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where no salutary plants are cultivated.
pression infallibly generates many others.
air are able to kindle the blaze of contention.

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8. By frequent conflicts and unreserved familiarity, all that mutual respect which is necessary to preserve love, even in the most intimate connexions, is entirely lost; and the faint affection which remains, is too feeble to be felt amid the furicus operation of the hateful passions.

9. Farewell peace and tranquility, and cheerful converse, and all the boasted comforts of the family circle. The nest, which should preserve a perpetual warmth by the constancy of paternal and conjugal affection, is rendered cold and joyless. In the place of the soft down which should cover it, are substituted thorns and briars.

10. The waters of strife, to make use of the beautiful allusion of scripture, rush in with impetuous violence, and ruffle and discolor that stream, which in its natural and undisturbed current, devolves its waters all smooth and limpid.

11. But it is not necessary to expatiate on the misery of family dissentions. I mean more particularly to suggest, family dissention, besides all its own immediate evils, is the fruitful parent of moral misconduct.

12. When the several parts which compose a family find themselves uneasy in that home which is naturally the seat of mutual enjoyment, they are tempted from the strait road of common prudence, to pursue their happiness through a devious wild of passion and imagination.

13. The son, arrived at years of maturity, who is treated harshly at home, will seldom spend his evenings at the domestic fire-side. If he lives in the city he will fly for refuge to company, and in the end, it is very probable he will form some unhappy connexion, which cannot be continued without a plentiful supply of money.

14. Money, it is probable, cannot be procured. What then remains, but to pursue those methods which unprincipled ingenuity has invented, and which, sooner or later, lead to their proper punishments, pain, shame and death!

15. But though the consequences are not always such as the operation of human laws produce, yet they are always terrible, and destructive of happiness and virtue.

16. Misery is indeed the necessary result of all deviation from rectitude; but early debauchery, early disease, early profligacy of all kinds, are peculiarly fruitful of

wretchedness, as they sow the seeds of misery in the spring: of life, when all that is sown takes deep root, and buds and blossoms, and brings forth fruit in profuse abundance.

17. In the disagreements between children and parents, it is certain that the children are usually most culpable.Their violent passions and defective experience render them disobedient and undutiful. Their love of pleasure opcrates so violently as often to destroy the source of filial affection.

18. A parent is stung to the heart by the ingratitude of a child. He checks his precipitancy, and perhaps with too little command of temper; for who can always hold the reins? Asperity produces asperity. But the child was the aggressor and therefore deserves a great part of the misery which ensues.

19. It is, however, certain, that the parent is often imprudent, as well as the child undutiful. He should endeavor to render home agreeable, by gentleness and reasonable indulgence for a man at every age, seeks to be pleased, but more particularly at the juvenile age.

20. He should indeed maintain his authority; but it should be like the mild dominion of a limited monarch, and not the iron rule of an austere tyrant. If home is rendered pleasing, it will not be long deserted. The prodigal will soon return, when his father's house is, always ready to receive him with joy.

21. What is said of the consequences of domestic disunion to sons, is equally to be applied to daughters. Indeed, as the misconduct of daughters is more fatal to family peace, though perhaps not more heinous in a moral view, particular care should be taken to render them attached to the comforts of the family circle.

22. When their home is disagreeable, they will be ready to make any exchange; and will often lose their characters, virtue and happiness, in the pursuit of it. Indeed, the female character and happiness are so easily injured, that no solicitude can be too great in their preservation, But prudence is necessary in every good cause, as well as zeal; and it is found by experience, that the gentlest method of gov ernment, if it is limited and directed by good sense, is the best.

23. It ought, indeed, to be steady, but not rigid; and 161251

every pleasure which is innocent in itself and its consequen ces, ought to be admitted, with a view to render less disa greeable that unwinking vigilance, which a delicate and sensible parent will judge necessary to be used in the care of a daughter.

24. To what wickedness as well as wretchedness matrimonial disagreements lead, every day's history will clearly inform us. When the husband is driven from his home by a termagant, he will seek enjoyment, which is denied him at home, in the haunts of vice, and in the riots of intemperance; nor can female corruption be wondered at, though it must be greatly pitied and regretted, when in the heart of a husband, which love and friendship should warm, hatred is found to rankle.

25. Conjugal infelicity not only renders life most uncom fortable, but leads to desperate dissoluteness, and carelessness in manners, which terminate in the rain of health, peace and fortune.

26. But it avails little to point out evils without recommending a remedy. One of the first rules which suggests itself is, that families should endeavor, by often and serious. ly reflecting on the subject, to convince themselves that not only the enjoyments but the virtues of every individual greatly depend on a cordial union.

