THE MARRIED MANS CATECHISM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 28 September 1907, Page 4

THE MARRIED MANS CATECHISM.

If you are a married man, and are wondering why your married life has not been as happy as you anticipated on the day of the wedding and before it, place before yourself these thoughts:— Perhaps you married a pretty face, with few brains behind it. Perhaps you have grown intellectually, and your wife has not kept step with you. But have yon done your best to develop her mind, and to lead her into a larger tield of thought'; Has it been a constant, patient effort on your part to make her the companion you needed in your life? Have you tried to share your intellectual pleasures with her, and to make her care fur the book and people that shed light on your path? Then about your children.

Are they a disappointment to you? Are they disoliedicnl, secretive, ami unsympathetic! Will they do nothing you want them to do? Have all your ambitions fur them resulted in disappointment: Then call yourself again before bar. You have had the opportunity to make those children what you desired them to lie. They came into the world with unformed brain cells and undeveloped tendencies. They were plastic as wax, had you chosen to realise the fact in time. Hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, the minds of these children have been developing. If you give them no careful personal attention, no patient lessons in the way you would have their mentalities directed, you must not blame them that they developed along the lines of least resistance.

Finally, you may have any time these last few years put to yourself the question—Am I a successful man? And you may have been uncertain as to the answer, not knowing by what test to measure yourself. Well, no man is called upon to accumulate millions, to establish colleges, to invent machinery, or write dramas. If he does any one of these things well, the world applauds; but only his own ambitions reprove when he fails to achieve some such success. But if your children are failures, then do not class yourself with the world's successful men. The man who is not the best friend of his son and daughter, the man whose children seek any confidants before himself, is not a successful man.

If you have kept in this eloie, sweet touch' with your children, if they love, respect, and admire you as they grow into .maturity, if they are a delight to your heart and a solace to your mind, then no matter how poor your worldly station or disappointed your worldly amonions, you are a successful man.