acter great importance, should be attached to the keeping of a promise, but greater regard should also be paid to the act of forming it. Some persons think they have resolved, when they have merely said to themselves they will do a thing; and others again, think they have resolved, when they have made no calculation of the difficulties to be encountered. In order to keep our resolution firm and inviolate, we should not play with it. We should not use it hastily, or often, but rather keep it in reserve, as a sacred power with which we are invested, and which it would be an abuse of one of the best gifts of God to man, to trifle with, weaken, or destroy.
Children especially should be taught to think well before they resolve; but having formed a resolution, they ought to be encouraged by all means to keep it. All promises should also be scrupulously kept with them, even at the cost of some annoyance to their parents or friends. It is related of Lord Chatham, that having promised his son to see the pulling down of a garden wall, he happened to forget this promise, and had it pulled down in his absence. Yet so strong was his feeling of the importance of what he had done, that he ordered his workmen to build up the wall again, in order that his son might witness the downfall he had anticipated with so much interest.
It seems strange that all the world should concur in admiring a character of spotless integrity, and yet take so little pains to maintain it in the young, when we know that every deviation from the direct line of rectitude on the part of parents, must necessarily tend to obscure that line in the minds of their children, who look up to them as examples, and who are more influenced by the general conduct of those with whom they associate, than by the force of argument or the persuasion of eloquence. The manner in which they are treated, then, should be firm, upright, and clear. There should be no confusion of contending motives; no aiming at one thing, and pretending to aim at another. Even in reasoning with them, things should be spoken of as they are, not merely as their parents wish them to be.
