: Music and Its Masters by Boise O B Otis Bardwell - Music; Musicians

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PAGE. PREFACE 9

SUGGESTIONS TO PARENTS 17

A WORD TO PARENTS 331

PRESS NOTICES 332

PREFACE

SUNDAY ought to be the most cheerful, sunniest, happiest and best day of the week in every home. In most homes it is the dullest and most dreary day of the week to the children, and the most taxing and the most wearying to the parents, especially to the mother. It not only ought to be, but it can be made, not only the brightest and happiest but also the most influential in the character-building and religious training of the children. In some households Sunday is looked forward to with anticipations of pleasure throughout the entire week. In these homes, the father does not come down stairs on Sunday morning and say: "Now, children, gather up those flowers, throw them out of the window, pull down the blinds, get down the Bible and we will have an awful solemn time here to-day." Neither is the day given to frivolity or the home to demoralizing influences. From morning until night there are two great principles that govern; first, the sacredness of the day, and second, the sacredness of the God-given nature of childhood. The day is not spent in repressing the child nature by a succession of "don't do that," "now stop that," etc., that begin in the morning and continue throughout the day, and end only when the little ones lose consciousness in sleep on Sunday night. In these homes, the parents recognize the fact that the child nature is the same whether the day is secular or sacred. On Sunday the child nature is not repressed, but the childish impulses are directed into channels suited to the sacredness of the day. In such homes the children, instead of being sorry that it is Sunday, are glad; instead of regretting the return of the day with dislike and dread, they welcome it as the brightest, the cheeriest and the best of all the week.

The purpose of the author in the preparation of this book in its present illustrated and slightly changed form, is to afford all parents a valuable aid in making Sunday not only the brightest, happiest and best day of the entire week for both parents and children, but also to aid the parents to make Sunday pre-eminently the day around which shall cluster throughout the entire life of each child the sweetest, tenderest and most sacred recollections of childhood, of father and mother and of brother and sister, and especially of their knowledge of the Bible and of everything sacred.

Did it ever occur to you, as a parent, that between the birth and the age of twenty-one years there are three solid years of Sundays--an amount of time almost equal to the number of years given to an entire course of college training? The Creator has not laid upon parents the responsibilities of parenthood without giving them ample time and opportunity to discharge these obligations to Him, to themselves, and to their children.

The idea which has been successfully demonstrated in hundreds of homes, where the impulses and natural inclinations of childhood have been turned into sacred channels on Sundays so as to enable the parents to teach spiritual truths in the most effective manner, is the method which is suggested by the author to the parents in the use, on Sunday afternoons, of the fifty-two little sermons given in this volume.

I knew a mother who regularly on Sunday afternoons gathered her children about her and read them religious books and literature. In her considerable family, every child became eminently useful. One, who was a university professor, told me that those Sunday afternoons with his mother in the nursery embodied the most formative influences of his life.

I know another family, of some seven or eight children, where Sunday was always used for religious instruction with the children. With the reading and other things, they always "played church", and the experience of those early childhood days made the boys splendid public talkers, and the girls were also very capable in the same direction. No better school of oratory was ever organized.

I know another family of four children, where the entire family looked forward throughout the week to the special and larger pleasure which Sunday always brought. They grew up naturally into a religious life, and developed that ability for public address and service which could not so well be gained in any other way.

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