KEYNOTES.

Southern Cross, Volume 3, Issue 51, 21 March 1896, Page 10

KEYNOTES.

The keynote of the day is usually struck by the mother in her morning mood of cheerfulness or depression. If she be a brisk and lighthearted person with a knack of putting crooked things straight and tangled things smooth, her very step and air and her voice as she goes singing about the house will make husband, children, and maids blithe and buoyant. Little as the world suspect it, the keynote of the business office, of the shop, the factory, the exchange, is often to be discovered in the quiet home from which the merchant, the operative, or

the broker has come to engage in the vocation of his daily life. A woman’s sweet face, her caressing hand, her loyal truth, her unswerving faith are supplying the man not only with motive power, but are forming his environment, subtle and intangible, but strongly potential all the while he is away from her. The boys of a certain family are . noted for their chivalry, their considerate manner towards their sisters, and their unswerving honesty. One stays a few days in the home where they have been reared, and observe* that the keynote of that home chords with the melody of the golden rule, ‘Do unto others that ye would that others should do unto you,’—it is plainly the marching order of the day for all who go forth from the training of the parents there. On the other hand, the mother, otherwise very attractive in person and demeanoui, is sharp and incisive in her way of addressing her young people. Aggressiveness and peremptoriness characterise them in turn. The small boy bullies his little brother, he orders the maid rudely about, he contradicts brusquely and impetuously statements made by schoolmates. His mother has enforced her authority by the strong hand, and her iihpetuous will has been obeyed, but no sweet spirit of obedience, no tender grace of decorum, has made life easeful and beautiful to the children. The keynote has been struck, with the result of jarring dissonance at present, and, what is worse, of future ill effects on character—ill effects which can never be quite overcome. As the mother’s word of the moment gives the keynote of a single day, so the mother’s habitual mood, her aims, her secret ambitions, her way of looking at life, give the keynote for many days, and sometimes for many lives. Whatever else perishes from the race, history is always going on, and one by one families are making it in the commonplace, uneventful days which are lived in quiet homes. —Selected.