Actions do not speak louder than words to a young heart; he must feel it in your touch, see it in your eye, hear it in your tones, or you will never convince child or boy that you love him, though you labour day and night for his good and his pleasure. Perhaps this is the special lesson of Christmas-tide for parents. The Son came--for what else we need not inquire now--to reinstate men by _compelling_ them to believe that they--the poorest shrinking and ashamèd souls of them--that they live enfolded in infinite personal love, desiring with desire the response of love for love. And who, like the parent, can help forward this “wonderful redemption”? The boy who knows that his father and his mother love him with measureless patience in his faults, and love him out of them, is not slow to perceive, and receive, and understand the dealings of the higher Love. But why should good parents, more than the rest of us, be expected to exhibit so divine a love? Perhaps because they are better than most of us; anyway, that appears to be their vocation. And that it is possible to fulfil even so high a calling we all know, because we know good mothers and good fathers. Parents, love your children, is, probably, an unnecessary counsel to any who read this paper; at any rate, it is a presuming one. But let us say to reserved undemonstrative parents who follow the example of righteous Abraham and _rule_ their households,--Rule none the less, but let your children feel and see and be quite sure that you love them. We do not suggest endearments in public, which the young folk cannot always abide. But, dear mother, take your big schoolgirl in your arms just once in the holidays, and let her have a good talk, all to your two selves; it will be to her like a meal to a hungry man. For the youths and maidens--remember, they would sell their souls for love; they do it too, and that is the reason of many of the ruined lives we sigh over. Who will break down the partition between supply and demand in many a home where there are hungry hearts on either side of the wall? CHAPTER X _PARENTS IN COUNCIL_ PART I “Now, let us address ourselves to the serious business of the evening. Here we are: ‘Six precious (pairs), and all agog, To dash through thick and thin!’ _Imprimis_--our desire is for reform! Not reform by Act of Parliament, if you please; but, will the world believe?--we veritably desire to _be reformed_! And that, as a vicarious effort for the coming race. Why, to have conceived the notion entitles us to sit by for our term of years and see how the others do it!” “Don’t be absurd, Ned, as if it were all a joke! We’re dreadfully in earnest, and can’t bear to have the time wasted. A pretty President you are.” “Why, my dear, that’s the joke; how can a man preside over a few friends who have done him the honour to dine at his table?”