Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class; and Moral Culture of Infancy.

by Mary Tyler Peabody Mann; Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

MORAL CULTURE OF INFANCY.

LETTER I.

My Dear Anna,—I had heard of your intention of keeping school before you wrote to me, and had rejoiced for the good cause as only one can do who knows your peculiar qualifications for it. I have been full of the purpose of answering your letter, to tell you how joyfully I look forward to the realization of some of my wishes through your help, such as that of perfecting some beautiful plan of education, which you and I, with our faith in perfectibility, might invent, but which I could not make alone. When we parted many years since, in one of those beautiful porticos of the temple of knowledge, where we had together been warmed by the fires of genius, and where our sympathy (perhaps I should say yours) had rekindled a certain torch of enthusiasm that had been long quenched by adversity—(I sadly fear it is smouldering again under the ashes of freshly-buried hope)—I little expected to meet you again in my favorite walk, made fragrant by the breath of little children. If we had chanced to meet often enough since then, we should have found much to reunite us, for my best teachers have been certain wise mothers;—indeed, the only schools in which I have found the instruction I needed, have been the nurseries and firesides to which I have been admitted, often through my loving interest in the little flowers that bloomed around them. I could tell you, if I dared, how many times I have wished I could be queen of such kingdoms, for the sake of the younger subjects of those realms, for I have learned quite as much from the mistakes as from the wisdom I have witnessed.

My desire to gather all I could, from the efforts and experience of others, once tempted me on an exploring expedition through our much vaunted Primary Schools. What would you say if I were to tell you that I met with but one spirit kindred to my own in the whole circuit? Among all the hard, knotty women, young and old, whom I found presiding over youthful destinies in this extensive organization, I found one lovely young creature who loved all her scholars, and who, by the power of this love, contrived partially to mitigate the horrors of benches without backs, long rote spelling-lessons, crowded and ill-ventilated rooms, tedious periods of idleness in which little darlings had to sit up straight and not speak or fidget (which last I consider one of the prerogatives of childhood). Her face radiated sunshine, her voice was music itself, and yet firm, and she often varied her routine of exercises, prescribed by the primary school committee, with a pleasant little story to illustrate some principle she wished the children to act upon. She was the only one who had interpolated a regular entertaining lesson into the routine, and this she effected by nipping some of the prescribed lessons five minutes each, so as to save twenty for her little treatise upon some interesting subject of natural history. I quite agreed with her that it was a species of petty larceny for which she would be acquitted in the courts above.

I could describe sad, heart-breaking scenes of youthful misery and terror, injustice and daily cruelty in these schools. In several cases my indignation was so much aroused that I was obliged to leave the room to avoid showing my excited feelings. My sympathy for suppressed yawns, limbs suddenly outstretched, or wry faces made behind the teachers' backs; tearful eyes, sleepy little heads nodding on fat shoulders, was so great, that I often smiled upon them when the teacher did not see me. I returned to my own little free republic, after spending one of my vacation weeks thus, more resolved than ever not to coerce babes into the paths of knowledge. Many a spine had its first bend there, I doubt not, and many a child learned to hate school in such scenes of discomfort. I have no doubt there were among the teachers many conscientious ones who did as well as they knew how under such a system. If such schools could be presided over by genius, and such geniuses could be left to their own judgment about what to teach and how to teach it, the experience of Mr. Alcott in his first Infant School among the poor of the North End proves that primary Education can be made for all, what we can make it who have the advantage of teaching in our own parlors.

It is astonishing to me that greater improvements have not already been made in this public school education. Often when I am sitting in my pleasant school-room with these favored children of wealthy parents around me, my thoughts recur to those crowded rooms, and the only remedy I see is, that school committees shall be formed of women. I believe many of the women I saw teaching in those primary schools would do better if left to their own instincts about the children. They have no liberty whatever, except such stolen liberty as I mentioned in the case of Miss E. What do men know about the needs of little children just out of nurseries? If I were one of the school committee, with carte blanche, I would have "stir-the-mush" or "puss-in-the-corner" among the exercises, with singing every hour, and marching and clapping of hands. And I would have well-ventilated rooms instead of such hot, suffocating places, warmed by large iron stoves.

And as I see the poor and neglected children in the streets, or in their own wretched houses, and how they live and grovel in low practices, gradually losing the sweet innocence of infantile expression, and becoming coarse and violent, even brutal, I wonder still more at the torpidity of society upon this subject. Nothing is such a proof of its selfishness as this neglect. Nothing makes me feel so keenly the need of a new organization of things. I do not like the thought of merging the sacred family relation in communities where all live together in public as it were, but it seems as if something might be done for the children of the needy that is not yet done. These poor city children are sequestered even from the influences of Nature. How strange that the more favored individuals should not seek every means to give them what culture they can have amid these brick walls. So much might be done by the help of the salient imagination of childhood, that we should be helped more than half way by blessed Nature herself. I often take an unfashionable walk inside the Mall on Sunday afternoon, when the Irish people bring their babes to play upon the green. I think it is the best institution in the city, and it would be a good idea to appoint a Commissioner in each ward to bring all the street children there every day and watch them while they play, and see that all have fair play. If school committees were formed of women, I think such an office might be created.

What faith we need to forgive heaven for the things that are! "How much that is, is not right," I am sometimes tempted to exclaim. I have no idea, however, that Pope meant anything but the eternal IS, when he wrote "Whatever is, is right." It would have been better for superficial thinkers, if he had never said it however, for I often hear it quoted to defend what I consider the marring, not the making of God's plans. I have no doubt there is a remedy for every individual case of misery in this world, if eyes were only open to see it, but this couching process is the needful thing, and that God has left us to think out for ourselves. We know that there are millions who live and die in ignorance of all that makes God God, or a Father. To these he is only the being that created them, and they may well ask, "Why did he make us? to suffer? to sin?"—for they are conscious only of the irregularities of that creation by which they are tortured. They never see the wonderful adaptation of things to each other;—they know nothing of the harmonies of their being with the being of others, or with Nature. The sort of education they get in cities, where life is stirring briskly around them, and each one seems scrambling to get the best morsel for himself, only makes them worse, unless something is done to evoke order for them out of this chaos. Their belief in Deity is a superstitious feeling about some supernatural power that exercises dominion over them, and subjects them to an imperious necessity. In the agony of death they cry aloud for fear; for they know they have made their fellow-men suffer, and death is a mirror that holds them up to themselves. Conscience breathes upon the glass, and in the dissolving picture its countenance is recognized,—but this is a base fear, and cannot be called an aspiration. To make sure the foundations of faith in God, one must know what God has done for him. Man must be made acquainted with his own nature before God's benevolence can be realized. If I did not think ignorance was at the root of all human evil, I should not have any hope; but though its kingdom is very large, no despot can be so easily driven from the throne. I hope all this does not seem irrelevant to the matter we are discussing; it brings me nearer to the point I wished to reach. I believe in that redemption which knowledge and principle combined bring to the soul that has slumbered in darkness. Its recuperative power is its most glorious attribute. The tendency of the character is so often imparted in earliest youth, that if this is right, if the first impressions of life and its author are the true ones, the rest of the education may almost with impunity be left to what is called chance. But if a child lives to the age of eight or ten years, without a ray of light which will explain his existence and position to himself; or lead him through Nature up to God; it must be difficult to inspire him afterwards with the true filial feeling toward his heavenly parent. And if, by a longer period of darkness, he has found that in a certain sense he can live without God in the world, he will stand a poor chance of realizing that he cannot do so in ordinary life after the period of impressible youth is past. I believe the soul will to all eternity have renewed chances to redeem itself; but I cannot easily give up this first life. When I think of the beautiful adaptations of the world to our wants; of the exquisite gratification the knowledge of these brings to the mind; of the harmonies of our existence with all other existences; and of the power of virtue to triumph over the earthward tendencies of this double human nature, and to sacrifice the present to the future good;—when I think of what the perfect man can be,—I cannot be reconciled that one should live and not have the keys to unlock this part of the universe. Childhood is in our power. The helpless little beings must be taken care of. The world waits upon the babe, as has truly been said; and is not this one of those beautiful provisions of Nature which show us how

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them as we will!"

"The child is father of the man," indeed; and while the heart bounds lightly, let us teach this youthful father the religion of Nature, which he can understand. When he comes to riper years he will be ready to comprehend the religion of the Spirit, without danger of superstition or bigotry.

One obstacle to such instruction in Christendom is, doubtless, the very prevalent feeling that the study of Nature leads to scepticism about revealed religion. This injury has been done to religion's self by the fact that a few learned men have been scoffers at Christianity, or rather at what has been accepted as Christianity, and it is the association of their names which is the foundation of the prejudice. The discrepancy also between the discoveries of science and the imagery of the Hebrew poets who sang about creation, is another cause; but since Mr. Silliman has ventured to say that there probably were a great many deluges, the ice of that difficulty has been cracked in our community.

I see no reason why simple religious lessons, like those Mr. Waterston gives in his Sunday-school, may not be given in the public schools. You will say, we must have Mr. Waterston to do it, (and that is true indeed, now,) but when the public mind is ready for such instruction, such teachers will come up to supply the demand.

My first introduction to natural science was in listening to instruction of this kind given to children older than myself, under the sanction of a mother's authority. They were lessons in Astronomy and Chemistry, given before there were any elementary books upon such subjects; and they so kindled my imagination, when a very young child, and gave me such a realizing sense of the presence of God around me, whom I had already known as a Heavenly Father, who took care of me and of all men, by night as well as by day, that from that time I never lost the child's sense of nearness, or felt any of those fears of the supernatural which haunt the imagination of uninstructed childhood. And yet I was in the habit of listening to the stories of an old crone who believed in the witches of Salem, where she had always resided, as firmly as she believed in the God that made her. When I first heard the remark that the study of Nature tended to make men atheistic, I resented it with indignation, though but a child.

This, then, is the kind of teaching that I think adapted to childhood. It need not be exclusive, but let it predominate. Other faculties, beside the emotions of wonder and veneration, may be cultivated side by side with these. Memory, comparison, judgment, and calculation may be strengthened by a judicious and well-proportioned teaching of the elements of languages and numbers, thus insuring the tools for future acquisition. But this is not direct food for the soul. The young heart is full of love for its parents, of delight at the knowledge of new things, and these affections may be guided into adoration of Supreme Intelligence; this love of knowledge turned to its source, as easily and naturally as the stream flows from the mountain to the sea.

Side by side with this higher cultivation I would teach the eye, the hand, and the ear to practise, and to work readily. The pencil should ever be in the hand, the picture before the eye,—especially when the objects of Nature cannot be, and sweet sounds in the ear. The love of activity is sufficient aid without the debasing influence of emulation. Facts are divine teaching, and a clear perception of them the basis of all theories; therefore they should be clearly and sharply presented and discriminated. When children are led to see their own ignorance, let them understand that we, who appear to them the concentration of all wisdom, ("Pallas-Minervas," as one of my little readers of Homer called me one day), are also ignorant in presence of the universe, which is full of things to be known, and they will not be discouraged, but only more eager to learn what they can of these worlds of knowledge; and will think of those still to be conquered rather than of any little acquirements of their own, thus escaping the dangers both of despondency and vanity. Let children lead this happy life till they are eight or nine, and let it be so full and blessed by love, sympathy, and the play of the creative imagination, that it will lift them over the rough places for many more years, while they shall build stone walls and towers of facts, as starting-places for future flights. It is the observation of every experienced heart that the most hardened sinner may be more easily redeemed, if he can be reminded of an infancy of purity and golden sunshine. If true, it is an argument for prolonging that infancy as far as possible, that the recollection of it, if unfortunately dimmed, may the more surely revive in those deep moments of existence, when the soul is thrown back upon itself for support and consolation; whether they be moments of guilt or of sorrow, of disappointed ambition or disappointed hope, of wounded pride, or wounded faith.

I am aware that the public schools are the hope of our land and its glory, and schools are the best world for children to grow up in when properly regulated; but I wish they need not be so large, so that there need be but one sovereign in each. Still more desirable is it, however, that none but living souls should ever have the privilege of unlocking the treasures of knowledge and thought for children. It is not enough to have deep and varied acquirements, but there must be a native delight in communicating, and a sympathy—a living sympathy—with every human being. These alone will awaken the love of excellence and call forth the powers of the mind. No one should ever have the care of children who does not love them because they are children, or who can ever feel the undertaking an irksome task. I always regret to see the occupation entered upon as a last resort for a livelihood, or by those whose spirits can no longer respond to the touch of childhood. It must be a strong spirit that, in such instances, can rise again to meet the bounding hopes of fresh being. It is like going back to principles, when our experience fails to answer our just demands for highest happiness. In the faith of childhood, which knows no doubt, we can see that one experience is not the test of what our birthright is; and while we do not neglect the warnings we have had, we must never think that our single experience has exhausted the source whence truth flows.

I believe, too, that the germ of everything is in the human soul; and this faith seems to me essential to a teacher. Education is not the creation, but only the bringing forth of these germs, and that alone is a true education which brings them forth in fair proportions. To make children learn something tangible, if I may so speak, and to keep them quiet, are the usual aims of a teacher, and success in these is the usual test of his value; but they seem to me not to be his highest merit. I have often waited long, and I have learned to wait patiently, for anything like results. There is a certain harmonious play of the faculties, to the production of which I direct my efforts, and which I watch for with intense interest in my children, (for they seem to me mine,) and this can never be cultivated if one is bound by any formulas. I consider myself fortunate that my own mind has always enjoyed its birthright of freedom; that no iron habits have bound me to any mechanical system. My advantage is a negative one, perhaps, for I never had much training of an intellectual kind, my physical education being the chief object in my childhood. I was at least saved from such formality as enabled the teacher of a distinguished school to say in my presence, that "the less boys understood or were interested in their lessons, the better the discipline of study." This was surely making the process as mechanical a one as the motions of a trip-hammer. But there you have an immense advantage over me. You have been well trained, and yet measured by no Procrustean bed, for your most living teacher never wore any fetters herself, and could not impose any. Am I not right? Your summer retreat has been "twice blessed" in having such advantages of highest education, added to the influences of Nature, which you so dearly love. You are bound to open your eyes as beamingly as she does, upon all who come under their glance, to show your gratitude for such teachings. I well remember your frequent descriptions of those "large orbs" that presided over the most interesting part of your youthful training. I have seen those eloquent eyes myself, and can conceive their power when animated with the inspiring pleasure of pouring the treasures of thought into a receiving soil. And you are not the only one whom I have heard discourse of this source of inspiration. Your best study, too, was in the season when the reins are generally relaxed. The time when I received most benefit from study, solitary and unaided, and even stolen as it was, (for the family decree was that, I being an invalid, must not study,) was when I pursued my lessons in an orchard, and generally in a tree, or sitting in the baby's breakfast-chair, in the midst of a shallow, rushing river, under a sweeping willow. I was brought up so much out of doors, that walls were oppressive to me. Indeed, I look back upon it as the only time of my childhood when any variety of influences acted upon me at once; and one which I ought not to omit to mention, was a much admired friend, who knew how to point out to me, leaf and flower in hand, what riches of knowledge were stored up in Nature for her children. I do not know but what my love of these hidden treasures was stimulated by the fear of being deprived of them. Owing to this fear I probably arrived earlier in life at that point which I have always contended was the great point in education,—the time when one takes it into one's own hands. But I do not think that your "two outward advantages" of motherhood and education, constitute all your qualifications for the task you have undertaken. I know what soil was warmed into fruitfulness by the rays shed from the sun of genius. Now, you are bound to fulfil my hopes, and if my own path is not smoothed by your help, I shall call you to account for my disappointment. I will give you my small experience, and tell you how I found out methods, because they were not practised upon me; and I bid forth your power of deducing theories and improvements that will cheer us both onward. For want of more interested auditors, I often pour out my plans for educing order out of the little chaoses committed to my care, to ears that stretch to their utmost for politeness' sake, and for my sake, perhaps; but not for the thing I wish to impart.

LETTER II.

My dear Anna,—I will begin by telling you that I can do the thing better than I can describe it. You must let me tell you stories out of my school-room to illustrate the wisdom of my proceedings. I can hardly tell you my enjoyment of the fresh affections of children, of their love of knowledge (of new things, as it always is to them), of their ready apprehension of principles, of their quick response to truth, their activity and buoyancy, their individuality, their promise. Sometimes I look forward for them, and tremble at what awaits them, when I see tendencies to evil or weakness. I know that every ill in their various paths may be made stepping-stones to highest good; but the doubt whether they will be made so, the certainty of the long and sharp pains of conflict, the dying down of hope, (that happily, I know, can yet rise Phœnix-like from its own ashes,) these, and many perils by the way, that my brooding heart points out to me, often oppress me, and I could wish them spared. When it is remembered how man has marred the work of God, how different his part ought to be from what it is, and how long it must be before the individuals of the race can work themselves free from the crust of evil that has grown over the whole, I think I may be pardoned for these heart aches; but I know they are not my highest moments. It has been deeply said that pain is the secret of Nature. I have that within me which responds to it. I must feel it for others as well as for myself, and shall constantly do so when my faith is perfected. I am grateful that I exist, for I can look upon what we call this life as only the beginning of a long career, in which I shall ever look back and rejoice that I have been a human being, whatever may be the ills that I suffer from just now. The consciousness of the capacities of expanding intellect and of glorious affections, assure me that the destiny of the soul will compensate for the heritage of woe, which this life is to many of us. Thus I try to look beyond the conflicts I see in the future of these little beings who now dance joyfully around me.

