plays are. Well, in the evening not farf rom midnight, they pair off, and the young gallants see their fair ones home. Smith seems greatly pleased as one pair after another trips out the front door. Of course the little gallants could not stop here. Not long after that, one could see some of them among a crowd around the church door, waiting to see their fair ones home. Friend Jones' little Ralph has also had a very manly training of this sort. His mother complained to me not long ago, that he was so headstrong and self-willed. To tell the truth, though but ten years old, that his father had no control over him. Now, friend Guardian, do tell me where are our boys and girls? The 1858.] Where are the Boys and Girls? 51 men and women of the next generation, and we ought to do something to prepare them for the duties of their future station. Your mission is to promote the interest of "Young men and ladies." Do you include the boys and girls? Or where do you put them, where do their parents put them? Perhaps the country dont need them, so they are pushed from infancy right up into grown habits. If .o, then we are as far advanced socially, as our Egyptian friends, who are nationally much older than we are. One might almost say that the people there are born men and women, or as we would say in English, young men and ladies. Boys and girls are married when eight to ten years old. My friend Ahmet Saidi, a man of more than common intelligence, has an interesting son seven years old. He is engaged to be married to a cousin of his. gave the little boy a party that cost him seventy-five dollars. he is going to have him marry. One reason why he is in a hurry about the matter, is that he and his wife may soon have a chance to rejoice together with the boy in his wedding party. Same reason that parents now have for making boys and girls act like men and women. He In a year In England and Germany boys and girls are just where nature has placed them, and are trained and treated accordingly. But of course we ought not to copy after any nation. We have sense enough to be original. Especially since this is a free country, parents should not be tyrannical. Their children ought to do what they please. If they keep on training their children in the principles of progress and freedom, we may hope for the day when children shall know more than their parents, and become their trainers and teachers. I have no doubt that some of your readers will thank me for showing them how nearly their domestic training approaches that of the Egyptians and Mahommedans. It may also be encouraging for them to know that they are doing a noble work for their children. For it is rather a small business for any human being to be a boy or a girl, in habit and conduct, as God wants them to be. It is much better to put big notions into their heads when they are young. Mothers ought to tease little girls about their beaux and instruct them in all the arts of the flirt. And boys ought to be trained and schooled in all the secrets of the fast and successful young man. All this, of course, is more important and dignified than to be a mere boy or girl in all the simplicity and good cheer that belongs to them. Where are our boys and girls? I walk along the street and see an important looking little individual approaching me. Think he is a boy, but see him striding along in strapped pants, breastpin, big collar, cane in hand, and head aloft overtowering his four feet body, a noble specimen of the caricature of a man. He enters a tobacco shop, sticks his heels upon the stove and talks on big topics. Now friend Guardian, I dont know whether I am behind the times or ahead of them, but I feel strangely out of place in a country where the boys and girls, the smile and sunshine of the race, are fast becoming extinct. Cant you guard us against such a calamity? Do tell parents they shall be kind enough to let their children be boys and girls before they strap, lace and hoop them into little, big-feeling, monstrously unnatural dandies and flirts. No class on earth would I rather have my friends than these little boys and girls. Therefore I feel so friendless because they are no more. For conscience sake let us have them again. Come, my sweet, happy little friends, please be boys and girls, then you will be happy. Skip, sport and play, study and read, and then you will get to be men and women of the right sort, soon enough. I will close this outpouring of my troubled heart with part of a little sermon I heard last fall. It was at the funeral of a kind, plain old man, who, though illiterate, tried to preach the Gospel to his fellows. He had lived at a retired place in the country. Over three hundred carriages brought mourners there from the neighborhood. At every window were many weeping heads trying to hear what a simple-hearted, unlettered old man preached. Yellow leaves were falling around us like snow-flakes, and the grass was all withered. Standing by the coffin he told us how his brother had helped him to preach the Gospel, but now he was taken home, and how much he needed him, that he felt lonely and looked wistfully for his final hour. I must quote from memory. He spoke on the virtue of a meek and humble spirit. "We are born," said he, "unto God's blessed kingdom, just like we were born when our frail life first began. Poor, little, ignorant, helpless creatures, that had to be taken care of by other people. Just so we begin the life of heaven on earth. Babes in Christ that must be fed with the milk of truth, and when they first begin to walk they will reach for the hand of an older brother or sister to hold them up. And if these let go the hold they will fall right down, and be afraid to try it again. Then the hands will help the legs, and it will go poorly enough until another hand is held out to help them up. By and by it will go better. But some children in Christ's family don't want to learn to walk before they run, and so they have it rough and tumble, all their own way, and they will be poorly prepared to hold out on the long journey to the land of the sweet 'hereafter.' Now, my dear comrades on this thorny way, let us learn to be children before we are men and women in God's household. And you who are still outside, may God make you as little children, and then you can come in too. But beware that you wont be born too big." |