A BAD CHARACTER, AND HOW IT FOLLOWS US.
SOME years ago, in a farming neighborhood, a middle-aged man was looking about in search of employment. He called at the house of a respect, able farmer, and told his errand.
"What is your name?" asked the farmer.
"John Wilson," was the reply.
"John Wilson—the same that lived near here when a boy?"
"The same, sir."
"Then I do not want you." John, surprised at such a reply, passed on to the house of the next farmer, and there a similar reply was given. And he found no one in the neighborhood where his earlier years had been spent who was willing to employ him. Passing on, he soon came in sight of the old school-house. "Ah," said he, "I understand it now. I was a school-boy there years ago; but what kind of a school-boy? Lazy, disobedient, often in mischief, and once caught in deliberate lying; and though since I have been trying to reform, they all think I am just the same as a man that I was as a boy. If I had done as I ought when at school, then people would have confidence in me now!"
So it is; and school-boys and school-girls should remember this,—that character follows us, and is remembered; and that those who have known us in our early days will be very apt to look upon us in later years as they did in our youth. A lazy boy generally makes a lazy man, just as a crooked sapling makes a crooked tree. And so a shiftless, careless, mischievous, untruthful boy is likely to have the same character when he grows up to manhood. And even if he has changed, it is hard to make people believe it; for, as someone has said, if the crack has been mended, people will always be looking where it was.
The great mass of idlers, thieves, paupers, vagabonds, and criminals that fill our penitentiaries and almshouses have- come to be what they are from wrong conduct and wrong habits in youth; as, on the other hand, those who make the great and useful men of the community are those who began right in their early days. As a general rule, we expect to see the traits of youth continued into, manhood, and confirmed and strengthened, rather than weakened, by years. And even where the character is really reformed, one often suffers for a lifetime for the errors and sins of youth; as the father told his son, "You may draw out the nails you have driven, but the holes in the post will remain!" Let all the young remember that character is early formed, and follows us wherever we go.-
The Children Paper.