You will wonder, perhaps, that one can conceive such a personal interest in the children of others; but it will come to you in time. You have truly said, that it needs all the tenderness of a mother, and her vital self-forgetting interest in the result, to enable her to find the true path of Nature from the beginning, and remove all obstacles to free unfolding. But many a mother sacrifices her elder children, as it were, to this discovery. As the germ of the maternal sentiment is in all women, relations may be established between teacher and child that may take the place of the natural one, so far as to answer all the purposes required. Such a relation is the only foundation upon which a true education can go on. It leaves no room for a division of interests between child and teacher, which division alone has the power forever to destroy all the best benefits of the communication of mind, and is generally, indeed, an effectual barrier against any communication at all. Such a relation as I would have does away with every feeling of reserve that might check the full and free expression of thought and feeling. A young child should turn to its teacher, as well as to its mother, with the undoubting confidence that there is a wealth of love equal to all occasions. When my little scholars call me "mother," which they often do from inadvertence, I feel most that I am in the true relation to them. I have in some instances been preferred before the mother, because I was the fountain of knowledge and even of tenderness to starved and neglected little souls. A very sensitive child of seven years old, who always said "can't," when any task, even the simplest, was set before her, but who was, nevertheless, so morbidly conscientious that she was miserable not to be able to accomplish anything that she thought her duty, took an opportunity one day, when she was alone with me, to make me the confidant of her domestic sorrows, asking me to promise I would not tell "mother." This was rather dangerous ground; but I knew something of the domestic life of the family, and that the tender mother of it was often exasperated almost to madness by the cruel tyranny and exactions of the father, and I promised. Then, with burning cheeks and trembling voice she told me that they did not love her at home; that her father despised her; that her mother urged her beyond her strength to meet his requirements; that her eldest sister treated her with harshness and ridicule because she was so "stupid," and that her younger sisters did not like to play with her because she was cross. I saw at a glance why she always said and felt "can't," and I stood awe-struck before the endowment of conscience in the child which had stood the test of such trials as these, and made duty the central point of her being, for that I had already known to be the case. I sympathized with her, as you may well imagine. I told her what I knew of the virtues of her mother, whom she tenderly loved, and whose love for herself she felt, but could not enjoy, because its natural expression was lost in the impatient endeavor to hold her up to her father's unreasonable requisitions. From that hour she was my child, and could work happily in my presence. I told her that I knew she always wished to do right, and that I should always be satisfied with whatever she could accomplish; that if I required too much of her, she only need to say so; that she must not try to do anything more than was pleasant and comfortable, for only thus could she preserve her powers of mind, which were good, and which would work well if they could work happily. Through my influence she passed much time away from her ungenial home, with friends in whose society she could be happy and unrestrained, and the burden was lightened so far that she was in the end able to justify herself, and take a happier place in the family circle; but she was irretrievably injured both mentally and morally, learning to become indifferent where she could not assert herself, and the battle of life will, I fear, ever be a hard one to her.

In such cases one feels the true spirit of adoption, and this should be the standard for the general relation. I do not feel satisfied till the most timid and reserved are confiding to me, smile when they meet my eye, and come to me in the hour of trouble; nor till the most perverse and reckless take my reproofs in sorrow and not in anger, and return to me for sympathy when they are good.

Nor am I willing to have anything to do with the education of a child whose parents I am unable to convince of my vital interest in its welfare, and into whose heart I cannot find an entering place, while at the same time I speak candidly of faults; for there is a sort of magnetism in the coöperation of mother and teacher; and its subtle influence, or the reverse, is distilled into every detail of the relation. Sometimes I find parents who do not know enough of their children to interfere at all, and then I am willing to do what I can to supply the deficiency. The school should only be the larger family for them, and the lessons learned should be the least good they receive from the daily routine. Still worse off are those who are educated at home by servants who rule in nurseries, and so long as they keep the children quiet are not questioned much as to the means by which they do it. Quite aggravated cases of oppression have come under my observation, which I have discovered by noticing the sway held over children by these hirelings, who bring them to and from school. I think I should never risk this evil in a family of my own.

To seize every opportunity to unfold thought in a natural way, to consider duty, to awaken and keep alive conscience, and cultivate a mutual confidence and forbearance between the young, should be the aim in such a little world as a school. The flow of happy spirits should be unchecked, and no deep memory of faults should remain with a child, unless they are of the deepest dye, such as falsehood and selfishness. A serious invasion of each other's rights should be made a prominent subject of blame, but the only retribution of which a child should be made to have a permanent consciousness, is that of the injury, or the danger of injury to itself, and I firmly believe if this can be made apparent to a child, it may be the strongest possible motive to keep it in the path of rectitude. It seems to me indeed the only legitimate motive to present to a human soul. I do not mean a selfish regard to the welfare even of one's own soul, but that regard which includes the welfare of others as well as of one's own. I do not like to say to a child, "do not so because if you do I cannot love you," for that is an outside motive, but rather "because you cannot grow any better if you do so and then you cannot respect yourself or be worthy of any one's love." "Do not grieve dear mother by doing wrong, for then she cannot be happy." "Are you not afraid if you do so, that by and by you can do something more naughty?" "Is there not something in you, that makes you feel very uncomfortable when you have done wrong? That is the way God has made us, so that we may grow better and not worse." I have arrested very naughty doings by such remarks, where defiance of human authority was very strong and determined. I have awakened a similar fear in many a child by relating what a dread I had in my own childhood of growing worse. Nothing is easier than to make a child false by frightening it or blaming it too much; but nothing will make a child so ingenuous as to convince it that you are interested in its progress, and would like to help it cure its own faults. But we must often wait long before a child is capable of taking this view so fully as to be influenced by it, in opposition to the dictates of passion and the weakness or immaturity of intellect; experience teaches us that the volatile, the obstinate, the self-indulgent, the crafty, and even the indolent must be influenced by the apprehension of a nearer penalty or the power of a more direct authority than that can always be understood to be. Self-control is often the first virtue to be cultivated, and a fear of present evil must sometimes be the instrument of its cultivation. A distinguished and most successful superintendent of an insane hospital once assured me, that in the majority of cases, self-control was all that was needed as a remedy for insanity. I asked him if he had ever known of insane children? He said he had known many; and that it usually appeared in the form of unmanageableness. If we concede that all evil in our race is partial insanity (and if we believe in the soul, we must finally think that the crust of organization into which it is built for a time is the only obstacle to its right action, and to put one parenthesis within another, which I know is not canonical, does not this point to the duty of providing against evil organizations?), why should we not treat all evil as insanity should be treated, and believe that if the power of self-government is cultivated, the soul will take care of itself? In this connection I always take health into consideration; for one wise mother of my acquaintance suggested a new idea to me by once telling me that for certain faults in her children she always gave medicine, being convinced that the difficulty lay in the stomach.

I am always very careful to disarm all fear before I use any authority. I find much timidity in children, as if they had been harshly dealt with. I have seen fearful looks of terror in little faces when I have approached them to enforce a request, and in such cases I either take them gently in my arms or draw them close to me with a caressing motion, which is sometimes all the punishment they need, if you will allow me such an Irishism. They are at the same time convinced of my earnestness, and disarmed of all opposition, and when I approach another time, if occasion requires, I can lead them to another seat or even out of the room, and enjoin obedience without exciting either fear or opposition. I never threaten any penalties, but execute my own requisitions decidedly at the moment, "because this is the right thing to be done." I think it is not well to threaten for next time; and where punishments are mild, such as changing a child's seat, or putting it into a room alone, or going to its mother and talking the matter over in presence of the child, a repetition of the offence may be avoided. I have one child in my school who would crouch down upon the floor, if opposed, or required to do any thing she did not wish to, and go into a sort of hysteric, protesting that she was dying. I laughed at her a little at first, but I soon saw she was very obstinate and very passionate, and several times on such occasions I took her up in my arms, though she was pretty heavy, and carried her to a bed, where I laid her down and left her to enjoy her performance alone. After a while she would sneak down into the school-room again looking very much ashamed, but I took no notice of this, and after two or three experiments she was entirely cured. I learned afterward that she had practised this device successfully upon a doting mother and her nursery-maid, who really feared she would die. They were much obliged to me for having the courage to meet it resolutely. She has become a charming little scholar, for she is as full of talent and affection as of self-will, and has been sent, by my urgent entreaty, to learn calisthenic exercises, where she expends the extra fluid which, when bottled up by inaction, works mischief in her. She was formerly unable to tie her own bonnet or draw on her own gloves, but in six months she has so changed that she can dress other children as well as herself, and climbs the banisters and perches herself fearlessly upon the tops of the doors, greatly to the terror of other little children of luxury like herself.

We should never prevaricate or in any way deceive a child for the sake of an immediate result, for that is not being true to principle, but we may be allowed sometimes, in our characters of mothers and teachers, to act as that "near Providence," which the mother has so happily been said to be. In God's government, some penalty, though often a hidden one, is the consequence of every transgression of law; and do we not in a small measure act to the child as his representatives? It is a dangerous power to have dominion over another soul, even for a time; but since it is actually given to us, are we not bound to make use of it, conscientiously and tenderly, but still to make use of it? I once knew a father who thought, because he was not himself perfect, that he had no right to exact obedience from his children. His retribution for this morbid conscientiousness was most deplorable. One child became insane from want of self-control, which he would not allow her to be taught; and another failed to have any sentiment of duty toward God or man, but passed many years of life without apparently knowing that any duty was required of him. Worldly prosperity in his case only increased the evil, for he was never obliged to make an exertion for himself or others. I have never heard that he was vicious, but he could not live even with the parent who had allowed him to grow up unrestrained. The parents surely are designed to represent to the child the Heavenly Father whom they cannot see, and who must later become an object of faith through that beautiful analogy of parental love and care.

I agree too with one of the best and wisest, who has said that it is not necessary to reward children for doing right, since God has so made man that doing right is, like loving, its own reward. Only those who have thought deeply can make such discriminations as these, yet to what noble mind, when the thing is once said, does it not seem base to give an outward reward for a lofty action? And is it not a brotherly act to help our fellow-pilgrims on their way, by giving a friendly warning when a stumbling-block is in the path? I think children can be made to understand that a judicious punishment is a friendly warning, if not the first time we administer it, then the second, or the third, or even the fiftieth time; for as we should forgive, so we should warn our brother, "not seven times, but seventy times seven." I learn to feel that if I am actuated by the right motive in my dealings with their souls, (and one learns to be very conscientious in meddling with them,) my pupils will find it out sooner or later; and then they will see all that I have done, as well as all that I may do, in a new light.

I have a bright little fellow in my school who had acquired a sad habit of sucking his thumb. I thought he actually began to grow thin upon it. I had checked him many times, and he was good about it, but the habit was too strong for him. One day I drew on a little conversation about helping each other out of difficulties, which all agreed to; and all professed themselves willing to be helped and to listen to warnings. I then said there was one in the school whom I wished to cure of a bad habit, and I had a plan for doing it, but its success must depend upon whether he was willing, and upon whether the rest would be really friendly and not laugh at him, or tease him, but help him in every way they could. They were very desirous to know who and what it was, and very sure they would do all that was desired. I then spoke to little W——, who was only six, or at most, seven years old, and asked him if he was willing to let me tie that hand behind him that he might be cured of sucking his thumb; for I knew of no other way. I told him it would try his patience; for it was his right hand, and he would have to be dependent upon others for many things, and often would find it very inconvenient and annoying. After I had impressed him fully with the importance of the matter, he consented, and the rest of the children promised to be attentive to his wants. I never tied the hand behind him till he put the thumb into his mouth; but it had to be done every day for a fortnight. He bore it, and all the inconveniences, like a hero, and not one child forgot to be considerate and helpful. He was cured of the trick, and he has been an object of great interest among his companions ever since, because they helped to do him good.

Perhaps, dear A——, you will think I dwell longer than necessary upon this subject, knowing as we do that the usual fault of schools is too much penalty, and too much low motive; but you and I are surrounded by those who are inclined, by their tendency of thought, to forget practical wisdom; who, in their lively sense that immortality begins now, and is not a distant good,—a sort of reward for well-doing, are in danger of forgetting that we are to be educated by circumstances, and that circumstances will educate us, whether we direct them or not, in this beginning of our long career. Those who have most faith in the soul and its ultimate power to work itself free from all impediments, are most apt to despise all the minor aids that may help its first steps.

Then there is another class of persons, who do not believe in the soul enough to think education of any use. They cannot very well tell you what they do believe; in truth they have no faith in anything, but finding it hard to control circumstances, and seeing instances of great failure where there have been most appliances, (they do not consider whether these appliances were wisely administered,) they give all up to chance, and believing neither in innate ideas nor in the use of means, rest satisfied with a low standard of action, and go through life without ever having a glimpse of anything better than themselves. Indeed, if they see anything better, they understand it so little, that they think it must be a delusive appearance, and that an earnest view of any subject is extravagance, or even insanity. But I do not think so great a want of faith is very common.

This is too long a letter, so good-by for the present. When I think you are rested from this, I will write again.

M.

LETTER III.

My dear Anna,—Let me introduce you to my little family. It consists of twenty children, some of whom have been under my care for three years. These latter are eight in number, and from nine to twelve years of age; then I have six who are not seven years old, who know how to read pretty well, but who study no lessons more difficult than a simple bit of poetry, the names of a few places on the map, a list of words from the black-board of the parts of a flower, or an interlined Latin fable, which I give them thus early, because Latin is one of the elements of our language, and its forms are so definite that it gives definiteness to ideas. These children print, write, draw from outlined forms and blocks, as well as from their own fancies, and listen to all sorts of information which I give them orally, and which they recount to me again when questioned. I tell a great many stories over maps, which are, in my dominions, not only lines running hither and thither with a few names interspersed, but real mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas, which I clothe with verdure, and people with all kinds of animate forms, such as beasts, birds, fishes, and William Tells, or other interesting individuals and tribes. I have a book, called "Wonders of the World," which is my Aladdin's lamp, and when I take it down, little hands are clapped and bright eyes glisten.

But I must not forget to mention my other six, who are sweet little buds of promise as one can well imagine; who love to hear stories about all living things, from oysters up through the more intelligent shell-fish that have heads as well as a foot, to small pink pigs and their mothers, butterflies, birds, dogs, horses, cows, and fellow-children; and to learn that their stockings are made of wool that grew on the back of a lamb, their shoes of the skin of a calf, their ribbons from the cocoons of a moth, the table of a tree, &c., &c. These little people were committed to my keeping directly out of their mothers' or their nurses' arms. I am always diffident about taking the place of the former, but rejoice to rescue babes from the care of the latter.

The first thing to be taught these, is how to live happily with each other; the next, how to use language. It is not necessary to wait till they can read before we begin this last instruction. They love dearly to repeat the words of simple poetry or of poetic prose, (Mrs. Barbauld is my classic for babes,) and it is curious to see how synthetical are their first mental operations, and how difficult they find it to disentangle the words of a short sentence, which evidently has hitherto been but one word of many syllables. Names of things can be made to stand forth distinctly before other words, because the objects of the senses do; but when I first ask children of three or four years old to make sentences and put in the and and, their pleasure in recognizing the single word is even greater, and they will amuse themselves a great deal with the exercise, running to me to whisper, "just now I said the;" or, "Charley said and." If the printed word is pointed out at the same time, it is still more interesting, because then it becomes an object of the senses, a real thing, just as much as the book it is printed in. You know I take the royal road to the attainment of this art, and teach words first, not letters. I find this a much better as well as happier way, for a word is a whole host of thoughts to a young child, and three words in a row a whole gallery of pictures. Bird, nest, tree! If a child has ever played in a meadow, or even in a garden, or sat on a grassy bank under the window, or has seen pigeons fly down into a city street, what subject of endless conversation does this combination of things present! The book that contains such words, and perhaps a story, of which they form a part, is itself an illuminated volume, and is immediately invested with a charm it cannot lose, for what child (or man) was ever tired of the thought of a bird, or a tree, to say nothing of that more rare and mysterious object, a nest? The warbled song, the downy breast, the sheltering wing, the snug retreat, have such an analogy with the mother's carol or lullaby, the brooding bosom, and the beloved arms, a child's dearest home, that every sentiment is enlisted, and a thousand things, never to be forgotten, may be said. There is no need of pictures on such a page as this. I well remember the shining pages of my childhood's books,—a lustre never emitted by white paper alone. I doubt not the ancient fancy of illuminating the works of great minds with gilded and scarlet letters grew out of some such early association with printed, or rather written thoughts;—for printing was not known then.

I believe you do not approve of this method of teaching to read; but I cannot help thinking a variety of experience like mine would make you a convert to my mode. I claim to have discovered it, and the bright little six years old rogue, upon whom I tried my first experiment, learned to read in six weeks, and every word was an experience to him, for I made up the lessons as we went on from day to day right out of his little life. He would scream with delight to see what he called his words on the sheet upon which I daily printed a new lesson. I have no doubt every name of a thing looked to him like the thing itself, for his imagination was a very transmuting one. You would have been as amused at his antics over the word "and" as I was. I only introduced such oysters of words occasionally into my gallery of pictures, but he never forgot any such useful members of society, though I think he could not have made pictures of them. One great point is, that children are always happy to read in this way; and to work their little brains against their will, seems to me cruel. It is quite an effort for them to learn to observe closely enough to distinguish such small particulars even as words, with which they have such vivid associations, and altogether an unnatural one to learn arbitrary signs, to which nothing already known can be attached. Until I was convinced that this was the best method, I always found myself instinctively helping innocent children along, through their first steps in reading, by means which, at the time, I half thought were tricks, and unsafe indulgences. I feared that I was depriving them of some desirable and wholesome discipline, such as we often hear of in our extreme youth from nursery-maids, who tell stories of parents who whip their children every morning that they may be good all day. But I will never again force helpless little ones, of three or four years old, to learn the alphabet and the abs, until every letter is interesting to them from the position it holds in some symbolic word.

When letters are learned in the ordinary way, they are often associated with some image, as a stands for apple, b for boy, c for cat; and these associations may be so many hindrances (certainly in the case of the vowels) to the next step in the process, because they must all be unlearned before the letters can be applied to other words. In our language there are so many silent letters in words, so many sounds for each vowel, and the alphabetic sound of the consonants is so different from their sound in words, that I do not care how late the analysis is put off.

After a while, I string columns of little words together, in which the vowel has the same sound, as can, man, pan, tan, and let these be the first spelling-lessons; but I prefer, even to this mode, that of letting children write from dictation the words they are familiar with on a page. One dear little boy came to school three months before he wished to read, or to look at a book, except for the pictures. At last he came into the class without an invitation, and has learned very fast, and can read better than some children who have read longer. He is a perfect little dumpling, as gay and happy as a lark all day, and I would not for the world make it a task for him to use his brain, thus risking the diminution of his rotundity. He is as wise as a judge, though he has not lost his baby looks; and he might be made to reason subtly at an early age I doubt not; but I hope all such powers will be allowed to slumber peacefully as yet. He is in the mean time learning to read slowly; to print, to draw houses, to repeat poetry, to sing songs about birds, bees, and lambs, and to have as much fun between these exercises as I can furnish him with,—the latter in another apartment, of course. I have taken no pains to teach him his letters. I have a great repugnance to letters, with their many different sounds, so puzzling to the brain;—but one day, finding he knew some of them, I pointed to g, and asked him if he knew the name of it. He said "grass," which was the first word in which he had seen g. So w he first called "water," for the same reason. I gave him their sounds, but not their alphabetical names. I was obliged to give him two sounds for g, one hard, one soft, and he soon knew all the consonants by their powers. I hope he will not ask me anything about the vowels at present.[I]

I also cut out the words children first learn, as soon as they can put together a few in short sentences, and let them arrange them to correspond with the sentences in the book. I have devoted one copy of my Primer to this purpose, and keep the words thus separated, and pasted upon card-board, for such use.

