Brothers and Sisters
What should be the home intercoxirse of brothers and sisters? What should they do toward the home life? How should they live together? These questions may be answered in general by sajdng that a close and tender friendship should exist between them. This sounds like a very commonplace remark. Of course brothers and sisters should be friends, and should live together in an intimate relationship as friends. No one denies it. But do we imiversally find this warm, living and tender friendship where there are young people in a home? We often find strong ties and attachments, mutual affection and interests, and much that is very beautiful; but when we come closer and look for friendship in the true sense, it i wanting. The brothers and sisters naay love one another very truly, but they seek their friends outside the home. They go outside for warm sympathy, for dose intimacy, for confidential companionship.
It is not hard to fund reasons for this. Living always together and knowing one another from
infancy, members of the same family are apt to grow uninteresting to one another. The sameness of the society, day after day, takes away its freshness. The common life which they all lead mider the same roof, with the same pursuits, the same topics for conversation, the same incidents and experiences, the same hopes and fears, the same joys and sorrows, the same books, the same social life, renders it difficult for the members of a household to impress one another in continual repetition and ever freshly kindle inspiration and emotion the one in the other, as friends from other homes can do, coming in only now and then.
Then the fact that it is home and that the ties are natural and thought to be secure; that the members are sure of each other, without making any effort to win confidence and regard; that love between them is a matter of course, as if by nature, without winning it or cherishing it or troubling themselves to keep it, — this is another of the causes for the absence of real friendship among brothers and sisters. They imagine that family affection is a sort of instinct, not subject to the laws which control other affections; that it does not need to be sought or gained or won, as affection must be in others, by giving affection in return and by the countless little tendernesses and thoughtfulnesses which are shown to others whom they desire to win. They forget that the principle, “He that hath friends must show himself friendly,” applies in the family just as well as outside of it.
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They forget that friendship anywhere must be cherished or it will die; that indifference and coldness will cause it to wither as drought causes summer flowers to wither. They imagine, in a word, that the love of the family is so sure and strong that it needs no care, no pains, to keep it safe. So it is that in very many homes brothers and sisters come and go, day after day, and year after year, mingling in all the life of the household, but never really forming dose friendships among themselves.
Friendships in the family require care and culture as do other friendships. We must win one another’s love inside the home doors just as we win the love of outside friends. We must prove ourselves worthy; we must show ourselves unselfish, self-forgetful, thoughtful, kind, tender, patient, helpful. Then when we have won each other we must keep the treasure of affection and confidence, just as we do in the case of friends not in the sacred circle of home.
If we have a friend whom we respect and prize very highly, we all know at what pains we are to retain his friendship. We are not sure of it regardless of our treatment of him. We are most careful never to do anything to make us seem imworthy of the friendship. We try to prune from our own character anything that would displease our friend. We cultivate assiduously those qualities of heart and life which he admires. We watch for opportimities to do kindnesses and show favors to him. We guard against whatever would wound him or cause him pain.
We give him our confidence, we trust him and prove our affection for him in coimtless ways.
Let no one suppose that home friendships can be won and kept in any other way. We cannot depend on nature or instinct to do this for us. We must live for each other. We must gain each other’s heart by giving just what we expect to receive. We must cherish the friendship that we have won. Unless we do, it will not grow. We must watch our words and our conduct. We must seek to please and take pains never to wound or grieve. We must deny self and live for one another. We must confide in one another. We must cultivate in our own hearts and lives whatever is beautiful, whatever is tender, whatever is holy, whatever is true. Friendships in our own home, to be deep and true and heart-satisfying, must be formed by the patient knitting of soul to soul and the growing of life into life, just as in other friendships.
Is it thus in most of our homes? There are distinguished exceptions; there are homes which shine like bits of heaven dropped down upon this sin-cursed earth. In these, natural affection has grown into a holy web of real and sacred friendship, binding brothers and sisters in closest bonds. There are brothers who have no friends so close as their own sisters; there are sisters who confide and trust in their own brothers as in no other friends.
One of the tenderest as well as saddest stories of all literature is that of Charles and Mary Lamb. In a fit of insanity the sister had taken the life of her
own mother. All her life after this she was subject to periods of frenzy, when it was necessary for her to be confined in an asylum. Then it was that her brother’s affection showed itself. He lived for his sister in imselfish devotion. When she was in her right mind she lived with him, and he watched over her with a care that was most touching.
