--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Merrill, Albert M. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 11 number: 1 published: 1907-11 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Albert M. Merrill, "“Mother and Sister Might Hear”," *Improvement Era* 11, no. 1 (November 1907): 52–54.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1101unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1101unse start_page: 52 end_page: 54 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1907-11) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1101unse publication_year: 1907 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1907, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # “Mother and Sister Might Hear” "MOTHER AND SISTER MIGHT HEAR." BY PROF. ALBERT M. MERRILL, OF THE CASSIA STAKE ACADEMY. The Junior boys will, doubtlessly, draw many profitable lessons this year from the reading of Tom Brown's School Days. Tom is not represented as an ideal boy, nor as one of the ' 'goody-goody" kind. He is just an ordinary boy, full of life and energy; he has plenty of faults, but these are fairly offset by good strong points. He is so perfectly natural, so resourceful, so viva- cious, and yet so kind-hearted, so generous, and true, that all -boys must, perforce, admire him. One of the satisfying things about his biography is that the training and circumstances of his early years bear fruit throughout his life. Like most boys, he could not forget the tender religious training of a loving mother, nor yet the occasional but pointed in- structions of the father. We feel sure that his father's last words of admonition when he left London, at the tender age of nine years, to enter Rugby, not only rang in his ears in the stage coach that morning, but that they recurred to him on many trying oc- casions afterward. They are words that can well afford to be printed in gold and held before the eyes of Latter-day Saint boys, or better still, engraved in their hearts where they may act as silent monitors in hours of need. After considering well and long what he could best say in parting, Mr. Brown gave utterance to the following: Tom, my boy, remember you are going at your own earnest request, to be chucked into this great school, like a young bear with all your troubles before you — earlier than we should have sent you, perhaps. If schools are what they were in my time, you'll see a great many cruel blackguard things done, and hear a deal of foul, bad talk. But never fear. You tell the truth, keep a brave and kind "MOTHER AND SISTER MIGHT HEAR." 53 heart, and never listen to or say anything you wouldn't have your mother and sister hear, and you'll never feel ashamed to come home, or we to see you. What splendid counsel this, for every boy to receive and live by. It constitutes a little religion all by itself, "pure and un- dented :" Tell the truth, keep a brave and kind heart, and never hsten to or say anything you wouldn't have your mother and sister hear, and you'll never jeel ashamed to come home, or we to see you. A boy that will do those things will find that he is in the way of becoming a good, clean, honorable man — a faithful Latter-day Saint. A boy that will keep his ears closed to filthy and obscene stories, and will guard his tongue from uttering an unclean word, — a word that his m >ther and his sister might not hear — will find that he has conceived within him a power for righteousness. It is clean boys that make clean men. We have often been led to admire the clean strain that ran through the character of President Ulysses S. Grant. A number of incidents are related of him. in his attitude toward purity of thought. On one occasion, he was seated in the Senate clumber, surrounded by a number of prominent men. It was a recess period, and they were conversing and telling stories. A Senator thought to tell a story, which a mother or a sister might not hear, and casting his eyes about the gallery began, "As there are. no ladies present," when he was suddenly interrupted by the President with, "But there are gentlemen present, and you'll please not tell that story here." George W. Childs wrote of Grant, "A great trait of Grant's character was his purity. I never heard him express an impure thought, or make an indelicate allusion in any way or shape. There is nothing I ever heard him say that could not be repeated in the presence of women." The boys of the Latter-day Saints should live so that such a remark might be truthfully made of every one of them. Oakley, Idaho. ANTHONY W. IVINS. Chosen, sustained and ordained, October 6, 1907, a member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles.