p. 15 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 33. (8/25/1909)

That Boy of Yours

By Frederick E. George

By Frederick E. George

A PHOTO lies before me — the photo of a boy — a beautiful boy. He reclines against a great tree, one arm thrown around the gnarled gray trunk. An ivied wall forms a picturesque background.

Dark curls tumble from his finely shaped head, encircling it like an aureole, and falling in soft undulations on his shoulders. His upturned face at once compels attention, for it is not an ordinary face. The exquisitely molded features, the great brown eyes with their long, fringelike lashes, beaming with hope, innocence, imagination and the joy of living; the fine aquiline nose and pensive curving lips all unite to form an ideal picture such as might inspire a poet or be the envy and the despair of a sculptor. What a perfect specimen of boyhood! What pride must fill his father’s heart! What joy must thrill that father’s hopes and aspirations as he looks down the long vista of years and beholds his boy — a man!

Years pass. Seated in my study my thoughts wander back to the old days. I think of all “my boys” out in the world now — some in college — some already in business — and I wonder how they are “turning out.” I wonder if any of the little lessons have struck home and if they find life a little pleasanter for my having lived.

“And teach him and train him to be like a man.”

A knock at my door and a letter is handed in. As I hastily open it, a photo falls to the floor.

“— University, “Oct. 5, ’07.

“Dear Professor:

“It was very kind of you to remember me on my birthday. I have read the book you sent me and wish to thank you from the bottom of my heart for it. I wish my father had given me something like that to read two years ago.

“I am trying to live up to the standards you set before me, but it is very hard to do so in this place. There is no restraint whatever on the boys. They come to lectures or stay away as they please, and nobody seems to care.

“Thanks for your words of encouragement. I am trying to keep cheerful and to make each failure a stepping-stone to success, but I get blue very often. But I am trying, and you are helping me to lift myself up.

“Write soon again.

“M——.”

Little M——! Six years since I have seen him! Six short years and now he is in college.

Ah, the photo! What? Impossible — but yes! there is that finely poised head and those glorious, luminous eyes — the same — but with what a difference! The innocence, the straightforward frankness is gone; one eyelid seems to droop; those lines — that indecision, cigarettes — and — and other things. Yes, other things.

I gaze earnestly at the picture of the youth, and then I draw from an old book the photo of the boy, with head erect, one arm thrown around the gnarled gray trunk of a great tree.

How can I help condemning a humanity that allows such things to be? Our educational system, our modern ideas of modesty, are all wrong. It is false modesty that prevents the parent from giving a straightforward answer to the natural questionings and wonderings of his son! False modesty that turns a pure, innocent child to the gutter for an answer which he always gets — clothed in the vilest and most filthy language! False modesty that prevents our schools from giving our boys, in a clean, truthful manner, the knowledge necessary for their very existence.—National Purity Federation Literature.

“Just Like a Boy”

By Elizabeth Rosser

By Elizabeth Rosser

“JUST like a boy!” exclaims the fond mother, As the babe on her bosom flies into a rage; She vainly endeavors her laughter to smother— ’Tis “funny” to see him so mad at his age. And so at his cradle we mothers begin it, And all through the years we might better employ, We teach him the fact, every hour, every minute, That the bad things he does are all “just like a boy!”

He tears up his books and smashes his playthings, He muddles the floor and the door loudly bangs, He strews all the rooms with his night-things and day-things, And breaks up our slumbers with noisy harangues. And yet we make ever a willing concession, Whate’er he may ruthlessly break or destroy; We say—and it covers up every transgression—(While we pick up the fragments) “It’s just like a boy!”

And, pity of pities!—we say it before him, The wide-open ears drink it gleefully in; And with the false notion we thoroly store him, What’s funny in him in his sister is sin. He comes home from school and his garments are muddy;—But never let that for a moment annoy;—His eye is swelled shut and his countenance bloody,—He’s only been fighting—that’s “just like a boy!”

Swift pass the years; and as he grows older, He bullies his sister, his mother he slights; Daily he grows more defiant and bolder, And ’tis “just like a boy” to stay out late o’ nights. He must sow his wild oats e’er in life he doth settle; Some few high carousals in youth must enjoy; If he gets into scrapes it will but show his mettle, All this we expect—that is “just like a boy!”

Day in and day out the laddie received it, Imbibed it along with his every-day food; He knows that his father and mother believed it,—That boys will be naughty, but girls must be good. Let’s give him a motto more true and more tender, And show him his place in humanity’s plan, His mother’s true comrade, his sister’s defender, And teach him and train him to be like a man.

To Make a House into a Home

By Bishop Vincent

THE biggest blunder you ever made was when you let your boy run things. What Young America needs above all things is untiring, uncompromising, gentle and affectionate parental authority. He likes it. Bring him up by it, and twenty years from now, after you are gone, if you got within ear-shot you'd hear him praising “the way father used to do.”

Recreation is a necessity, but in a home where the mother and her guests sit for hours at the card-table playing for prizes, leaving the children in charge of servants, no amount of church-going and profession of belief will avail to develop character in those children.

Home is the real test of character. No saint is ready for translation till he can live wisely, courageously, bravely, amiably and consistently at home. Self-control and silence know how to keep house—how to transform a house into a home—and willpower and good sense will teach one when and how long they should be exercised.

—Bishop Vincent.

The Last Resort

A LITTLE incident, which illustrates the half-unconscious feeling which many people have about depending on divine providence, is related in the memoirs of Mary Somerville. When a girl she and her brother had coaxed their timid mother to accompany them on a sail. The day was sunny, but a stiff breeze was blowing, and presently the boat began to toss and roll. “George,” called Mrs. Fairfax to the captain, “this is an awful storm! I fear we are in great danger; mind how you steer; remember, I trust in you!” He replied, “Dinna trust in me, leddy; trust in God Almighty.” In perfect horror the lady exclaimed, “Dear me, is it come to that!”—Selected.

A Hard Year for the Family

“It is the sign of a hard year for the family when the wife carries the stove and the husband the pipe.—Town and Country.

No Deed of Love Lost

By Louis Albert Banks

God has so made the world that every generous, Christlike deed shall have its influence, not only now and here, but evermore and everywhere. In Gray’s famous “Elegy” there is a line which bemoans the fate of the flowers that waste their sweetness on the desert air. But modern scientists assure us that the poet was wrong in his conception, and that no flower ever yet thus wasted its sweetness. They explain to us that all the flowers in the world, whether they be the laurels and the rhododendrons of the lofty mountains and the deep forests, or the palms of India and Africa, or the gorgeous century-plants of the American desert, or the roses of the valleys, are perpetually enriching the atmosphere and making the earth a healthier and sweeter place in which to live.

Many of these great gardens of God grow and flourish hundreds of miles from any human habitation, but cause the winds to catch up their fragrance, and the air is sweeter in Cleveland because there are flowers growing in South America and China. The God who knows how to make the flower-perfume cross the oceans, will not be at a loss to find a way to make your deed of forgiving love and mercy help the world, and that not only now but long after the deed is done.— Louis Albert Banks, D.D.

God Knows His Business

A TERRIFIC storm was raging, and in one home two of the larger children of the household were greatly frightened, both giving way to sobs. A five-year-old lad, who was not in the least disturbed by the storm, soon wearied of the cries of the older children, and blurted out: “O, stop your bawlin’! Don’t you s’pose God knows His business?” — Of Such Is the Kingdom.

Blessings of the Country

THE country is nature; the city is against nature, and to antagonize nature means enfeeblement.

It is because the city taints the blood, weakens the muscles, and makes the flesh flabby, that it has continually to draw upon the country for supplies of fresh human physique.

And it is because of the intense centripetal influence of the city that we may expect the continuation of a process of bodily degeneracy in the average physical condition of the country at large.

So that any influence that can be set in operation tending to reverse the drift of population and remanding it to the country and the soil, where it more properly belongs, will contribute to that extent to deepen the foundations of national life and to conserve and promote its vigor.—S. F. Examiner.

California Dried Fruit

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Daily News Bulletins

LIBERTY

THE OFFICIAL ORGAN OF

THE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY BUREAU

AN illustrated, 48-page, quarterly magazine, published as an exponent and advocate of true religious liberty; defending Christianity and the rights of conscience; upholding the Bible as the infallible word of God; recognizing the church and state as ordained of Heaven for specific and distinct purposes, but vigorously protesting against the alliance of the church with the state in the attempt to advance religion and to promote the state. Price 25 cents per year. Liberal terms to agents.

Address, LIBERTY, Takoma Park, D.C.

Life and Health

A PRACTICAL health journal, published with a view of meeting hygienic needs in every home; teaching how to care for the health and how to preserve life; prescribing simple home treatments to assist nature in throwing off diseases rather than adding more poison by using drugs or unnatural stimulants as remedies; teaching how to avoid disease as far as possible, how to manage in the home when sickness does come, and how to combat the disease by simple remedies which nature provides.