When the fit of insanity was coming on there were premonitory symptoms; they would then start off together for the asylum where for a time she must be confined. One of their friends relates how on one occasion he met the brother and sister weeping bitterly as hand in hand they slowly paced together a little footpath across the fields, and joining them he found that they were taking their solemn way to the accustomed asylum. This was not something that occurred once or twice only, but frequently, and was liable to occur at any time; it was not for a year or two only, but for thirty-five years, imtil death separated them. He ‘’did not nerve himself to bear his awful charge for a month or for a year; he endured his cross through life, conscious that there was no escape from its burden and from its pains.” The indescribable pathos of this story is equaled only by the matchless devotion and constancy of the brother to his sister in all her sad and terrible lot and by her tender, all-absorbing affection for him.
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The history of life is not all written. Here and there in many a quiet home there is a friendship
between brother and sister, on which God’s angels look with* admiring love, which realizes all that is tender and beautiful in human attachment and affection. Yet I do not think I write a rash word when I say that such friendships are rare. Ofttimes the intercourse of brothers and sisters in the home lacks even the graces of ordinary civility. As soon as the door shuts them within, restraint is thrown off, selfishness comes to the surface, courtesy is laid aside. There is no pleasant conversation. Neither lives for or tries to please the other. The speech is rude or careless and the whole bearing cold or indifferent. The better nature is hidden and the worse comes to the surface. Instead of a tender idyl of grace and beauty the intercourse of brother and sister is a harsh and painful discord. It should not be so. Brothers and sisters should live together as intimate friends, should carefully win and sedulously keep each other’s love, dwelling together in imity and tender affection. There is no friendship in the world so pure, so rich and helpful, as that of the family, if only it be watched and tended as it should be.
Why should not a brother make a confidante of his own sister rather than of any other? Why should not a sister look to her own brother for counsel, for protection, for advice, for intimacy, rather than to any other? Why should not brothers be proud to have their own sisters lean upon their arms? and why should not sisters be proud to look up into the faces of their brothers, and feel secure in the shelter
[1081 of their manly love? But instead of this what do we often see? The brothers turn away from their own homes to find their companionships and friendships in other circles. As if their own sisters were not worthy of them, or it were a shame for a young man to devote himself in any measure to his sisters, as soon as they are old enough to be their companions they begin to seek other friendships. The sisters are then left to go improtected or to accept that courtesy and shelter from others which their own brothers have failed to give.
That is the picture as too often it is. What it ought to be, however, is different.
A yoimg man should be more polite to his own sister than to any other young woman imder heaven; and a young woman should ever turn to her brother as the one nearest in all this world to her imtil a husband stands by her side.
Brothers and sisters are each other’s natural keepers. If they fulfilled their duties in this regard, the one to the other, life would show fewer wrecks. They should shield each other. They should be an inspiration to each other in the direction of all noble thought and better life. They should be each other’s guardian angels in this world of danger and of false and fatal paths.
Sisters may be their brothers’ angels. There is a picture of a child walking on a path that is covered with flowers. Along the edge of the narrow way is shrubbery which hides from the child’s sight a deep
precipice. The child is unconscious of danger, charmed by the flowers and not seeing how one misstep would hxurl it to death. Over the little pilgrim’s head hovers a shadowy angel form, scarcely visible, but with eager, loving interest in his eye, while his hand gently touches the child’s shoulder; his mission is to guide the child’s steps, to shield it from danger and to keep it from falling. The picture represents a truth in the loving providence of God. There are angels who guard, guide, shelter and keep God’s children. They are ministering spirits. They keep us in all our ways. Over each one of us a guardian angel hovers xmseen evermore. But there is also a most blessed angel ministry of sisters in behalf of their brothers. There is no need to paint here any picture of the perils to which young men are exposed in this world. It makes the heart bleed to see how many of the noblest of them are destroyed, dragged down to ruin, their fair lives blackened, their godlike manhood debauched. They go out of the home pure, with lofty aspirations, with high hopes, with brilliant promises, challenging the admiration of all who know them; they come back, how often! stained, degraded, hopes wrecked, promises unfulfilled. Every young man who enters life enters a fierce battle in which no truce will come till he either lies down in final defeat or wins the last victory and enters into joy and rest. Life is hard. The young enter it without thought, without anxiety, without serious or solemn sense of danger, because they are not con-
sdous of its true meaning. But it is one prolonged struggle with enemies and with perils.