I know all children learn to read, and some children learn rapidly, but I am always interested to know at what cost. It is a very important question, I assure you. One may not realize, at the time, the evils consequent upon the difficulties first encountered. The actual injury to the brain stands first among these. We grown people know the painful sensation consequent upon too long and too fixed attention to one subject, even in the arranging of piles of pamphlets which we are endeavoring to classify. The brain whirls and experiences chills, and the whole body feels it. So with children, when made to read too long, before the eye has learned to discriminate words easily. The child is told that it is naughty, if it does not continue as long as the teacher's or the mother's patience holds out (as soon as that is exhausted, the lesson is sure to be over). How false this is! A little child should never be required to do anything intellectual as a duty. It should not be required even to love as a duty, much less to think. Both should be made inevitable by the interest inspired; its mental efforts should only be sports. Its habits of self-control, its kindness, its affection, should be cultivated, and this rather by example than by precept. When mothers do not succeed in teaching their children to read, because they have not the resolution to force them to it, they often say to me, "Do teach the child to read, it will be a great resource;" I reply, if I think they will believe me, that their instincts have perhaps been wiser than their understanding; but if I see that they are unreasonable, I reply that I will try, reserving to myself the privilege of trying just as much as I please, and no more. I can generally make the effort to read a voluntary one, if I do not find any previous painful associations to do away. If I do, I wait patiently till I can replace them by others, and in the mean time make books vocal of such enchanting things that the desire will bubble up in the little mind, through all the rubbish that has gathered over it. The pleasure of reading together from a black-board, on which the letters should be printed with great exactness and perfection of form, in order to resemble those in the book, often gives this desire.

One little fellow, whose perceptive powers are sharper than those of my dumpling, reflects upon himself more, and although equally fat, appears, from a certain anxious expression on his face, to have had some trials. He says his sister sometimes "hurts his feelings." He thinks some words are beautiful and "full of pictures." He tells very small fibs, such as "Mother says I must read those words, and those." Do not suppose I let this fibbing pass. I make a great point of not believing it, and of comparing it with truth, and of proving to him that his mother knows nothing about it.

Another little darling, who cannot speak plain, says, "Oh, is 'at feathers? Why! is it feathers? Oh, now tell me where wings is! Oh! is 'at wings? Oh! I want to kiss oo."

I hear these little ones read four or five times a day. The lesson occupies about fifteen minutes each time. All "study" together, as they call it. I put my pointer on the book of each in turn, making it a habit that they shall not look off the book for the space of three minutes, perhaps, during which each reads. They keep within a few sentences of each other, near enough to think they read together, as I detain them long upon the repetition of all they know; but I see very clearly which will start off soon and outstrip the rest. I say nothing of which reads the best, but sometimes make such remarks as, "L—— will learn to read very fast, I think, he is so attentive." This makes L—— all the more attentive, and helps the others to make the effort; for with these four, to be able to read is the most charming of prospects. I am determined that no touch of weariness shall break the charm. In three months they will be able to read the two first stories in the Primer, which occupy about two pages. Their eyes will by that time become so accustomed to analyzing the looks of the words, that they will be able to print them without the book, and soon new words will be learned very rapidly. I stave off the spelling as long as possible, but you may be sure that these children will spell well by and by. I am convinced of this by experience, for the next class above these in age have begun within a few weeks to write stories of their own, composing instead of copying them from books, as they have done for two years, and I am myself quite astonished at their spelling. They have never spelled a word they did not understand, and their spelling in composition is better than that of some children still older who learned to spell elsewhere, and who hate spelling-books.

One of my exercises in thinking is to ask the children to tell me the names of all the actions they can think of; and to help them I say, for instance, "What can the bird do?" "What can the fly do?" "How many things can the fly do?" Another is to ask them what things are made of, and where they are found, "Are they vegetables, or are they from animals, or are they minerals?" They are vastly entertained by this, and one little fellow became so much excited, and wearied himself so much with his investigations at home, that his mother begged me to suspend the exercise for a time. Jemmy's head is a little too big for his body; and the look of research in his great eyes gives evidence of precocity, the thing of all others to be shunned. His mother has put thick boots upon him lately, and turned him out into the snow, and he looks like a butterfly in boots, with his ethereal head and spiritual orbs.

I have but one child under my care that I call a prodigy; and my influence has not yet been strong enough to check her ardor as it ought to be checked. She is sent to school because she is happier at school than in the nursery, to which rich people's children are so often banished. (I never intend to have a nursery in my house.) This child has been with me three years, and is but six now. She might be made one of those wonders of learning that occasionally astonish the world, if the plan of her education had not been to supply as little food as possible for her cravings. Fortunately she did not ask to read for a long time, but I have not a scholar so perseveringly industrious, so absorbed in whatever she is doing, so full of nervous energy. She is as conscientious as she is intellectual. I have never had to repeat a request to her, or to subject her to a rule. She always sees and does the fitting and the lovely thing. Before she learned to read she would sit for the hour together with a book in hand, (upside down, perhaps,) and improvisate stories wonderful to hear, in which the characters preserved their individuality, and the descriptions of nature were as vivid as those of a poet of many years. She was quite lost to outward things while improvisating thus. One day after school, the maid who came for her not having arrived, she threw herself on the floor, and began a story about a naughty child. I cannot now remember all the very words, for it was a year ago; but the qualities of the heroine were a combination of all the faults she knew anything about. "If people were ill, she always made a noise; she would shut the door hard if told that it would make people's heads ache. She hid other people's things, and would not tell where she had put them. She was very cross to her little brother, and often hurt the baby. She cut valuable things with the scissors, tore up her books, and left the pieces of paper on the parlor carpet. One day it rained very hard, and her mother told her not to go out, lest she should take cold. She was always disobedient, so she went up-stairs and put on a very nice dress and her best bonnet, with blue ribbons, and thin stockings and shoes, and nothing to keep herself warm, but went out in the rain, and paddled and paddled about, and wet her dress, and spoilt the blue ribbons on her bonnet; and when she came in she was very, very sick indeed, and had a dreadful fever, and people slammed the doors and made a great noise, and she had dreadful, oh, dreadful pains in her head and her side, and she could not eat or drink anything; and at last she died and did not go to heaven!" She stopped, completely out of breath. After a few moments' pause, I said, "Oh, I am sorry for the poor little girl that was punished so much. Was she so very naughty she could not go to heaven?"

She made no reply for some time, and then recommenced in a low, solemn voice: "When she was lying in her bed, she was very sorry she had not obeyed her mother, and a heavenly angel came down out of the heavenly sky and took her up into heaven." After a short pause she burst out again very energetically—"Then how she ramped! She trampled on the clouds, and put her foot in the sun, moon, and stars!" I made no further comment. I rarely interrupted her utterances, for they never were addressed to any one, and seldom indulged in, unless she thought herself alone. They were picturesque and symbolical, but never vague. The moral was always very apparent. But her imagination sometimes clothes objects with a light of its own. I was leading her up-stairs the other day, and as we stepped into the hall, we saw a large spider running before us. She dropped my hand and bounded forward, "Oh, you beautiful, smiling creature!" was her exclamation.

Would not a bird have been her passport into paradise at that moment?

Another of these children was walking in the mall with me one day, when the sun was shining with an afternoon light upon the bare trees, over rather a dreary landscape of snow and ice. "Oh, the trees look like golden twigs," said my little poetess, so full of joy that I could hardly hold her.

This, dear A——, is the

"time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To us do seem,
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream."

To return a moment to my little prodigy. When she did not for a long time ask to read, she wished to print, and it must have been this practice which gradually so accustomed her eye to the shapes of words, that when she suddenly conceived the desire to read, she remembered them with marvellous rapidity. Everything else was abandoned for the time, and in the course of two or three weeks she could read very well. I had often seen her take up the books which contained the stories she liked, and I supposed, at first, that she must have learned to read them herself in some unaccountable way. She had often repeated such stories from the book from beginning to end, word for word. But I found it was not the case,—that she had never actually read them before. However, I never could trace the steps. Spelling she does not find easy. Even now, several months after she has been able to read currently, if, when she comes to a new word, I propose to her to spell it, she will mention the letters (I never taught her their names, but she doubtless learned them while printing so industriously), and then say again, "What is it?" as if that had not helped her at all. But she never forgets a word after it is once told her. She joins in an exercise I frequently practise with older scholars, of spelling a few lines of the reading lesson, but she is not so ready as the others, although none read better, and few as well. She now composes stories on the slate instead of improvisating aloud so much; and I am surprised to find how many words she spells aright. But I try no experiments upon her, as my plan is to clip her wings. If she was enshrined in as rotund a body as some of the other children, I might venture a little, but she already looks too ethereal;—one sees at a glance that the sword of her fervent little spirit might easily be made to cut its sheath.

Children love to use their fingers, and I give them a slate when they come to school, and teach them to print, which accelerates the learning to read. I encourage them also to draw from beautiful outlines, from things they see in the room, and also from their own fancies. I draw upon the black-board before them, very slowly, giving directions for imitation. I never criticise their productions, whether successful or not. I often see a promise in the freedom of a stroke, or in the child's appreciation of his own drawing, which an unpractised eye could scarcely detect. If a little child brings me a slate with three marks drawn upon it which he calls a horse, or a dog, can I be so unsympathizing as to question it? Perhaps I add ears, legs or a tail, and my little disciple does not know the next moment whether he or I completed the picture, but the next specimen of his art will probably have at least one of these appendages.

I drew on the black-board to-day, a square house, with a door in the middle of the front, a window on each side the door, and one in each chamber over the parlors. Two chimneys surmounted the house, and the windows were divided each into six panes of glass. These things I mentioned as I drew them. It was not many minutes before I was called to look at two houses of four times the size of mine, with the additional embellishments of stairs to go up into the chambers, one of the windows open (which I thought decidedly the stroke of genius in this artist), smoke from the chimneys, steps to the doors (my house had been left hanging in mid air), pumps with individuals, I cannot call them men, suspended to their handles, and various other hieroglyphics which I could not stay to hear explained. These limners are four years old, their faith in themselves and others yet unshaken, and I should be the last one to suggest that stairs could not be seen through the walls of a house, or that men were not lines and dots, or birds as large as houses, for I have known children to cry at such criticisms, and to be quite checked in their artistic exploits by a laugh.

After such rude practice as this, the child, by imperceptible advances, begins at last to see things more as they are, and then a little criticism is safe, but it must still be guarded, sympathizing, and helpful. The next thing to be inculcated after this is that objects must not be drawn just as they are, but only as they appear. I made this remark to a child of seven to-day for the first time. He had learned too much to make similar mistakes to those of the little people lately mentioned, but in attempting to copy the drawing of a stool, he could not comprehend how the rungs that joined the legs of the stool could be drawn so as to look right, because one of them could not really be made to pass behind the leg. I pointed to a chair and told him to suppose he was drawing it upon the wall near which it stood, for his paper represented that wall, though for convenience sake it was laid flat upon the table. I asked him if he could see the whole of the legs farthest from him, and if the rungs of those legs did not pass behind the front legs. He saw it clearly. Then I told him we must draw things as they appeared, not as they really were. Nothing must be drawn which cannot be seen, although we know more is there than we can see without going behind it. He was delighted with this discovery. Now he understood about the rungs of the stool, and also why two legs appeared longer than the other two. The stool was finished intelligently, though not with elegance, and the paper was sprinkled with attempts at various chairs which he could see from his seat, some of which really looked as if one could sit down in them, and not as if they were flattened out and hanging against the wall. Some of the legs would have gone through the floor, to be sure, if they had been real chairs, in order to afford a comfortable and even seat, but I saw that the idea was seized, which was quite enough for my unexacting demands. A child much younger and less practised, drew the same stool right, without a word from me, and probably would be completely puzzled were I to give her the same explanation, for art speaks to her without articulate voice. I have one little girl with eyes which she seems scarcely yet to have used. I took a great deal of pains to teach her to draw a little upon the black-board last winter, but if I drew a perpendicular, she thought she imitated me by drawing a horizontal line. I endeavored to wake up the love and perception of form by hanging upon the board various exquisitely shaped vases and leaves, but neither these nor rectangular forms aroused her imitative powers. I never ceased to make these trials, for I remembered that a genius in that line once said to me, "the art of seeing must precede the art of drawing." During the long vacation she resided in the country, and nature must have opened her eyes, for since she came back to school (about two months ago), she has actually been able to imitate quite intelligibly some of those very forms, and prefers some of them to others. I assure you I enjoy her imperfect performances far more than I do the successful efforts of many others. A German friend gave me a book the other day which promises to pour a flood of light upon what I now look upon as my benighted efforts to simplify to children the art of drawing. It is the method of a man of genius, discovered after much groping. He, too, had wooden models made, and stood by them, and pointed out to his pupils which part to draw first, as I have done, but at last he has reduced the whole thing to a few lessons upon some rectilinear blocks, a niche, a cylinder, a grindstone, and a ball. I am revelling in the perfect adaptation I see in it to the end proposed, which is practical teaching of perspective without a word being said about vanishing points, aerial perspective, or any of those technicalities which weary my unmathematical brain, and which I have faithfully administered to myself from time to time.[J]

To vary the occupations of my cherubs, I let them write Foster's prepared copies with a pencil, which helps very much to regulate the motions of the hand, as there is a great interest felt in tracing each mark upon the blue line. They also look at pictures in books and on the wall, where I hang all the pretty things I can find, and tell me what is in them; and sometimes amuse themselves at a table of shells, where I hear them recounting in low voices the histories I have given them of these little tenants of the seas. When I kept caterpillars, or rather raised butterflies, they never were tired of watching the chrysalides, hoping to see the expected butterflies. After these came forth in their glory, we were all poisoned by handling the cocoons, and since that experience of itching hands, and arms, and swollen eyes, I have been afraid to venture upon that branch of natural history. Shells are the most convenient natural objects for children to handle. We talk over flowers often, and I teach the names of their different parts, and encourage the children to make collections of leaves, and learn the names of their shapes, preparatory to learning the art of analyzing them thoroughly. For this purpose I have drawn all the shapes I can find named in botanies, into a book, from which I teach them. Flowers are better for teaching beauty than botany, to little children, as they object particularly to tearing them to pieces.

I have not said one word about my little Robin, who stands most of the time at the window watching the horses in the stable opposite, the scene being often spiritualized by the descent of a flight of pigeons, which he generally apprises us of by a shout. Occasionally he turns round and sits down, and watches inside proceedings, and when an interesting story about living things is in progress, I sometimes find him in my lap, or behind me in the chair I am sitting in. His eyes are blue, and his long golden straight hair hangs down from his tall forehead like a cleft banner of light. Robin will not look inside of a book yet. He is like a caged bird in the city where he is imprisoned in winter. In summer he lives out of doors, and rides on horseback on his father's knee, and holds the reins in driving. His mother says horses are the predominating idea, and also sentiment of his life, at present, and this stable-peep into their city life is duly recounted every day at home. I often mourn over my lost residence by the Common, where the children who looked out of window could see trees and a lovely landscape, but you must not think I allow my scholars to be pent up five hours in the house. Twice a day, I array them all, summer and winter, and take them to our city paradise, which happily is very near. There we actually see a squirrel once in a while. One day we saw a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, and always the sparkling water and waving trees. And we have clear space and fresh air for half an hour. If you will not tell, I will confess that I have sometimes coasted down the least public side of Fox-hill with a babe in my lap, and I find I have not forgotten how to slide,—an accomplishment in which I excelled in my youth. In wet weather, I put on some of the out-door garments, open a window, and have a merry dance or play. The material for the early cultivation I would give is all nature, and art taken picturesquely. The nomenclatures of science are not for children, but its beauties and wonders are, and may be culled for them by a skilful hand till they have had a peep at the wide range of the universe. I believe you think it best not to open these store-houses until the mind is capable of comprehending them more fully, but I cannot think so, dear Anna. Children's love of nature forbids me to think so. I once opened a little soul's eyes with a bunch of flowers. It was a child who had never been to school before, but who had not been cultivated at home, because her mother had suffered from being over-educated, and wished to try the experiment of nature, as she called it,—by which she meant, I perceived, total neglect. She had allowed her, therefore, to grow up in the nursery and in the care of servants, both of which I consider as far from nature's teachings as possible.

The child was afraid of me and of the children. She looked at us for about three weeks with a fixed gaze as if we were not living beings, but perhaps walking pictures, her features only occasionally relaxing, I should rather say puckering into a woful wail, which expressed utter desolation and want of comprehension of our natures. She was impervious to all my blandishments, which I lavished more bountifully than usual to meet the case. When spoken to, she answered in a monosyllable, or not at all. When she wanted anything, she spoke one word to convey the idea, as a savage would, (she was five years old), and these utterances were never voluntary. She liked to sit close by her brother, who was two years older than herself, and who treated her with great tenderness and gentleness, though every manifestation from her was of the roughest kind. I was sure, however, that I did not see the whole, for his manner of taking her hand and saying "little sister" was so peculiar, that I did not doubt she was genial to him when not in this purgatory of people.

One day I had a beautiful bunch of flowers from a greenhouse on my table. This child's grandfather owned a greenhouse, but perhaps she had never been allowed to handle the flowers, which were altogether too precious for children, and wild pinks and violets had not been accessible to her. I had been trying many days in vain to interest her about a bee of which I had a picture. I had told her the bee made honey out of flowers. On that day I drew the tumbler that contained these splendid denizens of the greenhouse to the edge of the table, and said,—

"Did you ever see a little bee making honey?"

"No."

"Did you ever go into the country in summer when the grass is all green?"

"No."—(I knew she had.)

"Did you ever see pretty flowers growing?"

"No."

"I will tell you how little bees make honey—did you ever eat any honey?"

"Yes."

"They have a long hair sticking out of their heads, and they put it in there, where that yellow dust is, and there they find a little sweet drop that tastes like sugar, and they carry it home, and put it into a little hole, and then they come and get more, and carry that home, and they put that yellow dust into a little pocket by the side of their little leg, and by and by they get enough to make a great deal of honey."

"Do the bees make it all themselves?" said she, with a brightening look (the first look of intelligence I had seen), and at the same time making a plunge at the flowers.

