What Shall We Do With Our Parents?

The question, What shall we do with our parents, is of the greatest importance to those of us who are about to graduate. A young man rarely realizes its full suggestiveness until after his return home from college. In the careless days of early boyhood, the momentous issues of life, of which this is one, are not anticipated, or if so, only with a soothing sense of great distance.

The child's attitude of touching hopefulness is peculiarly striking in this particular. The confidence which he reposes in the fitness and adequacy of providence is nowhere better exemplified than in the unhesitating trust in which he permits his parents to take care of themselves.

During the two or three years before his entrance to college, it is true, the boy feels some dim forebodings of trouble ahead; but a decisive step to meet it is seldom taken. Human nature is weak, and the issue is generally avoided, while the anxious son consoles himself with the thought that years may bring wisdom to the dear parents.

He goes to college, and during his absence his fears are lulled to sleep. Occasionally his opinions clash with those of his father in regard to pecuniary arrangements, or he is interfered with respecting the method which he has decided to be most advantageous for the promotion of his studies. These are but passing clouds, but they presage the storm to come.

The graduate comes home, and the question immediately arises-how is he to assume his proper place at the head of his family; or if his conscience is weaker than his indolence, how is he even to vindicate his own absolute independence of parental influence?

Consider the situation. The man whose education is based on the rich experience of six thousand years is brought into daily intercourse with the man whose ideas are but the crude generalizations attained to in five thousand nine hundred and seventy. Their natural ability may be equal; but the difference in their points of view is tremendous. Fathers, as is well known, are never progressive; the standards of their early manhood are retained,-and they are long supplanted standards. As for mothers, the case is even worse, for their ideals are those of the maternal grandfather.

Under the circumstances the task set is a hard one. To lead, as gently as is consistent with firmness, the mistaken elders along a path which is difficult to their unaccustomed feet, to repeat again and again with kind insistence the doctrines which are so easy to the more enlightened mind, never forgetting that consideration which is due to a blood relation,-this is a duty calling into play all the self-assurance and confident superiority which even a careful training of four years can bestow.

Let us consider a single case; suppose a student, while a mere boy, has consented to take his father in with him to the paternal business, but that the wisdom which comes with long continued meditation shows him his mistake. He has learned the fallacy of his early reasoning. The object of life is pleasure and self-improvement. Money is but a means. The money getter makes it and end. Therefore he, the student, will not go into business, but travel, perhaps write a little, develop naturally as a flower, and live the only life possible for a rational graduate.

In such a case as this, power, as is so common, is on the side of wrong; and if a parent is obstinate, much trouble may be experienced in managing him. So frequently is this the fact that one hears every day of undutiful fathers usurping the reins of family government and ruling in their son's stead.

How then is this danger to be met? No general rule can be given. Each son must decide for himself in accordance with the peculiarities of his own especial parent. However, let not the son swerve an instant from his duty; knowing the true course, let him follow it, remembering that the persistent elbowing of the little wave gradually crowds aside the giant cliff. Let him complain unceasingly, let him be alternately sulky, gloomy, and petulant, let him if necessary even resort to desperate dissipation,- and success is almost inevitable.

GEORGE SIDNEY TYLOR.