To every yoxmg man life is q)ecially hard. As he goes into it he needs the sympathy of all who love him; he needs the prayers and the help of all his friends. For want of the strong support of love many a yoxmg man goes down in the battle, and many who come through victorious owe their victories to the holy affection of truly loyal hearts that inspired them with hope and courage in all their hours of struggle. The value of strong friendships never can be known in this world.
Next to mother and father there is no one who can do so much to help a yoxmg man to live nobly as his own sister. She cannot always go with him. Her weak arm could not always shield him if she were beside him. But there is a help which she can give him that will prove mightier than her presence. It is not the help of good advice and earnest words — these should have power, too — but the help rather of silent and holy influence, gained in the home by a life of unselfishness and beauty, and then held as a potent charm outside and beyond the home walls. There is a power over her brother possible to every true sister, which would be like the very hand of God to guide him and restrain him in all the paths of life. All sisters, however, do not have this power over their brothers, and, alas! sometimes the power is for evil rather than for good.
May I try to tell you, dear girls, how you can
[HI] indeed be yoxir brothers’ guardian angels? Show them in yoxir own lives at home the perfect grace and beauty of a true, noble and lofty womanhood. Strive after all that is delicate, all that is pure, all that is tender, all that is holy and sacred in the divine ideal of woman. Show them in yourselves such perfect loveliness that they will turn away ever after from everything that is unlovely. Make virtue so attractive to them, as they see it embodied in you, that they will always be repelled by vice. Let them see in you such purity of soul, such sweetness of spirit, such divine sanctity, that wherever they go your influence will hang about them like an armor of defense, or, like an angel, hover above their heads in perpetual benediction. Be as nearly a perfect woman, each one of you, through Christ’s help, as it is possible for you to be. Then when temptations come to your brother there will rise up before his eyes such visions of purity and love that he will turn away with loathing from the tempter.
But oh! if you are not such angels of true womanhood to your brothers, if you do not fill their souk with visions of purity and sweetness, what help do you hope to be to them when they stand in the face of sore temptations? If you are deceitful, if you are selfish, if you are false, if you violate the holy proprieties of modesty and true refinement; if you are frivolous and trifling; if you follow pleasure, turning away from everything serious; if you are careless or heartless, — do not deceive yourselves with the vain
111*] hope that you can be in any high sense your brothers’ guardians in the day of danger. You may advise, you may persuade, you may implore with tears and every token of tender love, when they begin to yield, but your entreaties will avail nothing because your own life has failed to stand the test and to exhibit before them a lofty ideal of womanhood. But if you will only be true, noble, unselfish, gentle, womanly, in the highest, purest sense; if you only are thoughtful and considerate and live for a piupose, making yoiu: character decided and strong, you will throw over your brothers a silent, imperceptible yet mighty influence, which will be a shield to them in danger, a panoply in temptation, and which will fill their hearts with the purest, loftiest aspirations and aims.
Brothers should also be their sisters’ guardians. Every young man knows what true gallantry is, and what it requires of him. He is to honor every lady, whether rich or poor, whether of higher or lower station, and show her every respect. He is to be to every woman a true knight, ready to defend her from danger, to shield her from every insult, to risk his own life in her behalf. There is no better test of a gentleman than his treatment of women.
Now, to whom ought every young man to show the highest, truest gallantry? To whom ought he first of all to be a most true and loyal knight? To whom if not to his own sisters? Do not they come first in the circle of those to whom he owes honor? Have they not the first claim on his affection? If
he is not a true gentleman to his own sisters, can he be at heart a true gentleman to any other woman? Can a young man be manly, and treat his own sisters with less respect and honor than he treats other yoimg ladies? Hence a still higher test of a gentleman is his treatment of his own sisters. His chivalry must show itself first toward those who are closest to him in natural ties. He must show them the truest deference. He must treat them with that delicate regard, that gentle, affectionate respect, that tells of the loftiest gallantry. He must consider himself their true knight, whose office it is to throw about them every needed shelter, to serve them, and to promote their highest good in every way.