"Yes," I said, and taking them out of the glass I put them all into her hand, for I did not even know that she could speak plain. She seized them eagerly, and without taking her eyes from them went on volubly asking a great many questions. I described the hive and how they all lived together, and told her God must have taught them how to make honey, for they could not speak or understand anybody's words, and that if they wandered ever so far away from their hive, they always knew the way back again. She held the flowers all the rest of the morning. When school was done, I told her to put them into the glass, and she should have them again in the afternoon. As soon as she returned, she very unceremoniously took possession of them,—the first act of volition she had ever ventured upon in my presence,—and nestling close to me asked me the same questions she had asked before, over and over again, and repeating them, and hearing my answers again and again, whenever she could secure my attention. As long as the flowers lasted, she seized upon them every day, and after they were withered to all other eyes, they retained their charm in hers. I varied the lesson often, by telling her of the silkworm, of the butterflies, and of many varieties of the bee family, and from that time a communication was established between us. She was never afraid of me any more; liked to sit near me; and have my sympathy in all things, provided I did not express it too openly. It was curious to see such mauvaise honte in such a tiny thing, for she was always reserved, and often relapsed into long silences, and was wholly without enterprise in matters in which the other children were very active, such as drawing, making block-houses, and even playing. But I could catch her eye at any time by a story of any living thing, and she would sometimes surprise me by the intelligence of her questions. For a long time she could not learn to read, or rather would not. Every new attempt at anything was begun in tears and despair, not from weakness, but from pride apparently. Her mother had begun to think it time to attend to her poor hidden soul a little; and after a long summer vacation which she passed in the country, she came back to school with pleasure and with a new face, and though always backward in comparison with children who had had motherly intercourse, and been taught early to use their faculties, she went steadily on. There was no competition to discourage her, and she learned to read immediately when she once wished to. None but mothers can do justice to little children. She sometimes made me think of your remark that every child needs four mothers. But I think the two heaven-appointed parents will do, if they see their duties and fulfil them.

To disarm your opposition about sending such little tots to school, I assure you that many of my mothers tell me that the transition from nursery life to my little community has cured children of fretting and other faults, and that they repeat the occupations of the school-room in their home plays.—Read "Christian Nurture," by Dr. Bushnell.

LETTER IV.

Dear A.,—When I have a collection of children around me to whom I am to teach things and morals, I always begin by making a simple statement of the footing on which I wish we shall live together. Prevention is better than cure, and much is gained with children, as with grown men, by expecting from them the best and noblest action.

In a school or in a family, I do not like any government but self-government, yet I wish my scholars to know that I often help the growth of the latter by interposing my authority when that of the inner law fails. When I commenced my present school, I had such a conversation with the children on the first day they were assembled, before there had been time for any overt acts upon a lower principle than the one I wished to inculcate.

My school consists of children belonging to one class in a certain sense of the word, that is, to families of the highest general cultivation amongst us, and what is still more important, to families in which there is a general if not well digested belief in the divinity of human nature. Yet there is a great diversity in the influences upon them. Even among people of the most liberal views there still lurks a sediment of the feeling that there is a principle of evil as well as of good in the human soul, and so people expect their children to be naughty on that ground. Now I do not believe in this. I think all evil is imperfection. It is sometimes very bad imperfection, I allow, and I am sometimes tempted to say poetically, though never literally, that it looks like innate depravity. But I do really believe in individual perfectibility, and that "circumstance, that unspiritual god and miscreator," is our great enemy. Circumstance is a very important personage in my calendar, and a perfect Proteus in the shapes he takes, for he covers not only the common surroundings we call circumstances, but organization itself. Perfection must be in the reach of every one by God's original design, and it is only man's marring that hinders its progress, and that temporarily. I hope you have the same instinct about this that I have. I can remember, even when I was not ten years old, hearing some one very severely criticised, who I happened to know had had the worst of moral educations, and I resented the criticism, not because the subject of it was any friend of mine, for it was a person in whom I had no particular interest, but I remember the feeling was a sort of vindication of God's goodness, an assurance that he would not judge that unfortunate person harshly or unforgivingly, but that the misfortunes she had brought upon herself, would teach her what her life at home had failed to teach her. How often I have thought of that poor woman in my life!

To go back to my school. I knew many of the families, some intimately enough to know the very peculiarities of the children, others only enough to be able to anticipate the little characters; others were perfect strangers, whom I was yet to study. Many of them had never been to school before, and I knew enough of the usual method of governing schools to be aware that the associations of those who had been in such scenes, were likely to be those of contention for power, the memory of penalties, and a division of interests between teachers and taught. Even at home some of these children had been governed by fixed rules, instead of the instincts of love, and had never been addressed as if they had any sense of right and wrong; others had been weakly indulged, others mostly if not wholly neglected, and left to the care of servants. One little boy and girl, children of wealthy parents, scarcely saw their father from one month's end to another, for he never rose till they went to school; they dined at two and he at five, and before his dinner was done, to which he never returned till the last moment, these little ones were put to bed. Even the elder children who also went to school, saw him only at dinner, for his evenings were usually spent in company, or at some club. I hope this is an extreme case. I should say that the mother in this family was an amiable woman, but not sufficiently like the "near Providence" to counteract the effects of such fatherly neglect.

There was one child, of truly religious and conscientious parents, whose moral influence was null, except indirectly, because they really believed that the human heart was originally depraved, and waited to be saved by special grace from God, irrespective of the conscience; and this girl, who was the oldest of my scholars, had less principle to work upon than any one, and when I first spoke of the cultivation of the mind as a religious duty, she told me very ingenuously that it was the first time she had ever heard such a thought, although she was considered quite remarkable at home for her religious sensibility, and really prayed aloud sometimes like a little seraph, in imitation of her truly devout parents; but she was very untruthful.

A few of the children had been made to feel that every human being has a conscience, which, when enlightened, will guide him right. In these latter the work of growth had already begun, and to them I looked for my allies in the work I was about to undertake. I knew that the best I could do would only come up to the standard that had ever been held up before them.

I seated them all around me and began by telling them how much I loved to keep school for little children, when they were good. But children were not always good, and I was glad to help them cure their little faults before they grew to be great ones, which was the thing most to be feared in the world. I hoped the good children here would help me make the others better, if there were any naughty ones. We must all be patient with naughty people, just as God was. It took naughty people a long time to grow better again. If each child would think about himself a moment, he would remember that he did not always do perfectly right; but God had given everybody a conscience which was sometimes called "the voice of God within us," so every one could improve who would listen to that voice.

There was a right thing to be done in every place. In school it would be necessary for all to keep good order, else it would be impossible to study, where there were so many persons; it was just as necessary too that all should be polite and kind to each other, else there could be no happiness. One unkind person could make all the rest uncomfortable.

After dwelling upon these points till all seemed to recognize their importance, I told them that some people kept order in schools by rigid rules and penalties; for instance, there would be a rule that every scholar who spoke aloud should have a mark for bad conduct, every one that kept order, a mark for good conduct; another rule would be, that every lesson learned well should have a mark of approbation, every lesson learned ill, a mark of disapprobation. The penalties for transgressing rules were floggings, bad reports written for parents to see, keeping lag after school, &c. &c.; the recompense for good marks, either a good report, or a present,—the handsomest prize being given to the one who learned lessons best.

But I did not wish to keep school thus. I had no respect for people who did right only because they feared punishment or hoped for a reward. Such motives made people selfish. I had known of children who would deny having done something they had really done, and try to make a teacher suppose some one else did it; and also of other children who were sorry when some one else got the present. All these things made people selfish, and tempted them to be false. We should do right because it was right, whether it were to bring us pleasure or pain. It was the duty of all to improve their faculties, because God had given them to us for that purpose, and had put us into a beautiful world, and given us parents and teachers to help us prepare for a long existence of which this life is but a small part,—a kind of school in which we are educated for another world.

I wished to have but one rule in my school, and that was the Golden Rule: "do unto others as you wish others to do unto you."

The duty in school was to study well and to keep order, that others might have a chance to study. It would be necessary for them all to respect my arrangements, and obey my wishes for the sake of this order, but they need not think of prizes or marks, for I should give none.

I wished them to govern themselves. This would make it unnecessary for me to watch them all the time. I should soon learn who was worthy of being trusted.

Did they not like to be trusted?

They responded warmly to this.

Did they not like to do as they pleased?

There was, of course, but one answer to this question.

I told them none could be allowed to do that in school except those who pleased to do right, because it was my duty to prevent them from disturbing each other, or from wasting their own time. But I hoped never to be obliged to punish any one for doing wrong. I should make no rules at present, and if I found all were polite, obliging, and industrious, I should never need to make any; but if there were any in school who did not obey conscience, and think about other people's convenience, I should be obliged to make rules for such. I should put the names of such scholars on a paper, and those children must live by my rules, because they had none of their own.

I considered proper manners in school to be quietness, no unnecessary speaking or moving about in study time, politeness to every one, ready obedience to my wishes and arrangements, and industrious habits of study.

I should now leave each one to make rules for himself in his own mind; they might write them down if they pleased. I should like to see what each one would think it right to do in school. They might imagine themselves keeping school, and tell how they should govern it, and what they thought the duties of scholars.

Some of them did this. Their regulations were very strict, their requisitions very great. Those who were then morally ready to apprehend my meaning, have never swerved since from the law laid down at that time.

But it was not long before several names were upon my list. For these I made specific rules, taking especial pains to say that they were not to apply to such or such individuals. If E—— or L—— or S——, for instance, should speak aloud on a pressing occasion, I should not subject them to the penalty, because I knew their principles were good; that they thought of the convenience of others, were studious, &c., &c. I should excuse a particular instance of apparent disorder in them until I had reason to think they were growing careless or thoughtless.

I made the same remark in regard to an occasional want of success in a lesson. I might perhaps have erred in judgment by giving too long a lesson. I might find upon experiment that the mind was not prepared for a particular thing. I should be inclined to think an industrious and conscientious scholar did not feel well, rather than to suppose any want of faithfulness. People must always be judged according to their characters.

I assure you it was a great punishment to have one's name upon my list. These children saw the joys of liberty, and that they could be secured only by doing right. I never saw any system of rewards or punishments have such a stimulating moral or intellectual effect.

Some of my scholars were too young even to be bound in all cases by this law of the general convenience, and these I spoke of as children whose habits were to be formed gradually, and of whom this comprehension of the convenience of others could not always be expected. I called upon the rest to help me keep them as quiet as would be consistent with their good, and took it for granted that none would trouble me by playing or interfering with them. There must, of course, be exceptions to all rules.

There were many occasions of recurring to this conversation, and of repeating its principles. When any overt acts of wrong-doing occurred, when new scholars came, I called them around me to talk about the principles on which we must live and act. These conversations were always interesting to the children, and kept up the government of the school. When I make rules and penalties for my delinquents, I make the rules as simple as possible, and the penalties as nearly like the natural consequences of wrong-doing as is practicable. I never lose an opportunity of inculcating obedience to the inward law as the only sure guide of conduct, and if one's eye is fixed upon this point, a thousand occasions will offer themselves. How can any one who does not believe this inward law to be the only sure guide of conduct govern children morally? I have a friend, quite a distinguished teacher, who believes in original depravity, and that conscience is not an unerring guide, and therefore that religious principle cannot be made to grow out of a child's consciousness, but that it is an arbitrary gift of God; supervened upon the human mind without reference to conscience. He once asked me if there were any religious exercises in my school; if I ever presented religious motives, and what they were. I told him I presented no other, that I made all duty a matter of conscience, and that I never saw a child who did not understand that motive. He said he had no doubt it was the noblest way of treating the child, and brought out the highest morality, but it was not religious education in his opinion! What an admission! the noblest way, bringing out the highest morality, and yet not religious education. His school is the constant scene of religious revivals, and by his own admission the children are told not to keep company with the children of liberal Christians, or of those who go to the theatre! I do not believe in a premature Christianity, so taught as to be able to give an account of itself in early youth.

I once visited an Infant Charity School, composed entirely of children who were not likely to have any kind of instruction at home, so that whatever was taught in the school would be likely to make quite an impression. After a pleasant little exercise in marching and singing, they were seated for a religious lesson. What do you think of the following as a basis of Christian charity?—average age of the children, eight.

What are the principles of Christianity?

To love one's neighbor and obey God, to believe in the Bible and the salvation by Christ.

Who are the heathen?

They are people who never heard of the Christian religion, and who cannot have salvation by Christ.

Name the heathen nations?

Indians, Hindoos, the people of Asia, Africa, and the islands in the Pacific Ocean.

What is the difference between Christians and heathen?

Christians serve God, walk humbly, and love their neighbors like themselves. Heathens lie, steal, commit murder, and are full of revenge.

Are all the people in Christendom true Christians?

No, only those who believe that God the Father took the form of man and came down to the earth, preached, suffered, and was crucified on the Cross.

What becomes of all who are not true Christians, and of all the heathen?

They go into everlasting fire.

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This was a rote-lesson which the children rattled off glibly.

Modifications of such lessons are given in schools where revivals are considered religious proceedings.

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Is it not fearful to think that there is a child in Christendom who is not instructed in the great fundamental truth that God has planted in every human soul a principle of conscience by which it can distinguish evil from good, and which, if obeyed, will save it, by some natural process alike applicable to Christian or heathen? The first principle to which a child should be pointed is the principle of law in the human breast. God has so made the human soul that this can be taught to young children if one only knows how to do it. If truly taught, we may safely trust that they can never so judge the much-abused heathen.

One day when I was walking in the mall with my little scholars, at recess, some of the children cried out to the others that they must not run upon the banks, or the constable would fine them. The warning was not received in a good spirit, and I perceived that the constable was not in good repute among children. I well remembered the "tidy-man," as our servant called him, of my childish days, and the apprehensions I used to entertain lest he should hook me up with his long pole into the gallery of the church, if I made any noise during service time, and I saw that these children thought it quite desirable to circumvent the constable, and get as many runs upon the banks as could be snatched during his absence.

This was an opportunity not to be lost, and when we returned to the school-room, I asked why they supposed the constable was ordered to let no one run upon the banks.

They were curious to hear a reason. It had not occurred to them, apparently, that there was any other reason than a desire to trouble children. I told them the history of the Boston Common—how much pains had been taken ever since the days of the Pilgrims (whom they know), to keep it inviolate, in order that all the citizens might enjoy its beauties and its advantages; how much money had been expended upon it; how it had been secured as a perpetual possession to all the citizens, and how every attempt to build even very near it, had been resisted for fear of cutting off the fine prospect; that even the cows that used to pasture there, had been turned away that the children of the city might play there undisturbed. I then told them why by-laws were made to preserve the beauty of the banks, particularly just after they were repaired and newly laid down with turf.

When they acknowledged that all this was reasonable, I told them that laws were made for the good of society, and that every good citizen would respect such laws. Whoever understood what law meant, that is, whoever knew the law within themselves, would respect the laws of a country or a city that were made for the good of all. I thought my lesson was successful.

One who has not been a great deal alone with the unsophisticated natures of children has little idea how early the highest principles of action can be instilled into them. It does not need many words, as I well remember from the few indelibly written upon my mind by a religious mother, who never comforted my timidity, which was excessive, by anything but principles which my soul responded to: "Do right always, and then you need not be afraid of anything;" and, "Your Heavenly Father will take care of you, and will let nothing happen to you but what is for your good," comprised the religious inculcations of my childhood, varied according to circumstances. And when I first fully realized that Christ, who was held up as a model, was "tempted like as we are," my religious education was complete, except what practice could give me. The imagination is as boundless in the images it evokes as imagery itself, and no specific cure for fears of darkness and unmeasured danger can ever meet the difficulty. If a timid child cannot be taught that he is under the eye of a tender and watchful Providence, his childhood may be one long terror, as I have known to be the case. If to this is to be added everlasting woe for wrong-doing, there is no wonder that God must come down from heaven to set things right, and invent a scheme which will virtually annihilate his own original provisions.

Many of my children have been religiously educated in the right way, have been made to think of God as their creator, benefactor, and preserver, and the author of all the beauties of nature that they see, and the powers they possess. When I say "we must return good for evil as Christ did, who was the most perfect being that ever lived," they understand me as speaking of a principle which they can apply directly to themselves; for I often add, "Christ said things when he was very young that showed he understood all about right and wrong, and in those years of his life which we are not told anything about in the Bible, he must always have obeyed his conscience, or he never could have preached to others as he did afterwards,"—for the only vital use of Christ's life to others is to make his spirit of action our own, and to believe that we can do likewise.

I have been led to think much of this in relation to children, by hearing my orthodox friend talk; for he is a very conscientious man, and his admission that to address the child's conscience was the noblest way of treating it, though not the canonical one, let in a world of light upon me touching the unchristian condition of Christendom. How can truth prevail where the noblest appeal is not considered the religious appeal? Truly yours,

M.

LETTER V.

My dear Anna,—If you wish to know the practical difficulties that arise out of my desire to inculcate self-government, and to keep my own out of sight as much as possible, I will tell you candidly that liberty is sometimes abused in my school; but I have never repented of my principles, and have learned not to be frightened by apparent failures, for I have never known an instance, where I have had an opportunity to observe the result, in which my plan has not answered somewhat to my hopes.

And now I must tell you what are my hopes. They are not to make men and women of children, or to produce perfect consistency of action in youth. They are to put the mind in the right attitude so that the education of life will bring forth the character harmoniously; and to make truth, sincerity, kindly affections, and a conscientious use of the powers of the mind the prevailing characteristics. Sometimes I wait long for the dawning of this hope, but I cannot despair of it as long as I believe in the soul. I do not mean that I think the soul self-existent, independent of God, but I believe it so created that it can right itself at last with due effort to realize His presence in vital laws. To induce it to make this effort is what education is designed to effect, is it not? I have had some children under my care who have come to me deceitful, perverse, without delicacy of sensibility, self-conceited, puffed up with lofty notions of their own importance and that of all who belonged to them; and these characteristics so prominent and offensive that our intercourse was for a long time nothing but war. I had no opportunity to express approbation or sympathy, for the object with them was to defy or circumvent me, and to accomplish their lessons by trickery instead of honest application. These faults were constantly recurring, and I was often strongly tempted to rid myself of the difficulty by declining to keep such scholars in school with others. If my operations had necessarily been confined to one apartment, I should have been obliged to do this sometimes, but in my father's house I had many facilities, and I felt it my duty, if possible, to do what I could for such unfortunate children, as long as I was sure that my influence, and not theirs, prevailed in the school. I saw that vices were made apparent, of whose existence I could have wished innocent children never to know, but I knew it was impossible to sequester them wholly from such contact, and perhaps it had better be under supervision and thus possibly turned to account. Sometimes the beauty of virtue is better seen by being contrasted with its opposite. Had not I a right to think the evil might be overruled for good, since God permits evil (the negative of good) in his world? To do this, however, requires the greatest vigilance, and occasionally I have been obliged to suspend very much the intellectual training of a school, to gain time to investigate its moral state, and the degree of evil influence that might tend to counteract mine, for these interlopers among the innocents sometimes had bright parts, and an activity that never tired. The faults of such children often brought them into direct collision with their companions whose peace they invaded, and thus far I was aided by my scholars in my discipline, though I have had cases where the outward speciousness was only such as one would imagine to belong to a matured person. I was obliged to take the greatest pains, however, in order not to destroy the very germ of delicacy (which yet bore no fruits), that my admonitions should be in private, whenever no overt acts made it necessary for me to speak before others. In private I need not speak in measured terms.