27. When they are convinced of this, they will endeavor to promote it; and it fortunately happens, that the very wish and attempt of every individual must infallibly secure success. It may, indeed, be difficult to restrain the occasional sallies of temper; but where there is, in the more dispassionate moments, a settled desire to preserve domestic union, the transient violence of passion will not often produce a permanent rupture.

23. It is another most excellent rule, to avoid a gross familiarity, even where the connexion is most intimate. The buman heart is so constructed as to love respect. It would indeed be unnatural în very intimate friends, to behave to each other with stiffness; but there is a delicacy of manner, and a flattering deference, that tend to preserve that degree of esteem, which is necessary to support affection, and which is lost in contempt, when it deviates into excessive familiarity.

29. An habitual politeness of manners will prevent even indifference from degenerating to hatred. It will refine, exalt and perpetuate affection.

30. But the best and most efficacious rule is, that we should not think our moral and religious duties are only to be practised in public, and in the sight of those from whose applause we expect the gratification of our vanity, ambition, or avarice: but that we should be equally attentive to our behavior among those who can only pay us by reciprocal love.

31. We must show the sincerity of our principles and professions by acting consistent with them, not only in the legislature, in the field, in the pulpit, at the bar, or in any public assembly, but at the fire-side..

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you." "It is not charged, mother," says Will. "Well but may be," says the good old woman, "it will go off, even if it isn't charged."-" But there is no lock on it, ma'am." "O dear Billy, I am afraid the hollow thing there, the barrel, I think you call it, will shoot, even if there is no lock." 2. Don't laugh at the old lady. Two thirds of our fears and apprehensions of the evils and mischiefs of this life, are just as well founded as her's were in this case.

3. There are many unavoidable evils in life, which it becomes us as men and as Christians, to bear with fortitude; and there is a certain period assigned to us all, and yet dreaded by most of us, wherein we must conflict with death, and finally lose connexion with all things beneath the sun. These things are beyond our utmost power to resist, or sagacity to evade.

4. It is our wisest part, therefore, to prepare to encounter them in such a manner as shall do honor to cur profession, and manifest a perfect conformity to that directory on which our profession stands. But why need we anticipate unavoidable evils, and "feel a thousand deaths by fearing one?"

5. Why need a woman be everlastingly burying her children, in her imagination, and spend her whole time in a fancied course of bereavement, because they are mortal, and must die some time or other? A divine teacher says, "sufficient for the day is the evil thereof;" Lut we put new and unnecessary gall in all the bitter cups we have to

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drink in life, by artfully mixing, sipping, and smelling be forehand like the squeamish patient, who by viewing and thinking of his physic, brings a greater distress and burden on his stomach, before he takes it, than the physic itself could ever have done.

6. I would have people be more careful of firc-arins than they are but I don't take a gun barrel, unconnected with powder and lock, to be more dangerous than a broomstick.

7. Sergeant Tremble and his wife, during the time of general health, feel as easy and secure as if their chidren were immortal. Now and then a neighbor drops off with the consumption, or an apoplexy; but that makes no impression, as all their children are plump and hearty.

8. If there are no cancers, dysenteries, small-pox, bladders in the throat, and such like things to be heard of, they almost bid defiance to death; but the moment information was given that a child six miles off, had the throat distemper, all comfort bade adieu to the honse,, and the misery then endured from dreadful apprehensions, lest the disease should enter the family, is unspeakable.

9. The old sergeant thought that when the wind blew from that quarter, he could smell the infection, and therefore ordered the children to keep house, and drink wormwood and rum, as a preservative against contagion. As for Mrs. Tremble, her mind was in a state of never ceasing agitation at that time: a specimen of the common situation of the family is as follows:

10. Susy, your eyes look heavy, you don't feel a sore throat, do you? Husband, I heard Tommy cough in the bed room just now. I'm afraid the distemper is beginning in his vitals, let us get up and light a candle. You don't begin to feel any sore on your tongue or your mouth, do you, my dear little chicken? It seems to me Molly did not eat her breakfast with so good a stomach this morning as she used to do. I'm in distress for fear she has got the distemper coming on.

11. The house was one day a perfect Bedlam; for having heard that rue and rum was an excellent guard in their present danger, the good lady dispensed the catholicon so liberally among her children one morning, that not a soul of them could eat all day; Tom vomited heartily; Sue looked as red as fire, and Molly as pale as death.

12. O! what terrors, and heart achings, till the force of

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