Of course there is no young man with one spark of the honor of true manliness in his breast who will not instinctively defend his sister, if she is insulted in the street. He will put himself instantly between her and the danger. Neither is there any brother worthy of the name who will not defend the honor of his sister if vile tongues asperse it. But more than this is required of a loyal brother. He should make himself a wall about his sister to shield her from every evil and imholy influence. Every young man knows other yoimg men; he knows their character, their habits, their good and evil qualities. He knows the yoimg men whose lives are impure, who are licentious, who consort with harlots. He knows those who indulge in strong drink, those who are godless and profane, those whose lives are stained
[1141 with the filth of debauchery. Can he be a true brother and permit such a young man to be the companion of his pure and gentle sister? Can he allow her in the innocence of her heart to accept the attentions of such a yoimg man, to lean upon his arm, to look up into his face with trust? Can he allow her to give her soul’s confidences to him? Can he see a friendship forming, strengthening, between his sister and such a yoxmg man and remain silent, uttering in her ear no voice of warning or protest, and yet be a loyal and faithful brother to her?
This is a place for plain, strong and earnest words. Surely young men do not think of this matter seriously or they would require no argtmient to convince them of their duty. Put the case in the strongest possible form and bring it close home. You have a sister pure as a lily. She has grown up beside you in the shelter of the home. Her eyes have never looked upon anything vile. Her ears have never heard an impure word. Her soul is white as the snowflakes that fall from the clouds. You love her as you love your own life. You honor her as if she were a queen. A yoimg man seeks to win her regard and confidence. He stands well in society, has good Dinners, is attractive, intelligent. But you know that he frequents resorts of evil, that his secret life is imchaste, that his soul is stained with low and vile sins, that he is the victim of habits which will bring ruin and dishonor in the end. Your sister knows nothing of his true character. Can you permit hln
to become her companion? Are you not boimd to tell her that he is not worthy of her? Can you do otherwise and be a faithful brother?
Besides this standing between his sister and danger every brother should also show her in his own life the ideal of the truest, purest, most honorable manhood. If it be true that the best shield a sister can make for her brother is to show him in herself the loftiest example of womanhood, it is true also that the truest defense a brother can make for his sister is a noble manhood in his own person. He must exhibit before her continually a character without spot or stain, with high aspirations, with generous sympathies, with pure, true, unselfish, ChristUke spirit and disposition. If he is going to shield his sister from the impure, he must not be impure himself. He must show her in himself such a high ideal of manhood that her soul shall imconsciously and instinctively shrink from everything that is vulgar, rude or evil. There is no other defense so perfect. Let no brother think that he can be a shelter from evil to his sister if his own life be not unsullied and true.
There is no better place than this to say a few earnest words to young girls on the cultivation of their own hearts. Among all the elements of beauty in the character of a young woman none is more essential than purity of mind and heart, and none gives such grace to the whole life and spirit. It is not possible even to think of true womanhood without purity. It were as easy to think of a rose without
beauty or of a lily without whiteness. Amid the wreck of this world, wrought by sin, there are still some fragments of the beauty of Eden, and among these none is lovelier than the unsullied delicacy of a true woman’s heart. It is possible, too, to preserve this holy purity even amid all this world’s sin and foulness. I have seen a lily floating in the black waters of a bog. All about it lay stagnation and vileness, but in the midst of all this the lily remained pure as the robes of an angel. It lay on the dark pond, rocked on the bosom of every ripple, yet never receiving a stain. It held up its unsullied face toward God’s blue heaven and poured its fragrance all about it. So is it possible, even in this world of moral evil, for a yoimg woman to grow up, keeping her soul unstained in the midst of it all and ever breathing out the perfume of holy, imselfish love.