It is frightful to feel one's self so directly in contact with the wrong-doing of a fellow-being, but at such times I have laid open the heart as well as I was able, and showed the characteristics in all their hideousness, taking it for granted that the moral judgment was still alive.

A great man once said to me that we had no second consciousness by which we could judge ourselves; and Burns, you know, exclaims,—

"O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!"

but I agree neither with the philosopher nor the poet, for conscience is that second consciousness, which can be evoked if only the right conjurer speaks. I believe in no other safeguard than that "voice of God within us" to which I firmly believe no human being is always deaf. But, dear A——, what is so revolting as a bad child? It seems an anomaly in nature. I depict no imaginary characters to you. I do not think I could imagine a bad child. It must be seen and known to be believed in. I am always inclined to blame the environment of such a child, but repeated instances that I have known convince me that souls differ in quality, and that it is unreasonable to expect the loveliest type of virtue in all. I believe in the remedial power of education, not that it can change the quality of the soul, but the character of the individual. A bold, free spirit will not by education be made delicate, but its boldness may be employed on worthy objects, and so of other traits. Truth too can be shown to be beautiful to some, but to others to be only manly, or respectable.

I have known children, who apparently had very little sensibility, to be touched by the fact of never being unnecessarily exposed to others. This care awakened in them a perception of delicacy. In one instance, I learned subsequently that reproof received thus in private made a great impression, while that administered at the moment of overt acts of wrong-doing in the presence of the school made very little, or only provoked defiance. I have sometimes had testimonies of affection from such naughty children, and have feared they only proved a want of sensibility, but this instance showed me that my care and painstaking were appreciated where I least thought of it. I have often realized that I kept bad manifestations in check, though the frequent outbreaks of such traits as want of truth, stratagem, attempts at secret influence in the school, proofs of want of delicacy of taste and of conscience, made me feel that all I could do in the short period while my influence lasted, was to hold up my testimony to good principles, and make an adherence to truth, and sincere and conscientious action in every particular of life,—the central points round which all other things must revolve. This I never lose an opportunity of doing by dwelling upon it to others as well as to the guilty. In a small school like mine—yet large enough for variety,—I am in such close personal contact with all my scholars, that the intimacy is nearly as great as in a family; indeed, my personal intercourse with many of the children includes more hours and more actual communication of mind than takes place in some families. It seems to me very important that schools should be of such a size that this may be the case, if they are to be looked to as a means of moral, as well as of intellectual culture; and if they are not, I conceive them to be nurseries of as much evil as good, to say the least. One of the most melancholy things in life, to me, is seeing children get used to what is wrong, submitting to it as a necessity of growth; and a good school, where everything can be talked over, is an immense check upon this. Happily the world cannot spoil a good soul, but there are degrees in goodness, and in moral strength, and even good souls get tarnished by getting used to evil. I would put off the day as long as possible. In cities, where nearly the whole of youth is passed in schools, more regard should be had to the moral part of the training. Knowledge is dangerous power to the unconscientious, and every child should and can be made to feel it.

In such deplorable instances as I have referred to, every power within me has been taxed to the utmost to counteract the evil tendencies that put forth their shoots in every direction. Sometimes a clearness of head that made it easy for a child to see the bearings of things, or even an instinctive affectionateness of disposition (not such as would stand the test of opposition, however), have been the only foundations of my hope. These do not supply the place of tenderness of conscience, but when one is endeavoring to help forward that growth, a clear intellect is an important aid. A natural obtuseness in both departments of the nature would make one's efforts dark and groping indeed.

Now when I thus confess how small has often been the reward for my pains, you may smile at my credulity, but I have had some rewards in the midst of discouragements. I did feel in one instance, before my scholar was taken from me,—and she was taken away because her mother had not the moral courage to let her suffer the natural consequences of her wrong-doing, at a crisis when I felt convinced it might do her radical good,—that she had a far-off glimpse of what character is; that the fine saying of Novalis, "character is a well-educated will," had dawned upon her mind; for she could sometimes tell the truth against her own interest, and could bear the natural consequences of a fault, occasionally, without flying into a passion. My "natural consequences" were, privation from the society of her companions when she had abused their faith and their peace, &c. The child was willing herself to sit, for a whole term, in another apartment, and not enter the school-room except for a recitation, and to have no part in the plays of the school, but her mother was not willing.

This child I could not call noble-minded, or generous-hearted, or a lover of truth, or a self-governing being, but I thought she had been able to discern glimpses of these characteristics in others whom she had wronged, and that had given me hope. I was thankful that I had given her principles instead of penalties, and that I had had faith enough to wait for the dawning of light within herself, without giving her up or producing a false shine by addressing lower motives. She would have despised me at that moment, if I had yielded to her mother's wish that I should reinstate her in school before she had outlived her probation, which the child and I had agreed to be the best discipline for her. I am inclined to think she judged her mother unfavorably at that time, for she often came to see me afterward, to ask me if I thought such and such things were right—things which she evidently had heard discussed. She was but eleven, but she had a wonderful power of writing symbolically. She once wrote a legend in imitation of those of Spenser's "Faëry Queene," which showed great intellectual insight into the distinctions between right and wrong, and her sense of her own faults was such that if anything closely resembling them was read of in school, she would put her head under the table, as if she knew and felt its application. The apparent attraction of my society to this child was very significant to me. She would ask me the most subtle questions in morals, and discourse as well as I could, so that I felt as if her knowledge of right and wrong, gained through the intellect, was rather a hinderance than a help to her moral improvement for she was guilty every day of malicious falsehoods. Her envy of her companions was sickening to the heart, for it made her active in injuring them. She had vanity rather than ambition, for her desire to excel did not spur her to any troublesome efforts, it only made her hate every pursuit in which others excelled her, either by natural gift or by conscientious, patient industry. At such times she would throw her books across the room, and stamp upon the floor like a little maniac. Her unusual brilliancy of imagination, unaccompanied by any sedative qualities, was one explanation of her character. Her wit and fancy gave her great influence over her companions, by whom she was admired, or feared, or held in great aversion. She had a passionate attachment to one girl a little older than herself, who was singularly lovely and delicate in mind and conscience; but this passionate love alternated with fits of persecution, arising wholly out of envy, so that I have known her friend, who was strangely fascinated by her, to be ill for several days, in consequence of painful scenes of its display. This little Italian soul, born under our cold skies, was almost a fiend at eleven years old. Perhaps the intellectual insight she possessed at that early age, will be useful to her at any period of life when her moral nature shall be awakened. I have known instances in which the latter slumbered in childhood, and was roused into vivid action later in life by crushing and heart-scathing events, consequent upon its early torpor; and I should not be surprised if she should yet come to me across the wastes of life for sympathy and help; for she knew I would fain have given her my time and strength to awaken in her a love of excellence. Such characters have success in the world from very unscrupulousness, till they trample too proudly on the rights of others. The charms they do possess, whether personal or mental, lure them on to greater evils till they are thrown back suddenly into the presence of eternal truth, and then what misery must ensue, what a reckoning must come! Do such children of God see wider and deeper into the eternal truth for having gone astray? I would fain think so; for in this universe of compensations we can only see that one for the lost heaven of innocent childhood. Let those who have not such temptations mourn over, but not despise the erring!

I would aid many children to conquer temper by a near penalty, or give courage to confess a fault by taking away the apprehension of all other punishment than the natural one of self-reproach, reflected from the mother-confessor; but sometimes I see children who are afraid of nothing in heaven or earth, the current of whose impertinence I can indeed check for the moment; the bold, defying glance of whose eye I can quell, but the coarse texture of whose mind admits none of the more delicate influences. A large generosity, or a great moral indignation or self-conquest, may be comprehended by such children, but not a fine sympathy, or a tender regret.

I have had pupils with as violent passions, as determined will, as much intellectual insight, and a temperament that made every emotion as keen as the stroke of a Damascus blade, but a sensibility that would respond to the gentlest touch, and a conscience whose stings were like a sharp goad. This keenness of nature made childhood's experience like that of a matured mind that had seen and felt the consequences of evil; and the gravity of age took the place of the buoyancy of childhood. A word in season would bring such a child to repentance and amendment too, for I think nothing of occasional backsliding, where the desire of improvement prevails. Such children are subject to abuse of a peculiar kind, which they seldom escape. This quick sensibility is too often called forth, and a morbid sensitiveness is produced which too often takes refuge in recklessness. I have known such instances where the very words "doing right" became hateful, when uttered by lips that had invaded too often the sacred sensibility. Such vivid intellects are also apt to be exercised too strongly for the entertainment of others, and excited to undue activity by questions of morals which should not be urged thus early, if we wish for a healthful development. The principle of self-government is thus impaired, not strengthened. The trial of strength ought to come later in life; and truthfulness alone will save one who has such painful associations with virtue. I am thinking now of a particular child whose peace of mind I have seen thus disturbed fearfully, and to whom I felt it my duty to secure as much tranquillity as the hours he passed with me could contain, even if advancement in literature must be sacrificed to that end.

I know nothing more painful than to see a child of delicate sensibility, and lively moral sense, growing hardened to the wrong-doing of others, as it grows older, and even learning to expect it. I have seen this in more than one child, and it has made me feel that there is a limit beyond which we should not open the eyes of childhood. Let them live in happy unconsciousness of all evil but that which is in themselves, as long as possible, and let the characters of others be mysterious to them, rather than let them acquire the habit of looking out for blemishes by hearing low motives attributed to others. I would never trace out evil in character before children, except where refraining from doing so might risk the injury of the moral sense. We all know, I fear, what it is to have our idols cast down, and our ideal desecrated and sad; bitter indeed is the wakening from our dream of man-and-woman-worship; but we learn one thing by dwelling upon the perfection of our ideal, and that is, of what we are capable. No one can ever realize that who has not worshipped some fellow-mortal, at some time. I would not forget the passionate loves of my childhood for anything I have yet realized in life.

Upon the whole, if I find truth in a character, I pass lightly over all other deficiencies. And even some forms of falsehood do not discourage me. A child that is managed by strategem will almost inevitably become artful; but a generous, confiding treatment, in which his honor is trusted, will probably bring him back to candor and simplicity. I love to teach children to look upon and understand the virtues of others, to excite their enthusiasm for fearless truth, self-sacrifice, and long-suffering patience and kindness. All the experience of my life is worked up into little stories. When I say "once I knew, &c.," I always chain attention. I love to tell of one child I knew when very young, who would never let another child communicate any secret, as children take such pleasure in doing, without saying in answer to the question, "Will you never tell?" "Nobody but my mother." This was her invariable answer, and her sturdiness through all manner of ridicule made a great impression upon me. We were inseparable companions, and I remember nothing that bound me to her so strongly as this uprightness. I adopted the same measure by her advice, and we doubtless escaped much evil in that way. She went by the name of "Nobody But," but she had true moral courage, and I used to resent, in her behalf, this nickname. My loyalty to her generally saved me from even the temptation of being asked. This and other small heroes and heroines are important mythological personages in my school.

I have one scholar who was brought to me from a very large school where no child could receive individual attention, and no subject of interest was either studied or talked about. Certain outward actions brought certain rewards or punishments. The principles of self-government and conscience were never addressed. His mind, of fine natural powers, would have been starved all that time if he had not had intellectual culture at home. When he came into my school-room I could see that every association with such scenes was wearisome and disgusting. Before the study-bell was rung, he would pour into my ear the whole history of his life, his excursions among the mountains, the stories told him by his travelled uncles, his knowledge of animals, birds, flowers, and all in a childlike spirit of confidence in my interest and sympathy, which he caught from the other children. But when the school-hour came, a lassitude pervaded all his faculties, and even a spirit of opposition seemed to take possession of him. It was not the signal for many pleasant things to happen, as with the rest, but for some stupid effort to be made. The memory of many thousand spelling lessons, including countless words to which no idea was attached in his mind, and of dull readings of the same uninteresting sentences from the beginning to the end of the year, and the adding, subtracting, and dividing of inexpressive numbers, came thronging thick upon him. I learned the facts from outside testimony, first suspecting them from their effects. It needed only to look at him to see them written in his expressive face.

As soon as I saw clearly how it was, I determined that my school-room should for a time be as much like the wild woods as I could make it, consistently with due decorum; that he should enjoy the sweets of liberty in certain ways, while at the same time I would endeavor gently to substitute for his previous associations with study, something more living. I soon saw that he evidently thought he was to do pretty much as he pleased. I did not always check him when he walked to the window without any apparent object but to enjoy the prospect in the street, though I sometimes expressed surprise that he should do it when I had given him a lesson to learn. He saw no black marks expressive of the youthful sins of looking up from his book, or treading on the toes of his neighbors, though after a while I gave him a little table by himself, because he had not self-control enough to refrain from such interference with others. I once remarked to him that he was like those people whom society put into the State-prison, because he violated social duties. Only those could enjoy freedom who did not interfere with others' rights and comforts. The taste for liberty soon spread into other things. He did not like to study anything that required an effort, and showed a great feeling of discouragement whenever anything new was required of him. He always said "can't," and often added in a half whisper, "won't." I did not yield to this, but insisted upon having my requisitions answered, partly because obedience must be the cardinal virtue in school, and partly because I knew such despondency would never be conquered unless by a sense of power to conquer difficulties. Much time and labor it cost me and him to establish my authority in this respect, and to induce him to begin to study a hard lesson. After I had gained these points, however, I gradually set aside those things to which he had the most aversion, and which had no interest but one borrowed from a sense of duty, and thought it best to let him choose more for himself. I could have done this earlier if the aversion to certain mental efforts had not been accompanied with wilful resistance to my wishes, and a want of consideration for my duties. Many of the vile tricks of school-boys, both in school and in play-hours, annoyed me and his companions.

At last the reaction began to take place. He became interested in Latin fables and natural history, and when I began to administer less interesting things in small doses, he would bring his book to me saying, "I can't tell how to get this lesson," instead of "I shall never get this, and I am not going to try." When I found he could adopt a suggestion from me as to the best way to conquer a difficulty, I could send him into another room to pronounce French phrases aloud, without the interruption of other recitations. I had no possible penalties for the recurrence of fits of idleness, and when he interrupted others, I only expressed my surprise and regret that he should be so childish and selfish, and occasionally sent him home because he was utterly disagreeable. These faults seemed to be the result of a morbid activity where healthful manifestations had been arbitrarily checked, and not an evil disposition; for he really loved little children, and was communicating and confiding to me before and after school, quite courteous and polite to me as Miss P——, but wholly in opposition to the school-dame. I always took pains to appeal to him for his traveller's stories when they came in appropriately to the geography lesson, or could illustrate in any way what was read. School began gradually to afford him the same sort of pleasure he received from reading with his mother, which was always agreeable, and had stored his mind with pleasant knowledge. In morals as well as in lessons I did the same thing. I called upon him to help me take care of the little children when we walked, because I saw he could do this with ease and pleasure. As soon as any other relation took the place of the school relation, all things went on agreeably. He knew that I respected his word, and that his story had due weight in the scale when I asked for various testimony in regard to any subject of difference.

My object was, as you will perceive, to leave him to feel the natural consequences of doing wrong, instead of fearing any arbitrary punishment; being confident that the natural sequence of things (that is, God's arrangements) would enlighten the mind as no mere penalty or mere precept could do. I often feel that I can see the prominent points in a case like this, where a mother may not, owing to her position. Neither do mothers know the faults of the school-room. I give information of these, as they tell me the faults of the nursery. Children that cry much in nurseries, seldom cry at all in a school-room, where a pleasing variety occupies the time, and a seed-grain of self-control is planted; and temptations arise in the school-room, where peculiar efforts and sacrifices are called for, that do not assail the child at home. The mother of this boy could hardly be made to believe that in school-hours neither his intellect nor his conscience acted, because she knew they did at other times. It was as if a spell bound him there. In his previous school-life there had been little but spelling-lessons, and what is called discipline, which consists, as far as I can understand, (and I have inquired very particularly of those who advocate the system,) of teaching as many uninteresting words as can be crowded into the memory, especial care being taken to keep out of the way all ideas. It was in such a conversation that the view was advanced to which I have before alluded, that the less interest, the more discipline of study. The advocate of such a plan thought everything that was studied in youth was forgotten, be it what it might, therefore training (alias misery and waste of time) was alone useful or desirable. He instanced his own experience as a proof of this, and where it was gently insinuated that perhaps if those forgotten geography lessons, Latin lessons, etc., had had any interest of their own, such as associations with interesting people, or the amusement of a story, they might have kept their place in his mind, he rejected the idea entirely, showing, as the Puritans did when they persecuted the Quakers for doing the very thing they had done, the evils of a bad education. I even ventured a little story, (that being a lively kind of argument I like to use,) of a little girl in my school, who, when I was endeavoring to make her hear the thunder-music and see the rainbow-tinted spray of Niagara Falls, exclaimed, "Why, I never knew before that Niagara Falls was made of water!"—but I found he could not be taught "out of the mouth of babes and sucklings."

I could have told him, if I had not been discouraged, of a dear little boy of my acquaintance, seven years old, whom his mother wished to send to my school, but his more ambitious father chose to put him into the Latin Grammar-School, (the very one of which this gentleman was usher when I talked with him.) His mother begged me to let him come to me privately to learn with me the terrible Latin Grammar-lesson of three pages, which was to be his first lesson in the school, and the language. So little Georgie and I had a secret session every day for a long time, in which we got the lesson together—I would hear him say it, and he would hear me, and I endeavored to extract some hidden meaning from it for him, but although I saved him from many a feruling, his hatred of school became so intense, from the impossibility he found of ever succeeding without penalty and suffering, that he actually broke down in spirits and health, and was at last taken away and sent to a military school to save his life. His mother and I knew why he failed, for he was of delicate organization, easily frightened, and his sensibility, which was keen and might have opened to him the beauties of the universe, was poisoned and embittered by unjust severity and the fearful drill of that model school. Some of my boys who have gone there after having learned to use their faculties, have succeeded well, and found no difficulties; but poor little George was taken from what I call a spelling-school, and put into that tread-mill, as it proved to him. I attribute a subsequent unhappy career to this mistake in his education, but I hope something will yet evoke his originally lovely nature.[K]

When one hears such views as these, and many others of similar import that I could recount, one almost despairs of ever seeing a whole man. The fact that there is a grain of truth in such heaps of falsehood, only increases the difficulty, because that grain of truth prevents the recognition of that mass of error. My observation and experience are that, not till things are intelligently learned do they begin to fertilize the mind, or are they even sure to stay in it, and scarcely a fine intellect will give you any other record of itself than that the date of its improvement began at that era when either self-education or the wise teacher showed it the thread of relation that runs through all things. Not till at least one human fact has exemplified some spiritual law, does the intellect work intelligently, or begin to arrange its stores. Do we not know some minds that are mere encyclopedias, which imagination has never penetrated with its Ithuriel spear? If such have moral sense in any fair proportion, they are liable to become hopelessly miserable in this world of shadows because they can see nothing but the shadows.