Send for sample copy and special rates to agents. Price 10 cents per copy or $1.00 per year.

Address, LIFE & HEALTH, Takoma Park, D. C.

Take the Chicago and Northwestern Line for all points East.

Through daily and personally conducted tourist cars from San Francisco at 6:40 p. m. Low round-trip tickets on various dates to Eastern points. Apply to Southern Pacific agents, or

R. R. RITCHIE,

General Agent Chicago & Northwestern R. R.

878 Market St. San Francisco

Our Little Friend

An Illustrated Paper for the Smaller Men and Women, for the Children and Little Ones

Instructive and entertaining, clean, wholesome, sensible. It is a character builder, a helper to father and mother. Our Little Friend would plant seed in the joyous life of the children in the Present, that it may bear blessed fruitage in the Harvest of the Future. Respect your child's individuality. Take the paper for him or her. Only 50 cents a year.

Address, OUR LITTLE FRIEND, Mountain View, Cal.

Early Writings.

By Mrs. E. G. White. A new edition of this popular work, rearranged and reprinted from new plates. This book is a compilation of the first published writings of the author, and contains many encouraging words for those who are looking for the soon return of our Lord. Cloth, 75c; limp leather, $1.25. Address this office.

Signs of the Times Volumes 20 and 21

By Editor

Wanted.—“Signs of the Times” Volumes 20 and 21, for the years 1894 and 1895. If any of our readers have one or both of these volumes, bound or unbound, which they will sell or loan, will they please communicate with us at once? Address the editor.

Ground Squirrels, Rats, and Plague

It is now stated that the ground-squirrels are a menace; that they may take the germs of bubonic plague from rats, and make it endemic in California. The only real remedy there seems to be is persistent war on rats till all are destroyed. American Medicine declares that the only way to do it is to starve them to death by cleanliness.

Longing for a Kingdom of Peace

A recent daily paper declares: “All Europe staggers as a man sick to death,” and seemingly at the bottom of nearly all the troubles is personal ambition, desire for wealth rather than the good of humanity. It is even stated that the murders which began the war with Morocco were invited by the company exploiting the country, in order to furnish a pretext for the intervention of Spain. It was Abdul Hamid’s determination to rule in Turkey that brought on the recent Armenian massacres. To-day all Europe is staggering under a debt which forbodes early disaster. How every true soul ought to long for that kingdom which shall not know war, for that peace which shall endure forever.

A Sunday-Law Trial in South Carolina

By Editor

There comes to us too late for publication in this issue a report of a Sunday-law trial in South Carolina. It will appear next week. Our readers will be interested in knowing how an evil law in a good community can be used as an instrument of tyranny and oppression.

Turkey and the Vatican

“When the present Sultan was raised to the throne,” says the Western Watchman, “the official communication was made through a special mission, composed of six high officials of the Turkish government,” to the pope. Why should not the Sublime Porte and the Vatican come together?

China Protests Japanese Railway Scheme

The Chinese Government has recalled her minister Wu Ting Fang, and in his place sends a more progressive man, Chang Yin Ting. China wants the aid of America and the powers against Japan's action in the building of the Antung-Mukden railway; and declares that the construction of this road is a part of a military scheme to conquer China. China's appeal will put the powers on record. Her protest is said to be “distinctly the most important utterance on the Far Eastern Question that has been made within the last three years.”

A Holy War Called For

The greatest Catholic paper in America is the Western Watchman, of St. Louis, and in its issue of July 29, in speaking of the militant attitude of the French Church, it declares:

“It takes a lot of provocation and a long time to work up the church in our day to the fighting point; but her fingers are just as well skilled for war as they ever were; and the world needs a sight of the Catholic Church in battle array. It will do it good, and then the Lord of Hosts will come forth from His concealment behind the clouds, and show a startled world that His arm is not shortened. We need a holy war in Christendom. France is the home of Christian chivalry. She has poured out blood and treasure in the past like water to smite the infidel and rescue the sanctuaries of the church from their profaning grasp.

“The infidel is now entrenched in France herself. He rules on the Seine with more haughty sway than he ever did on Asiatic slope or Mediterranean wave. Let the soldiers of the Cross have at him. Don’t parley with him; smite him, hurl him from his political entrenchments, and let his resting-place be at the bottom of the great river that in ages gone by saw so many Christian soldiers set out to give battle to the enemies of God and Holy Church. We have said many times already, and we repeat it here: the next revolution in France will end with the massacre of the infidels.”