There is need here for earnest warning. There are dangers to which every yoimg girl is exposed. There are indications in society of the lowering of the tone of girlhood. There are things in some circles that are painful to every sensitive heart. There are papers and books offered everywhere, and read by too many, which leave a trail of stain on the fair flowers of maidenly refinement. When on a winter’s morning you breathe upon the exquisite tracery of frostwork on a window-pane, it melts down, and no hiunan hand can ever restore it. Still less is it possible to restore the charm of purity to the soul that has lost it. If a young girl would grow into the most
spotless womanhood, radiant in every featxire with the loveliness of Christ’s own image, she must from her earliest youth, through all the experiences of her life, maintain unsullied purity of heart.
So far the duty only of brothers to sisters and sisters to brothers has been considered. It ought to make a yoimg man’s heart exult to have a beautiful and noble sister to lean upon his arm and look up to him for protection, for counsel, for strong, holy friendship. And a sister ought to be proud and happy to have a brother growing into manly strength, to stand by her side, to bear her upon his arm, and to shelter her from life’s storms. Between brother and sister there should be a friendship deep, strong, close, confiding and faithful.
But the home presents opportunities also for friendships between brother and brother, and between sister and sister. Why should not the brothers of a family stand together? They have conmion ties, conunon jo)rs and sorrows, conmion interests. The same mother gave them birth and taught their infant lips to lisp the words of prayer. The same father toiled and sacrificed for them. The same home roof shelters them. Why should they not be to each other the loyalest of friends? When one is in trouble, to whom should his instincts teach him first to turn if not to his own brother? Where should he think to find quicker sympathy and readier help than in his brother’s heart and hand? Who should be so willing to give help as a brother?
Yet, do we alwasrs find such friendship between brothers? Sometimes we do. There are families of brothers who do stand together in most loyal affection. They share each other’s burdens. If one is in trouble the others gather close about im with strong sustaining sympathy, as when one branch of a tree is bruised all the other branches give of their life to restore the one that is injured. The picture is very beautiful, and it is what should be seen in every home in which brothers dwell. But too often it is not seen. Frequently they drift apart even while they stay imder the home roof. Each builds up interests of his own. They seek different friends outside. Sometimes over a father’s grave they quarrel about petty questions of property, and imholy feuds build walls between hearts and lives that should have been bound together inseparably forever. With so much in common, with the most sacred ties to bind them together, and the most holy memories to sanctify their union, brothers should permit nothing ever to estrange them from each other. No selfish interest, no question of money or property, no bitterness or feud, should ever come in to sever their hearts. Though continents divide them and seas roll between them, their love should remain faithful, strong and true forever.
In like manner the sisters in a home should maintain their friendship for each other through all the changes and all the varied experiences of life. This they do more frequently than their brothers. There are many very beautiful sisterly attachments. Their
life within the home holds them together more closely than brothers are held in their outside life. They have better opportunities for the cultivation of friendship among themselves in the many hours they sit together at their household work. Then the interests of their lives are less likely to separate them or start differences between them. Nothing is lovelier than the picture of sisters locked in each other’s arms, their lives blending in holy love, the one helping the other, giving comfort in sorrow, strength in weakness and help in trial.
Are the brothers and sisters who read these pages realizing in their own lives the ideals which have here been even so imperfectly sketched? Are they living together in tender love in their own home? If they are, heaven’s benediction will fall upon their hearts and lives like a baptism of holy peace. If they are not, where is the fault? What can be done to correct it? Too many blessed possibilities of joy, of love and of helpfulness lie in these sacred relationships to be neglected or ruthlessly tossed into the dust. Life is too short to be spent in strife and discord anywhere, especially in the holy circle of the home. Strifes and alienations here are the seeds for a harvest of sorrow. Sad, sad will it be to stand by the co&n of a brother or a sister, and while we look at the cold, silent clay, remember that we were ever xmkind to one who stood so near, that we ever failed in acts of love, or that we ever allowed anything to estrange us or make our intercourse cold and formal.
Is your home plain and bare? Must you meet hardships and endure toil? Have you cares and privations? Do you sigh for something finer, more beautiful, less hard? Call up love to wreathe itself over all your home life. Cultivate home friendships. Bind up the broken home ties. Plant the flowers of affection in every comer. Then soon all will be transfigured. You will forget care, hardships and toil, for they will all be hidden imder lovely garments of affection. Your eye will see no more the homeliness, the hardness, the anxieties, the toils, but will be charmed with the luxuriance of love that shall cover every blemish.