I once knew a mother who was a beautiful type to me of the spirit that should actuate the guardians of the young. She looked upon a soul with such awe that it was not easy for her to impose her authority upon her children, for might there not be something in their natures superior to her own? The possibility of this made her cautious in her requisitions, lest she should nip some beautiful bud of promise in them. I knew her when they were all young, and I saw that it was not want of decision, but the fear of doing harm that often arrested her action. The children were not always serene and happy, and sometimes not obedient, for they had strong wills, and what is called a great deal of character. How could there but be strong individuality in such a family? There was no fixed pattern by which they were all to be measured. But they reverenced her as she did them, for she lived and acted simply and genuinely, and encompassed them round about with her tenderness, practising daily those virtues of devotion and self-denial which are demanded of the mother of a large family, and never turning a deaf ear to the wants of those less favored with earthly happiness than herself. She treated her children with the respect one human being owes to another, irrespective of age. Yet she did not commit the error we sometimes see of reasoning out every point of duty with children, thus teaching them to quibble and catch at words. She could check that while she showed respect for their reasons. She had that true humility which makes its possessors question every step of the way in the path of duty, while they have a trusting faith that there is something within them to answer to its calls.

She died suddenly, and then her influence, which many might have doubted, appeared in a wonderful and beautiful manner. Circumstances were such that no one was able to take the proper care of the family for a month or two in the absence of the father. The eldest children, two boys, one fourteen, the other eleven, immediately took the place of their mother as a matter of course, assumed the personal care which they had seen their mother take every day, of six little brothers and sisters, arranging everything as their mother had done, even in such minutiæ as placing the clothes in the proper drawers, and washing and dressing the younger children, which the mother had never left to servants, although the home was well supplied with them. In a quiet and unostentatious manner a large establishment had been managed by a superior mind so skilfully, that these boys found no difficulty in keeping everything in train till their father's return. They had been inspired by their mother with a sense of order, propriety, and responsibility, for it was a peculiarity in her that she rather acted than inculcated principles, and through their great and tender affection, which had been her happiness in life, her characteristics flowed naturally and without a break into their lives. Such a mother should every teacher be, especially of young children.

You need not tell me that mothers and teachers must be wise as well as tender, courageous as well as reverential. I know it well. I can tell you of a young mother who risked an essential injury to her child (humanly speaking, for we cannot injure the essence of another) by allowing him to quibble upon subjects of right and wrong, and accepting his excuses when he could found them upon any inadvertence of hers. His mental motions were more rapid than hers, and a morbid tenderness of conscience made her hesitate to lay injunctions upon him, lest she might err in judgment. A natural tendency to subtlety and stratagem was thus fostered in him, and as he had not much imagination, there was danger that he would become actually deceitful. He led an innocent life compared with many boys of his age, for he was kept very much out of harm's way, but I soon perceived the pleasure he experienced from a successful trick of fun, and that his great command over his nerves tempted him to play many such, which he could do with a grave face. I never saw one that was not in itself innocent fun, and if they had been practised as some children practise them, who will betray their agency the next moment from mere artlessness, I should only have battled the point with him as I do with others who play in school in study hours, (or rather half hours.) But I saw that this was likely to become a deeper evil, connected as it was with his habit of excusing himself, finding flaws in my directions, and quibbling upon words. It was too serious a matter for penalties of my device, designed as reminders, nor was I willing to enter the lists with him and vanquish him by my superior sagacity, for this would be only sharpening his tools.

I took a good opportunity one day to call what he did mean, and to tell him that I thought he was growing cunning, which I was very sorry for, as that led to deception of all sorts. It was very funny to pull another boy's hair, and then look grave as if he knew nothing about it, which I had often seen him do, but I could not laugh at fun, when it was at the expense of truthfulness, though I enjoyed a good joke as well as any one. It was wrong, too, for him to play when I was looking the other way, because it was cheating me and setting a bad example to the other scholars. I liked to be able to trust people's honor, and when I gave a direction, and then went to the other side of the room to attend to others, in the confidence that my wishes would be conscientiously regarded, I was disappointed and grieved to find that I was cheated. I did not like to be obliged to watch people. I could not respect any one I must watch, and I would not watch him. If he would do wrong and teach others to do so, he must sit entirely by himself. As to himself, no one else could cure him of his faults. If he was willing to grow deceitful, no one could help it; but if he had no honor, every one must defend himself against him, and he could command no respect from any one, nor have any of his own, which I thought more precious than that of others. What was a person good for who could not have self-respect? It was a pleasant thing to make other people laugh, but if he could allow another to bear the blame of it, and not speak up to say he was the offender, I could not trust him even when he did speak. I added, that I had long observed these tricks of his, and had been sure they would at last lead to meanness, and here was an instance of it just as I had expected. I also reminded him of an occasion when I saw him take an unfair advantage in play for the mere pleasure of winning a little game, thus giving up his honor for the enjoyment of a moment. I hoped he would remember these instances and the danger to which he was exposing himself. I would not dare to punish such faults, for I might be suspicious of him when he did not deserve it, as I could not always read his mind or be sure of his sincerity. The punishment must be the one God had appointed for such faults—and that was, a loss of integrity itself, the most dreadful of all punishments.

The child loved me and thought a great deal of my opinion. He did not wish the tears in his eyes to fall, and he swallowed them till his face flushed. I had spoken before all the school, as it was a public offence not to be passed over; for nothing is more attractive to children than the wittiness of practical jokes, as I knew one child to confess when asked which boys he liked best in a certain story, "Oh the bad boys," said he, "I like the wittiness of them."

I afterwards took every opportunity to put this little fellow upon his honor, and often said, so that he might hear it, that if any one wished to be fair and honorable, they had better not indulge in what seemed very innocent fun when concealment was necessary, for fear of learning to deceive. I often appealed to him for testimony, because I knew he had accuracy of observation, and dwelt particularly on such occasions upon my wish that he should tell me all his own part in a transaction, very carefully, both good and bad, for the sake of helping me to do justice, and urged him not to be cowardly, or keep back anything for fear of being blamed. Blame, I once told him, was one of our best friends. The fear of it sometimes kept us from doing wrong even when we had no better reason, and when we had done wrong, it showed us to ourselves, just as we were, and waked conscience up to its duty. Only cowards were afraid to tell the truth against themselves. Yet I checked him whenever he told tales of others; which is a thing I always carefully discriminate from telling the truth when asked. I checked him also because one of his bad habits was to excuse himself, and the temptation that assailed him was to throw the blame on others.

In every way I could think of, I thus tried to show him how his particular tendencies would lead him into falsehood, which I assumed to be the greatest of faults.

After three years' continuance in my school, I assure you there was not a child in it that I would more readily trust, and though he always annoyed me with his playfulness, it ceased to be tricky. I had frequent occasions to notice his candor and to refer to his improvement. I never spoke to him again before the school upon the subject of his mean fault, but I kept it fresh in his own mind, and long after, when I reproved another child for symptoms of the same fault, I remarked that one of my scholars had once given me the same cause to fear for his integrity, but he had watched himself, and I was glad to say he had resisted temptation and grown honorable and trustworthy. I saw that he knew who I meant, but the others had forgotten who it could be. I did not gratify their curiosity, of course.

I do not know that this boy is above temptation, but I have had many proofs of his power to resist it; occasions that brought him no glory, some of which I have recognized by such a remark as "how respectable honesty is," or "how I like to see moral courage that fears nothing but doing wrong." Sometimes I took no visible notice, for we need not always praise well-doing. It is often both unnecessary and unwise, for where goodness is not wholly spontaneous, it may be vitiated by love of approbation. It is only perfect goodness, or such measure of that as mortals may attain, that can always bear praise and grow only more fervent for it.

Sometimes I leave one scholar to keep school while I go into another room to hear a lesson, and then I require an account of their stewardship. I am always careful to select one whom all will concur in respecting and of whom they will feel no jealousy when they are censured. I once left this boy in charge, but after a short time he came and requested to be released, because he felt as if it was like tale-bearing to tell of his companions, and he did not feel sure that they would be willing. I saw by this that he meant to be faithful; indeed, it was not till after I had full confidence in him that I ventured on so important a step. I presume he did not feel as if I could say, as I had said of some others, "You know —— would not find fault with you if he could help it, or if his conscience did not require it of him." There is no point that must be managed with such delicacy as this of discriminating between truth and falsehood. Children live so long in their ideal worlds, and are so much talked to in symbols, that when they begin to deal more with realities they must often be reminded to be accurate. I would lead them gently out of the creations of their imaginations when this time comes, constantly reminding them that they must tell things just as they are; and when they embellish their statements, I go over them quietly, re-stating for them, and leaving out all the marvellous additions. Little children will often quote their absent mothers' authority, when it is impossible that the circumstances can have been anticipated. I always reply to this very decidedly, "Oh! no; mother did not say so. She does not know anything about it; you must not tell me so; that is saying what is not true, which is very wrong." If they persist, I say, "Very well; I will write a little note to mother when you go home, and tell her I am afraid her little child has said what is not true, shall I?" This will generally bring out a confession. I do not punish on such occasions, for there is no surer way of producing falsehood than by inspiring fear, but I try to produce a little agony in the conscience and make a child very unhappy for the moment. This suffering can be referred to afterwards, in private, and the danger pointed out of growing wicked, which I find the greatest instrument of awakening the inward monitor.

Some people object to allegories and fairy stories for children, but I am never afraid of them if they are true to nature, truly imaginative, or if the impossible is occasionally caught a glimpse of. A fairy that comes out of a flower, is an imaginary being that will never disturb the dreams or deceive the intellect of a child. I always call such stories poetry, and sometimes ask what they teach. If a teaching use cannot be made of them, they are not written conscientiously and are not good food for the young. A child of well cultivated imagination will be likely to be more rather than less truthful than others. But I do not like ogres. I once had a scholar, a child of eleven years, that had never known the care of parents. She was a southern child, whose parents died in her infancy, and she was sent from one boarding-school to another, where she was made the tool of unscrupulous girls to obtain their ends against authority. She told untruths always, even upon the most trivial matters, as if she feared being circumvented, or giving any handle to others by whom she might be blamed. She was so subtle, that it was almost impossible to obtain a fact from her, although she lived in the family. Her relations had wholly neglected all personal care of her, and I found she knew nothing whatever about them. I learned that her parents were two very lovely young people, both of whom died early of consumption, and she had an uncle who was a bachelor and a very wealthy planter. He had been very fond of his sister, and meant to take home this child and make her his heiress as soon as she was old enough. She had the precocity of constitution and temperament common to the southerners, but had no interest in life at all except for present gratification. It was difficult to interest her in anything, and I determined to try the experiment of describing her parents and her uncle, and telling her of her future prospects. I saw when I was talking to her that she was much moved, but she did not wish me to know it. During the several months she had been under my care, I had never seen her off her guard, and she did not mean to be now. She said, "yes, I know," several times, but in her emotion she had forgotten that she had told me several times when I had asked her, that she had no relations. As I went on speaking of the lovely character of her mother, who died at her birth, I saw the color flash and her lips quiver, but she would express no interest in the matter in words, and I took no notice of her natural emotions. But when I went on to speak of the uncle and his beautiful home, his love for his sister, and for her, whom he had never seen since her babyhood, and of his wish that she should preside over his home when old enough, she fairly burst into tears; and when I drew her into my arms she put her head on my bosom and gave way to violent sobbing. But still she was cautious in speaking, and I did not convict her of having concealed the truth. She was naturally very timid, and I had divined the cause of her phase of falsehood. She had been treated very cruelly, and was afraid of human beings. After a while she proposed to write to her uncle and tell him what she was studying; but although I doubt not life had a new interest to her, I could not tell what was the characteristic of her interest, owing to her great reserve. It might have been sordid, for she was very selfish; but she was soon removed, and I had no opportunity of seeing her for many years. I then found her still in the family of her guardian, to one of whose sons she was engaged, but I was told there was no love, only speculation, at the foundation of the young man's views, and the seeds of consumption, inherited from her mother, had begun to ripen in her. She was brilliantly beautiful, and showed a great deal of feeling on seeing me, but died very soon after. The only evidence I ever had of the existence of the moral sentiment in her wronged soul, was her fondness for another child in my family, who was the soul of truth and love, and who had divine patience with this her little tormentor, whom she watched over and remonstrated with like a little mother. This companion, of just her own age, had had a very remarkable moral training, consecrated forever by the sufferings for conscience' sake of a very dear and gifted mother, whose persecutions were known to her child, and no one could know her, not even the most hardened or obtuse, without being affected by her. She was a little Christ among other children, and so regarded by them, and I always hoped that the poor little waif had through her a glimpse of the Heaven into which she seemed to have no passport. At the time, I rejoiced for my little angel, when her heart was relieved of such a charge, for certain natural graces as well as the condition of moral benightment of the little stranger had taken very deep hold of her; but I think a reform might have been effected with such an aid. The martyr's child lived long enough to fulfil her promise, and grew happy enough to blossom out into some buds of lovely promise, intellectual as well as moral, and then she went too, but could be no more an angel the other side of the veil than she was on this. How slight the barrier sometimes seems to be, yet how impervious! Was it the divine love in you which made you do that? was her mother's form of reproof, always remembered.

Is there any danger of inspiring a child with too great self-reliance, by directing it to the immutable law of God in its own breast as a guide of conduct? It has been wisely said that we know of the moral nature of God only what the moral sentiment teaches us, and that the visible world and revelation only confirm what this sentiment gives primarily. We know that the sentiment of reverence may be directed to objects unworthy the homage of the soul. In the fluctuations of human opinion there may be a higher or lower view of God's nature. He may be looked upon as all justice without mercy, or as mercy without justice, or as a union of both, according to the enlightenment of the intellect, but we can cultivate in every child a reverence for God's voice in conscience, an allegiance to God as goodness itself, or as a Father, ready to forgive us when we repent, and to help our efforts. The human being may by turns worship God as a Father, as a power, or as law; and salvation, or the redemption of the soul from evil, does not depend upon the form of belief, but upon the allegiance to that something higher which is a law to it. I do not say that it is not important what the form is, for we know that there is all the difference in the world between the savage's worship of his fetish, and the Christian's of his God, but the savage may be more loyal to the small glimmer of truth represented by his fetish, than many a so-called Christian is to his more advanced conception of Deity. Therefore it is loyalty of soul which is to be cultivated, and that is done through conscience.

I know no higher motive to be given to a child or to a man, than that the more he obeys the voice of conscience, the more tender it becomes; and the more he cultivates his intellect the greater will be its expansion; and no fear that either can entertain is so salutary as the fear of losing the delicacy of the conscience, or the power of increasing insight. Offer no secondary motives, but as high a view as we can give of the primal one, not judging for our fellow-man, or even child, what it is ready to receive, for either may be capable of receiving more than we can give.

This does not interfere with bringing the consequences of wrong-doing into immediate view, which is in fact all that we do when we punish judiciously. If a child is selfish he is thrust aside by those who have the power to do it. This is a direct natural consequence, quite as much so as that the selfishness grows by indulgence, but weak children in a school or in a family must not venture to thrust aside an offender. I must therefore come to their assistance.

I have one child in my school who has so little power of self-control, that I am obliged to be very peremptory with him every day. It would not be sufficient for me to say, "You trouble others so that they do not like to have you sit near them," and wait for that truth to influence him. I must put him in a seat by himself, and show him that he is not to approach others now, and that he must make an immediate effort to gain a better social position. If anything comes into his head, he seems utterly incapable of refraining from the utterance of it, even in the midst of a recitation, or be it ever so irrelevant to the matter in hand. He wishes to tell anecdotes of which he is reminded by something read or recited. If I tell him he must not take up the time, he is so earnest to go on, that often I cannot stop him without walking him out of the room. Then I tell him that since he has no power of self-control, he must stay there till I call him; or I allow him to return on condition that he does not open his mouth even to read or to recite. I impose this privation to teach him self-control, the want of which will make him annoying to every one. He pours forth many sensible remarks and more good feelings, but the law of adaptation seems wanting. He has sensibility and conscience, and a general desire to do right. If not approved, he is afflicted; if he does not succeed in his undertakings, he cries with grief, cries aloud often, though a huge boy of nine years old,—a little giant in form and strength. He generally seems to tell the truth, though he is weak, and yields easily to the temptation of gaining his ends. But if he cannot remember easily, he lashes himself into hysterics. He has quick perceptive powers, but little power of reasoning. My aim is to show him the connection between his faults and his sufferings; to let the latter be felt to be the whip that scourges his faults—not himself; for there is no fair proportion between the constant punishment he brings upon himself and his wilful wrong-doing. I am afraid he will always be a trial to his friends. He is one of my least hopeful cases, because not well gifted. I am afraid there is a germ somewhere that the sun has not yet shone upon—that some tile that is now weighing down his brain must be lifted before mortal man can help him. You remember the story of Descartes, who was an idiot till his skull was cracked, when suddenly the brain expanded, and the fissure never closing, he became a great man. Perhaps my obtuse boy will get some friendly blow, mental or physical, that will let in the light. His mother turned him out into the street to amuse himself, because she could not manage him. If she had not, perhaps I should already have turned him back upon her hands, for he really is the greatest trouble I have. My hope for him is that maturity and experience will teach him what others cannot. This is often the case.

