“’T is by degrees the youthful mind expands; and every day,
Soft as it rolls along, shows some new charm;
Then infant reason grows apace, and calls
For the kind hand of an assiduous care.”
“Delightful task, to rear the tender thought,
To pour the new instruction o’er the mind,
To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix
The generous purpose in the glowing breast.”
The period at length arrived, when it became necessary that Alida should receive further instruction in the various branches of female literature. With this view, her father thought proper to change the place of her studies from the village school to the New-York Seminary.
It was his idea that nothing afforded so pleasing a prospect as the graces of beauty, aided by wisdom and useful knowledge, and that care should be taken that the mind should first be initiated in the solid acquirements, before the embellishments of education should be allowed to take up the attention or engross the thoughts; and that the first purposes of the teacher should be directed to endeavour to cause the mental powers of the scholar to be excited, in the first place, to attain to whatever is most useful and necessary, and that suitable application and industry was the only means whereby we may gain celebrity in any art or science, or therein arrive at any degree of perfection.