But in the light of the word of God and His “more sure word of prophecy,” it may be said that the Lord of Hosts will not make bare His arm by such means as proposed by the Watchman. That is simply a repetition of the Dark Ages.

Catholicism Predominant

THE German Reichstag is a conglomerate body. It has a half dozen or more parties. Sometimes these can be gotten together and do come together under strange combinations. What is called “the Center Party” is the Roman Catholic party. There have been times in the past when the government has been forced to make terms with them, but for some time they have been one of the quiet parties of the German Parliament. Yet in order to obtain support for his war measures, the Kaiser has been forced to call to his aid the Catholic Center again. These have united with the Conservatives, and the Western Watchman of July 8 declares:

“Henceforward only such laws will be passed by the Reichstag as will suit the Catholic party, and the greatest Protestant state in Europe must, willy nilly, take its orders from Rome. We would put it thus bluntly, because we would emphasize the victory the Center has won; and for the further reason that the parties which have controlled the policy of the German Empire for many years, to the exclusion of the Center, have always boasted that the country would have to be governed either by them or the Pope. We take their own estimate of the situation and state a condition in the words of their own description. The Center is again in supreme power, and with the Conservatives will rule the destinies of the German state.”

In other words, Germany has again “gone to Canossa.”

National Conservation Congress in Seattle

The First National Conservation Congress of the United States, will be held in the Auditorium of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Seattle, Wash., August 26, 27, 28. It will bring together several thousand men and women interested in the material development of the country; and the proper utilization of all the natural resources producing individual wealth and national prosperity. The congress will mark the opening of a campaign for international conservation of all that assists in making the world a desirable place for present and future generations to build homes and establish commercial enterprises. The First National Conservation Congress convenes in Seattle for the purpose of uniting on definite plans for protecting, conserving, and perpetuating the resources of land and water. Among the speakers listed are: President William H. Taft; Hon. R. A. Ballinger, Secretary of the Interior; Gifford Pinchot, chairman of the joint committee on Conservation between States and Nation; F. H. Newell, Chief of the Reclamation Service; Senator Reed Smoot, of Utah; Senator Paris Gibson, of Montana, and several members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives; and Hon. W. T. Freer, Governor of Hawaii, and Prof. Ralph S. Hosmer, of the Hawaiian Conservation Commission. In addition, some of the most prominent churchmen of the day will participate.

Cut Out the Bible.

By Editor

A despatch from Chicago, July 22, declares that Prof. Clyde W. Votaw, of the University of Chicago Divinity School, who lectured on “Ethics and the Sunday-School” the day before, declared that the Bible was not modern enough for the child, and Sunday-school teachers should leave their Bibles at home, because neither the pupil nor the average teacher could understand the Scripture sufficiently to consider them. He would have the Sunday-school pay more attention to the topics of contemporaneous existence than to the Scriptures. How glad we are that God has given His Bible to the common people, and that when the greatest Teacher of all ages was here upon the earth “the common people heard Him gladly.” He is just the same great Teacher to-day.

Tele-vision.—

A despatch from Copenhagen, July 31, declares that two Danes, named Anderson, brothers, have accomplished what has been dreamed of for years, seeing by wire, “tele-vision” (seeing far off). In other words, an apparatus is invented by means of which it is possible to see what is going on at the other end of a telephone wire. The details of the invention are naturally kept secret, but there appears to be no doubt as to its genuineness. The despatch states that an engineer of high repute has just tested the claims of the Andersons, and the expert declared the claim to be entirely justified. The process is entirely new and very simple. The men who have solved this problem are of humble parentage and are aged 28 and 30, respectively.

Germany’s New Chancellor

It was not very long ago that Jew-baiting was almost a popular thing in Germany, but there succeeds Prince Von Buelow, the retiring Imperial Chancellor, Dr. Von-Bethmann-Hollweg, a Jew. He seems to have been an old friend of the Emperor in his school-days.

Fall of the Clemenceau Ministry

July 20 the Clemenceau ministry of France fell under dramatic circumstances at the conclusion of a violent debate over naval scandals. Clemenceau is succeeded by M. Briand.

Earthquake Damages Nagoya

A severe earthquake occurred in central Japan at 3:30 A.M., August 14. The city of Nagoya, with a population of 250,000, was badly damaged, and many lives were lost.

Great Fire in Osaka, Japan

It is said that the recent fire in Osaka, Japan, burned over a territory five miles square, destroying 20,000 houses.