Another little fellow appears to have no natural perception of the rights of others. He does not understand the sentiment of obedience, as many lively children do. If I keep my eye fixed upon him, he does not do the things I positively forbid him to do, but he is the very prince of mischief, and I am obliged to watch him narrowly lest he turn inkstands upside down, and go to such like extremes. In some cases I merely follow my instincts, and this is such an one. I feel as if I were to put principle into this child because I have it myself, much as the magnetist imposes his will upon his patient by exercising it forcibly. I find myself looking at him much more than I talk to him, not always reprovingly, never stealthily, but steadily and gravely. I do not like to govern, but I am not afraid of children, as some people are. My nerves can bear their crying, if they do not cry with pain, and they soon learn that they gain nothing from me by it. They do not put me out of temper, or exhaust my patience, or my perseverance; but the determined will, the ever-springing gayety, the wild spirits that tire most people, are a constant source of pleasure and exhilaration to me. It seems to me so unnatural that childhood should be naughty, that if they are obstinate I am very apt to think it the fault of some still more obstinate grown person, who has turned a stout heart into a wilful one by unwise opposition; and I love to set myself to disarming the stubborn will, leaving it only resolute. If they are false, I feel as if their faith had been broken, or their fears excited, and I love to show them the beauty of truth, or inspire them with moral courage. If they are passionate, I love to calm them down, and give them the pleasure of tranquillity, and the joys of self-conquest,—not "breaking their spirits," but sympathizing with their ardor while I check its excesses; for enthusiasm is a boon of which I would not deprive humanity. If they are phlegmatic, commonly called stupid, I love to find some subject or object of interest that will startle them into animation; if timid and easily discouraged, I can give them the pleasures of success by offering only practicable tasks; if self-conceited, I can point out to them the kingdoms of knowledge yet to be conquered. I often quote the words of Linnæus, who once said it would take him all his life to learn thoroughly what was under his own hand, and what was this compared with the universe!

I believe I enjoy the youngest of my tribe most, before they know evil or are accustomed to hear of it with composure; when the wanton killing of a bird, or even of a spider, excites their weeping indignation; when the creations of their own fancies are as real to them as the things before their bodily eyes; and they do not question if the bird in the story speaks, or the stars sing. One may then imagine that they may be among the few who love to the end with unbroken faith, who never lose their primitive innocence, but grow as the tree grows, whose leaves, when the early frost nips them, turn to scales to protect their sister growths, adding to the final perfection of the whole, not arresting its beautiful and symmetrical progress, neither withering in the bud, nor throwing out gnarled branches to the light and heat that would fain warm and smile upon them. I would not pin these little inheritors of the earth to one seat, or always check the wild burst of delight, or the ringing laugh. I even like to have the older children hear it occasionally, and recognize it with a smile as I do, for they have already begun to remember happiness, alas! as if it had already begun its flight. They have laughed when it was not sympathized with, been reproved for loving fun, and deprived of innocent sports because they were not convenient to others. I like to keep up their sympathies with the spontaneous activity and pure imaginations of these babes. It is out of order for a little child that catches my eye to run across the room to say, "Oh, may I come and see 'oo 'ittle while?" but I cannot but nod assent, and he will come and scramble into my lap, where he is no sooner fairly settled and hugged than he will scramble down again and go back to his slate or his window. If he nestles up into his sister's chair, while she is studying, I put my finger on my lips, but let her put her arm round him and keep him till he is tired. This little sunbeam begins to wish to draw on the slate, and the little sister of seven years takes the greatest interest in what he does, as if expecting some angelic exploit of the pencil.

But though I wish to have self-government in my scholars instead of my own, dear Anna, do not for a moment mistake me. I consider obedience an essential ingredient of order, and order I regard as "heaven's first law." Indeed I have sent away one scholar of whom I have spoken a little way back, because I could not command his obedience; and my authority must not be questioned, although I do not obtrude it. No human being can be good or happy who cannot obey; and those parents do the best thing for their children, who successfully cultivate the sentiment. For, if it is the sentiment, it will acknowledge all lawful authority. When it is merely a practice gained through fear, there is generally no sentiment in it. The child who will not eat the bit of cake offered in its mother's absence, because she has refused to let him have it before,—and I have known many such,—is truly the obedient child. Children not only respect most but love best those whom they cheerfully obey. A child that obeys a judicious and affectionate mother, or teacher, will often, in the midst of its opposition and wilfulness, acknowledge that the power which rules him is a beneficent power. If I did not think that a pretty good child would feel that I was in the right very soon after a conflict of wills, I should suspect myself of having given some evidence of love of power or want of good temper. I would not restrain an expression of honest indignation, or strong disapprobation, if the offence deserved it; but any impatience of temper, or any personal feeling, except that of sorrow, is a crime in this relation. It may not be in a mother's or teacher's power to be always wise, judicious, or intellectually ready for an occasion; but the virtue of patience is lawfully demanded of them at the tribunal of conscience always. Corporal punishment I have nothing to do with, for though I know it is necessary in some extreme cases, I prefer that parents should exercise that function. No person that has a less vital interest in a child than a parent, should inflict it; and though as a principle of government I consider it brutalizing, there are instances in which I have felt it to be a holy act, and in which I have known the child to respect it, and to feel hurt for its parent rather than for itself. But my own influence, to be secure and useful, must be wholly moral and intellectual. I often tell children that I must inform their parents when I find them impervious to any influence of mine; and when, as has sometimes been the case, they have begged me not to do it, because they should be whipped, I have said that "perhaps that was the very best possible thing that could be done, and if a parent thought it necessary to whip his child, it must be because he truly loved him, and thought it right to do what must be to himself a painful thing: such a reason must not deter me from doing my duty. I should not act according to my conscience if I concealed anything from parents, for they are the guardians God has appointed over children, and I should do wrong to prevent them from knowing everything that I knew, that would help them make their children good."

I cannot provide for those exceptional cases illustrated to me by a little new scholar I once had, who was very refractory. I said to him, "don't you wish to be good, Lewis?" "No," he cried out in a distressed voice. He was only six years old, but this seemed to be a new case, so I put my arm affectionately round him and said, "What does it mean to be good, Lewis?" He raised his tearful eyes to me and gasped out "ter be whipped!" I never saw a look of greater infantile woe; but I soon taught him that that was not what I meant by "being good."

I know one mother who has a family of excitable children, which she treats wholly on hygienic principles. If they are out of temper, she administers nauseous doses of medicine, and such has been her power over their consciences that she can make them grateful to God for such blessings as ipecacuanha and epsom salts, even when she is holding the spoon to their mouths. This is a fact within my knowledge; and it was the first thing I knew that set my thoughts upon the track, which has led me to a firm conviction that half the ills of temper and perversity may be traced to physical causes; for her instinct proved to be a correct one. Her children were honorable and affectionate, but irritable, and this was owing to an unhappy inheritance of physical structure, incompatible with serenity till counteracted by judicious treatment. One of those wise physicians, who sometimes adorn the profession, was her aid and counsellor. "Her children rise up and call her blessed," and bless her too.

LETTER VI.

Dear Anna,—I have just heard that you think of changing your original plan, and becoming a governess. At the risk of being impertinent, I must give you the warning of experience against this course. I know the voice of experience is not an unerring one, because circumstances differ almost infinitely, but I think the relation of governess an unnatural one, and also that the disadvantages of home education, given exclusively, far overbalance its advantages. Mark me, I say given exclusively, for I think the early education should always be domestic. I would have every mother set apart from all the other duties of life to attend to her children, and be qualified to give them the rudiments of not only moral but intellectual training. I know only one mother who has done this absolutely and with all the requisite surroundings, though I know many who would be glad to do it. Perhaps I should say I know only one father who has made it possible. Doubtless there are some fathers who would be glad to have it done, with whom the mothers are not ready to coöperate. I could branch off here, and tell all I think about parents not having the right views of their parental duties, but that would take me still farther back, to the subject of being married on the right principles, which I have been led to reflect much upon, as I have circulated through the families of my friends, particularly of those who have from time to time put their children into my charge. I speak it with diffidence, but I see many families in which the children are regarded in the light of annoyances rather than of blessings; consequently they are penned up in nurseries, put to bed by servants, fed by them, washed and dressed by them, excused by them, falsely entertained by them, in fact educated by them, until they are old enough to be quiet inmates of the parlor, when they are allowed to be present to listen to conversations about the last new fashion, or comments upon the party of last night and that of the night to come. I have known the mothers of children under my care, to promise a sick child she would not go out in the evening, in order to quiet her querulous complaints of her nurse or attendant, and then to break the promise as soon as the child fell asleep, confiding in its mother's sincerity. This is an extreme case, but it is not so rare for mothers to send their children to bed under the care of servants, instead of leaving the pleasant fireside to make the most of that gracious hour when the heart of the child is most likely to unfold to the tender parent, and to utter its repentant confession or fervent little prayer.

But this is wandering a little from the point. I begin to think I indulge in too many digressions; but my vocation leads me into such observations and reflections.

I know there is much to be said on both sides of this question. I should give you the sum of my opinion, if I should say that after the age has arrived at which children are ordinarily sent to school, an alternation of the home and the school education is the best mode. Here experience raises her voice again; for the best educations I have known, all other things being equal, have been in two families where this has been done. In one of these, the watchful eye of the mother saw the very moment in which the home influence was becoming too exclusive and oppressive, and also when the school influence became scattering to the mind from too much companionship, or when ambition took the place of love of knowledge and excellence. The school intercourse was occasionally broken in upon by months of home life, when the mother devoted herself as companion in study and recreation, and kept alive her daughters' sympathy with her in her domestic duties. I have often seen the mere school-life kill out this sympathy with mothers and younger members of the family, and foreign influences quite counteract the parental ones.

My own favorite mode of education would be to send children to school after they have been well trained in imagination and self control at home, at the age when the social feeling seeks variety, and can receive least injury from indiscriminate contact; and when arrived at the age when too much companionship becomes dangerous, to call the girls back to the home influences, and let them there pursue, with judicious assistance, or even a chosen companion, the studies best adapted to the peculiarities of character, the mother ever keeping herself the chosen confidant, and making herself a willing sacrifice, instead of allowing the social tendencies of her daughters to expend themselves on frivolous or unworthy companions. Mothers are too apt to indulge their own ease, and allow their children to frequent, alone, scenes of amusement over which parents should always preside. I have known marriage relations to be formed and cemented by daughters so neglected, before parents knew even the fact of acquaintanceship.

I know how difficult is such practice as I would recommend, in our present state of society; but one can hardly help following out one's imaginings of perfect circumstances, and fancying all the good that might accrue in such millenniums. It was very sensibly remarked to me a little while since, by one to whom I was speaking of my ideal of education for girls, that we can rarely begin and go on with them according to any one system; for they are brought to us in all stages of development, most frequently, alas, without any. You will please always to understand me as if everything went on right from the beginning.

To return to your present plans. I think I must have learnt this rambling habit which so often leads my pen off the track, when roving the woods and fields in my extreme youth, now resting by the side of the arrowy river of my favorite valley, where the "sweet waters meet," or floating with you down the placid Charles at the winds' and the tides' sweet will.

I anticipate what you will tell me of the advantages under which you enter upon the career of a governess. I expect a glowing description of your new life, because I know how you love and admire those friends; but that will make no difference in my views. I too have a friend with whom I agree upon the subject of education; a mother whose experience and wisdom have aided me much, and whose spirit has presided over my school-room as a sort of tutelary genius, into whose family I should be willing to go and give all the aid I could furnish for the furtherance of her plans, (her own book-knowledge not being equal to mine,) if she constituted the whole influence in her own family. There would be a perfect coöperation between us two, the intercourse of years having prepared the way for it. But her husband is not as wise as she is, and I would not therefore venture. Yours may be a peculiar case of sympathy with both parents, but let us look upon it in a general way.

We will suppose a good family, and that the parents are conscientious, and have a general confidence in the judgment and acquirements of the governess. But if the mother is a person of decided views, and fixed in her own opinions, and the father also, you might immediately find insuperable difficulties. You would not like to exert any influence opposed to the parental, however injudicious you might deem that to be. You would not like to take sides with either parent. They might, by amicable discussion, modify each other's views, so as to do just right by their children; while the influence of another, thrown into either scale, would produce dissatisfaction. In your school-room, on the contrary, you can be perfectly independent of either, and without standing in the attitude of opposition, or running the risk of encroaching upon the rights of a parent, you can know just as much and just as little as you please of the difference of views; and having your scholar in a new scene, and subjected to different influences, you may be able fully to carry out your own views, without exciting the jealousy of parents. This is the only way to avoid such collisions as I dread, and which seem to me almost inevitable in such a union as that of parent and teacher in the same family. As an independent teacher, your opinions may be expressed with the utmost freedom; for I would have no tampering with truth. But few mothers are humble or wise enough to be willing to be criticised at home when it comes to the point. Then in my opinion such an inmate spoils a family, which should be a sacred circle where none intrude. I myself have had the whole care of children in a family, moral and intellectual, but no one but the parents ought to have had it. It set up an authority that was more respected than that of the parent. I have also, in another instance, had the sympathy and confidence of one parent, and the jealous watchfulness of the other, who would not listen to the suggestions of a third person. I have also seen children who knew more of truth than their parents, and who knew that I knew it; and I would never again put myself in that position. I have seen the wounded vanity of otherwise good mothers baffle the best intentions and wisest action on the part of a governess; and even sadder cases, where conscience itself must have been sacrificed to keep the peace. No individual should ever step between parents and children, and point out the errors of the former. Principles alone should do this; nothing less sacred should intervene. In my school-room, I can dwell upon principles forever, and apply them to the cases in hand as closely and as skilfully as I please, and keep clear of personalities, if I find them baneful. If one is in the family, this seems to me scarcely possible. Often when I speak of a wrong action, be it the wanton killing of a bird, or the indulgence of an evil passion, children say to me, "My father does that sometimes," and even add, "I wish he would not." This moral judgment is inevitable; it must come sooner or later, and the sooner the child defines the line by his own observations and reflections the better, but it must often pass without comment. I should be sorry to be obliged to be silent upon any point of right and wrong, because there are sinners at my elbow. In a school-room, which is a separate world within the great world,—connected with it, yet severed from it,—principles may reign triumphant. In a family, persons prevail more or less, and this is one of my chief reasons for objecting to an exclusively private education. Special modes of thought and standards of action are imposed by example and habit; and where there is no variety of views presented for comparison, minds cannot easily expand, still less choose the best of several good ways. I have seen the victims of private education perpetuate family faults, and in later life left standing alone in the world, knowing little of its interests, and having no sympathy from without. I have seen morbid sensibility thus nourished into insanity itself.

But you must tell me the result of your experiment. It dashes my hopes of any brilliant discoveries. I much question whether, under the most favorable circumstances, you will find yourself able to satisfy yourself and others too. Those friends who love you so much will perhaps be unwilling to make demands upon you; and this will make you anxious to do all you can imagine them to desire. This is the worst of all slaveries—to be in a situation where one is not sure of all that is demanded, and where delicacy forbids the free expression of wishes. In most cases, too great requisitions are made upon the time and thoughts of a governess. There should be a rigid arrangement in regard to hours and services, leaving the time which is not employed in instruction wholly free, independent, and solitary, if desired. For a time you will be willing to give all your waking hours to your employment, and feel that you cannot do enough to serve a friend; but real teaching is an immense tax upon the mind and the health; and you have duties to yourself, the neglect of which will at last unfit you for the proper fulfilment of the very engagement you have entered into. Your own qualities of character may clash with those of the family, and you cannot be supposed to have the touchstone to their peculiarities, that members of the same family have,—an innate and fibrous knowledge, as it were, of the springs of each other's action, and the associations that govern these springs. I have never seen a more painful tyranny exercised than that over a governess in one instance; not a palpable tyranny that could be rebelled against and openly thrown off, but a total ignorance of another's wants and rights, that made the whole life a bondage. The lady who presides believes sincerely that she offers a happy home and easy duties to one whose whole time and thoughts are taxed in such a manner that she cannot feel at liberty to dispose of an hour, although many are actually left unoccupied by accident. This is an extraordinary instance of selfishness, I acknowledge, but it generally taints the relation, more or less. I have but one counsel to give to such sufferers. Sacrifice everything but independence, but preserve that inviolate; for without it one can neither be truthful nor capable of improvement. We never should allow ourselves to be in a responsible situation where we cannot express our opinions for fear of giving offence. There is enough of that servile fear in our common intercourse with our fellow-beings. Let us keep ourselves out of temptation while our daily prayer is that God may not lead us into it.

I am prepared for a theoretic refutation of all my positions, but shall probably be very self-opinionated till you have lived through this experience, as I have done.

Yours, affectionately, M.

LETTER VII.

My dear Anna,—I am somewhat reconciled to your being in a less independent situation than I wished for you, by learning that you are, after all, in a school-room of your own, surrounded by children educated thus far under various influences. The range of ages in your little company appears to me rather too unequal; but I have such confidence in your resources, that I will not forebode failure. I only hope you will not be distracted by too various calls. In my own experience, I was obliged to relinquish older and more advanced pupils in favor of younger ones, because I found the proper attention to the two classes incompatible, and in my own case my heart was with the little ones. You are better fitted to cope with older children, because your force of will is superior to mine.

I rejoice in your lovely surroundings. I once kept school near a gurgling brook, whose banks were ornamented with wild flowers, and the room was always redolent of perfumes, and garlanded with clematis and other flowers in their season. Not only children's heads, but mine, were wreathed with them; and many a lesson was given and learned under the trees, and on the grassy turf, golden with buttercups and dandelions. But now a few feet of sky, and a glimpse of verdant back-yards from one window, is all I can boast of when housed. I am blessed with the proximity of Boston Common, through which I daily wander with my little flock, and many of my children have country summers to remember,—vacations at least. Cities are unnatural places for the young. All childhood should be passed in the country, and in afterlife its memories can be pitted against the evils the grownup must bear in pursuit of certain social privileges.

I feel modest about describing my lessons, now you actually have your classes before you, and are sounding certain depths to meet the occasion. I wonder if you will begin with creation, as a friend I could name told me she did, when first meeting face to face a little disciple, her first pupil.

I am glad you do not begin with a large school. In many schools that I have visited, I have seen that the teachers were overpowered by numbers. This is apt to necessitate—no, not necessitate, for that cannot be necessary which is wrong,—but it is apt to introduce the motive of emulation, as a part of the machinery. Emulation is a passion—I call it an evil propensity, so strongly implanted in the natural constitution of man, that it needs no fostering. It should be checked and restrained like any appetite, so that its only function may be the desire to emulate noble deeds, but never to be degraded into competition for praise or honors. One of the mothers of my children thinks it is a very useful ally to induce children to study hard spelling-lessons; but I assure her it cannot be made to play into my spelling-lessons, which are natural growths out of reading-lessons. No, I banish that evil spirit from my dominions, and endeavor to teach my scholars to have a deep interest in "each other's" progress instead of wishing to rise upon the ruin of others. I have a device which answers all the purpose of a healthful stimulus, and insures some of the lawful rewards of industry.

In my present school, where the children are all under twelve, I made one class in arithmetic, including all who could count their fingers and thumbs, and, arranging them in the order of ages, began with the youngest, asking the questions in Colburn's first lessons in arithmetic, and saying that I should take the first section and let each one go through with it before I went farther. When the youngest missed a question, I marked the number of it with her name, and began at the beginning with the next in order. Some of them soon missed, others went straight through without a mistake. I simply said to the first one who did this, "You may return to your seat and occupy yourself quietly in any way you please every day at this hour until this lesson is over."

The lesson was to continue half an hour.

Those who did not go straight through, remained and took another turn after each had tried.

I had seen the pleasing effect of this mode of hearing a recitation practised upon older scholars, and knew that its charms would gradually unfold to these little ones.

The first section was accomplished by all that first day. But I gradually took longer and longer portions; and soon the pleasure of getting through, and having the disposal of little times thus gained, was very animating. I liked the effect much better than that I heard described by a distinguished German mathematician, who told me that his father, who was a soldier, had a triangle of wood made, very sharp at the edges, on which he obliged him to kneel while he studied his arithmetic lessons. The effect was very stimulating to his mathematical faculties, and though he hated his father at the time (a consequence I thought more of than he appeared to), he attributed to it a remarkable power, second only to Sir Isaac Newton's (who could think a train of mathematical thoughts consecutively for twenty minutes), of thinking his mathematical thoughts consecutively fifteen minutes.

My little people were so delighted with their leisure, thus gained, that they voluntarily studied their lessons beforehand (which I did not require), and soon I was obliged to set off the older portion into a separate class, who went on with the mental arithmetic very rapidly, while the younger ones, who recited on the same plan, and enjoyed themselves in the same way, were more deliberate. I followed the same plan with "Fowle's Geographical Questions on the Maps," which is a very nice book for children's use. It makes them very thoroughly acquainted with maps. My favorite geography lessons (and the favorite lessons of my scholars too), are oral; and I now have a course of lectures delivered on a certain day in the week by the children, which would amuse you, I am sure. I put my work-table on one end of the long writing-table, and my little lecturers stand behind i: in turn, sometimes with a written lecture, sometimes with only a wand to point at maps or pictures,—and give their little lectures. One little fellow of eight would talk all the afternoon over a map if I would let him, telling stories of countries which he has heard of from me or others. Another is very fond of natural history, and her little lectures are about insects, and birds, &c. Indeed, these are their chief topics,—geography and animal life.

In arithmetic I also have many other exercises, such as arranging beans in certain numerical forms; and on the black-board I teach numeration in a simple way. I use Shaw's box of arithmetical blocks to teach the philosophy of carrying tens, and I think it admirable. I also have Holbrook's frame of balls. All these devices help to make processes clear. I find a very great difference in children in regard to arithmetic. I have had one scholar who never could go (she died at fifteen) beyond a certain section in "Colburn's Mental Arithmetic." She reached that after repeated trials; for when I found her grounded at any special point, I always turned back and let her review, and in that way she would gain a little at every repeated trial. This child found geometry easier than numbers, and mastered "Grund's Plane Geometry." She could also write out a reminiscence of Dr. Channing's sermons, or remember anything interesting in history, natural history, or anything of an ethical character. I also had one gifted little scholar who could not learn to spell accurately; but she drew with great power and beauty,—with "an eye that no teaching could give," as was said of her by a fine artist. These discrepancies in talent are very curious. Phrenological philosophy alone explains them.[L]

Having thus disposed of geography and arithmetic, in the last of which I doubt not your mathematical faculty will strike out something new, you will expect me to describe my modes of teaching language, as you know that to be my personal hobby. I think I might have other hobbies if I knew more. But I do think the teaching of language covers a great deal of ground, bringing into play, as it certainly does, so many faculties.

The first thing to be aimed at in language is, that it shall be clearly understood. It is not necessary to go out of one's own language to teach etymology. I take such words as funny, kindly, sweetly, and ask from what words those are derived.

"What does funny mean?" The answer will be, "Full of fun," or "Something that has fun in it." "What is kindly?" "Full of kindness." "What does agreeable mean?" "Something we like," said a little boy one day in answer to this question.

"Does every one like the same things?" said I.

"No."

"Then something may be agreeable to you that is not agreeable, to me."

"Yes."

"Can you think now what the word agreeable is made from?"

He could not think.

"A thing agrees with something in me that does not agree with something in you, perhaps. I do not like the perfume of a narcissus. It does not agree with my sense of smell, but it agrees with some people's sense of smell."

He was pleased with this, and saw that agree was the word.

"From what is lively made?" I asked.

He hesitated.

"What does it mean?" said I.

"Oh, lively, why it means very lively!"

"Can a table be lively?"

"No, it must be something that is alive. Oh, I know now—alive is the word."

"What is alive made from?"

"Living," he answered.

"All these words are made from the name of something."

This brought him to the word life, and then he sprung up and clapped his hands and whirled round.

I do not always check these natural gymnastics.

Such lessons as these I am teased for continually. Those who have studied I can carry still farther in derivation. I sometimes reverse the process and ask for all the words that are made from life, action, &c.

Often when I give the children their slates to amuse themselves a little while, they bring me lists of words made on this principle of analysis; and I assure you that when I read to them, I am never allowed to pass by a word that is not understood. Several times when I have deliberately pronounced a very long word that I expected to be questioned upon, it has brought half a dozen of my little audience to their feet.

I was very fond, when a child, of listening to lessons upon figures of speech, given in my mother's school; and was quite expert in hunting up metaphors, tropes, hyperboles, and personifications. So I impart the same pleasure. The spiritual applications of words is pleasantly educed out of their sensuous qualities, also. "The sweet apple," and "the sweet child," are equally significant; and it is well to trace back words thus figuratively used to their original meaning in the sensuous world, for they are felt to be more significant when thus verified. It leads to sound thinking. There are so many poetical expressions in common parlance, that it is very easy to put children upon this track.

I have lately set up a little class in thinking, preliminary to giving some idea of the construction of sentences. I do not attempt to teach grammar technically to such little people as mine; but I contrive to induct it into them by certain devices, not wholly original, for they are recorded in the "Record of a School." Allow me to repeat the drilling with which I began.

I called them around me one day to have a new lesson, which is always joyfully acceded to by these little lovers of new things, and nothing pleases them better than to be set to thinking.

I asked them if they knew what their five senses were.

Not one had ever heard those words used together, apparently.

I enumerated; sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste.

Several individuals jumped up, whirled round, and sat down again.—

I then asked each in turn to name some object, and tell me by which of their senses they could perceive it; and by how many?

This they did readily again and again. They could see, and smell, and touch, and taste a rose, but they could not hear it. So of other things.

I then said, "I have a thought; do you know what it is?"

"No."

"Cannot you see, or hear, or smell, or touch, or taste my thought?"

"No."

"Now each one of you think of some object, but do not speak till I ask you for your thought."

"Can you see your thought?"

Some answered "No," others "Yes."

I asked each in turn for their thoughts. They were a bird, a house, a horse, &c., all visible objects.

I said, "All these things can be seen when they are before you; but can you see the thought?"

Some answered "Yes" to this, which I found meant that they could see the image of the thing in the mind; others said "No."

"Can you see your thinking?"

"No."

"Can you not send your thoughts out into the country, where you have sometimes taken a ride?"

"Yes."

"Can you see, smell, hear, taste, or touch your mind?"

"No."

"But is not mind a real thing? Have not you a mind that you think with?"

"Yes."

"There are some real things, then, beside those we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch?"

"Yes."

"What other things beside your mind?"

No one answered.

"Have you any love?"

This brought many to their feet, with a shouted "Yes."

"Any happiness?"

"Yes."

"Goodness?"

"Yes."

"Naughtiness?"

"Yes."

"Is truth in the mind, or outside of it where we can see it?"

"In the mind."

I then took Mrs. Barbauld's hymns, in the first of which occur the words reason, kindness, heart, life, beside the names of many objects of the senses, and made two columns on the black-board, in which I put down respectively, as they were mentioned, all the names of objects, both of the senses and of the mind. To the latter list I added the words God and soul, by the direction of the children, upon asking them if they could think of any more such words.

I then made the same discrimination between actions of the body and actions of the mind, which they followed very well, sometimes confounding the two, as older philosophers do.

I endeavored to give them the idea that things which they see, hear, &c., exist both in the mind and out of it. This I could do by asking them if the person who made the first chair did not think of it first. Was it not in his mind before he could make it? So everything in the world existed in God's mind before he made it.

I then asked, "Which column of words gives the names of real things?"

They all said the objects of the senses were the real things.

"Can they not be broken up, or burnt, or worn out?"

"Yes."

"Can the soul, or love, or goodness, or happiness, be broken, or burnt up, or worn out?"

"No."

"Which are the things that last forever, then,—these objects of your senses, or these objects of your mind?"

"The objects of the mind."

"Does your goodness always last?"

"No."

"Where does it go to when you are not good?"

Nobody knew.

"Can you have it again when you wish to?"

"Yes."

"Who do you think keeps it for you?"

"God."

"That is what we mean when we pray to God to help us to be good."

All seemed to understand this.

"Then we find," I said, "that the real things that last forever are in the mind?"

"Yes."

"Do our bodies last forever?"

"No."

"Do we live forever?"

"Yes."

"Yes, our souls are the real things."

This was enough for one lesson. Another day I asked about the qualities of things, and added a column for such words as green, white, pretty, &c. These are the main classes, and I shall go on by degrees to words expressive of relations, and to words that are substituted for the names of persons and things which are pronouns. The children are very fond of making lists of words of this sort, and often bring them to me, divided off into their respective columns.

I have put the whole school, except the babes, into this class; and of those who know how to read well I have made a Latin class. For this I use the interlined translation of "Æsop's Fables," which Mr. G—— T—— first imported into this country. I began with a line of a fable committed to memory, with the English words beneath them. It is not only good for spelling to begin Latin early, but it gives precision to thinking, if used aright. After learning one fable, by degrees, I let the children vocabularize the words by putting the names of things into one column, the names of actions into another, as in the analysis of English; and this has given them quite a vocabulary of Latin, from which we often make lessons in derivation. Putting the nouns into a column soon showed the modifications of termination, and then I explained the difference between that language and ours in that respect, and showed them how few small words were used in Latin. They have also studied the indicative mode of the verb amo, and have learned to substitute other verbs in the various tenses. But I confine them at present chiefly to committing to memory the fables.

Dr. Follen thinks it well to teach German very early also, which gives the Teutonic element to our language; but I have not done this in my present school, because the difficulty of the German letter is such a puzzle to little brains.

French I only teach them colloquially as yet; for the sight of French words confuses spelling very much with little children. It is well to exercise their organs in pronouncing the words; and all my children can say many things in French. By and by I shall show them the words, if they stay with me till they are ready for them. All these exercises of mind, if not made fatiguing by too long continuance at one time, are perennially interesting to children. The new life and vigor a little hard thinking imparts to them makes one almost a convert to a theory lately set forth by one of our contemporaries, that the scholar and thinker should be the longest lived man. I believe it will be found true, if the brain be healthily, not morbidly worked. I love to see the eye fixed in thought for a moment, even in a very young child: but I would have in the next moment a jump or a run, or a laugh; and these generally alternate with thinking, if nature is left free. I am jealous of one moment's weariness at this age. I speak particularly now of very young children, who are only too willing to think, not of the wilful, playful rogues whom it is hard to fix one moment, because they would have no work, but all play. There is a great difference, however, in children of all ages, and I would be careful of them all. Force and vigor are so essential to health of mind, as well as of body, that I would secure those first to every child.

I once had a very bright boy of four in my school, who had a very remarkable memory. He would learn a verse of poetry by my repeating it once, and learned to read with marvellous rapidity. It was almost alarming; but I took care not to stimulate him in any way. He was suddenly seized with a violent influenza, and did not return to school for two months. When he returned, he had not only forgotten all he had learned, but never showed the same aptitude again. In a year afterwards he had not caught up with those first few months. This taught me never to urge a child to exertion while suffering from a cold; and my attention having thus been directed to the point, I have often observed how that malady dulls the action of the faculties.

I have one dear little scholar now, only too willing to exert her mind; and if I see that anything seems difficult to her earnest spirit, I advise her at once to put it aside; for the tearful eyes tell me plainly that there is no need of urgency on my part, and that the danger is in too great persistence of the will for duty's sake. If it is necessary to explain the matter to others, I do not hesitate to say that that little scholar studies too hard for her health, and I do not wish her to be fatigued. It is necessary for her peace of mind to say as much as this, and the others only see more clearly what I wish them to see, that I measure them by the effort they make, not by the results they achieve. The same persistence of will and earnestness of spirit sometimes produces a violent shock of feeling in this child, if she is arrested in any of her purposes, even of play; but a gentle steadiness on my part soon brings the repentant little head on my bosom.

I often wish I knew how much moral and mental effort I ought to require of children, to keep the soul in full play and never encroach upon nature, which adjusts the balances so happily in her own way, when not constrained. I have to fall back upon my instincts for this, as the mother undoubtedly does. This adjustment has been very happily and wisely made in the case of Laura Bridgeman, one proof of which is, that an obstacle in her path is only met as a joyful occasion for some new effort. If she finds a stumbling-block in her way, instead of falling over it, or being discouraged by it, she dances round it, and apparently hails it as a new proof of the power within her to conquer all things. If her thread gets tangled when she is sewing, she laughs and adjusts it. Giant Despair would in vain tempt her, but would try again to hang himself, as when, in olden time, Truth and Holiness together escaped from his clutches. Principles, when known to her, seem to be imperative; and cut off as she is from the deceptive senses, she recognizes only the power within herself, which laughs at the defiance of insolent brute matter. It was the plan of her education that she should not be told of God's existence till she gave indication of some idea of Him; but in some way or other she became possessed of that name for the existence of absolute power and goodness (we do not know yet how far that embodiment of the idea was intuitive); and she already refers all things to His agency. One suggestion pointing towards that idea would necessarily fructify in such a mind as hers, and immediately she would have a name for the law within her which she obeys so wonderfully in conscience, and exemplifies so remarkably in her intellectual operations. She answers to me the question which I have heard asked, "Whence do the intuitions of the mind come?"

But I must go back to my little family once more. These children are quite expert printers, and have followed their fancies very much as to what they printed; as, favorite stories or scraps of poetry, for I did not wish the process to become tedious. One day I let each dictate to me a short story, which I wrote down as they dictated; and while they were full of delight I proposed that they should write stories themselves, instead of copying them. This they subsequently varied with writing what they could remember of my readings to them; so now I am overwhelmed with compositions of all sorts, and often very good ones. I have always thought it well for children to write a good deal, and I have never found any difficulty in making them like to do it. When I read or tell them anything I wish them to write, I often put leading words on the black-board, to suggest the order of the story, or the description; or, to spell difficult words. One child writes funny stories, and laughs herself as she writes; another gives descriptions of natural scenery, in the midst of which her characters find themselves. One writes about wolves and other horrors. I have a variety of pictures hanging on the walls, and I sometimes propose that they should write stories about them. These writings are all printed with lead pencil, or on the slate, because the mechanical difficulty of writing script with the pen makes it tedious to children.

I shall look impatiently for your account of your proceedings. I believe I have told you the principal things I endeavor to teach, but it is impossible to describe all the occasions on which one can minister to the inquiring minds of children. I suppose many persons would think I give too much time to playing and singing, but I do not often invite people into my school, for my ideas of order are different from the ordinary one of sitting still and not speaking. I am perfectly content as long as the lifting of my finger or the tinkling of my little bell will reduce my subjects to order.

I forgot to mention that one day in the week we resolve ourselves into a sculptor's studio. I seat the children around one of the long tables and let them model in clay. They make miniature vases, and even faces, and who knows but what some genius may be developed?[M] Paper cutting is also one of my arts. It teaches forms as well as drawing, and some of these children cut very decent birds and other animals. Sometimes I draw for them to cut, and I have shown them the properties of a circle by cutting one and dividing it up into angles, acute and obtuse, and teaching them to put them together again. I was much pleased myself when I first understood the relation of angles to a circle, and find that other children also enjoy it. I let them play with the Chinese puzzle also, which exercises their inventive faculties.[N]

If all teachers loved to play with children as well as I do, I think they would discover what I think I have; that children need superintendence in their plays to defend them against each other. The only danger is, that the older person may lead too much, and not sufficiently follow the leading of the children. When children do work at anything, they should be taught to do it accurately and well; but a concentrated effort should be very short. I hope everything, as I told you, from your discoveries in this charming science, of which I am never tired, I am never weary of talking about my little flock, and all the little flocks I have from time to time presided over. The last always seems to me the most interesting; especially the younger ones. A new little being just waking up to a consciousness of the world environing it, is a new study to me always, one of which I never tire, as I am very apt to do of older people. When you have taught a few years, we will compare notes again.

Very affectionately yours,
M.

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SONGS.

Transcriber's Note: You can hear a midi version of the songs following by clicking on the word "midi" under each sheet of music.

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

2.

Angry words they never speak,
Promises they never break;
Unkind looks they never show;
Love sits smiling on each brow.
O, how lovely, &c.

3.

They are one in heart and mind;
Courteous, pitiful, and kind;
Willing others to forgive,
And make happy all who live.

4.

When at home, at school, at play,
They are cheerful, blithe, and gay;
Always trying to increase
Human pleasure, social peace.

5.

If we for each other care,
All each other's burdens bear,
Soon the human race will be
Like one happy family.
O, how lovely, &c.

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

2 Would you know how does the peasant
Reap his barley and wheat?
Look, 'tis so, so does the peasant
Reap his barley and wheat. La, la, la, &c.
3 Would you know how does the peasant
Thrash his barley and wheat?
Look, 'tis so, so does the peasant
Thrash his barley and wheat. La, la, la, &c.
4 Would you know how does the peasant
Sift his barley and wheat?
Look, 'tis so, so does the peasant
Sift his barley and wheat. La, la, la, &c.
5 Would you know how rests the peasant
When his labor is done?
Look, 'tis so, so rests the peasant
When his labor is done. La, la, la, &c.
6 Would you know how plays the peasant,
When his labor is done?
Look, 'tis so, so plays the peasant,
When his labor is done. La, la, la, &c.

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[Midi.]

Let us now leave off our sawing,
Rest awhile in pretty playing,
Playing, playing, playing so;
Playing, playing, playing, playing,
Till 'tis time to saw again.

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

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[Midi.]

2.

Hare now be careful,
Sit quite still,
The hunter is near;
Dogs are running down the hill,
Sit quite still, sit quite still.

3.

Hare now be cheerful,
Jump and spring;
All danger is past.
Hare now spring, jump and spring,
Jump and spring, jump and spring.

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[Midi.]

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