The schooling afforded by instructive plays should be the only schooling of the first seven years of life. Late springs produce the most abundant harvests in the mind as in the field. Precocious and delicate children especially should be kept from a too early and close application to books. By means of healthful and instructive games and sports; by visits to workshops and factories where familiar objects are made; and by a cultivation of the sense of the beautiful in nature and art, more can be done towards securing a sound mind in a sound body than by the easier and more common method of sending the child to school almost as soon as it can walk.
IMPORTANCE OF TEACHING CHILDREN HYGIENIC HABITS.
The force of habits should never be lost sight of by those having the charge of children. They constitute a power of which parents should early avail themselves. J. J. Rousseau has said, 'The only habit which one ought to permit the child, is of not contracting any.' But this is impossible and undesirable. When it is remembered that a good habit is just as hard to break as a bad one, the importance of seeking from the very cradle to frame good habits is evident. It is easy to create, but difficult to reform. What then are some of the principal hygienic habits which it is desirable to teach children?
First we will mention, a liking for proper food at regular times. The indigestion, or weakness of digestion, from which many children suffer, is in some cases hereditary or the result of feeble health. But most frequently it is the effect of bad management. The giving to the child of pastry and cakes at meals instead of simple and nutritious food, the encouragement of capriciousness of appetite instead of teaching it to like everything that is healthful, and the neglect to inculcate the habit of eating at regular hours, these are the principal causes of many cases of diarrhœa, vomitings, weak appetite, colicky pains, and indigestion among children.
The daily use of at least a sponge-bath of the entire person is an excellent habit. Cold water should be employed after the fifth or sixth year. This simple practice of a cold sponge-bath every morning, if more generally taught children, would avert many a cold and rheumatic attack in after life.
The habit of quenching the thirst with only simple drinks, milk and water, should be early and thoroughly formed. No American mother would think of giving spirits to her child, excepting under medical advice; but many permit almost from infancy the use of tea and coffee. These drinks are not only unnecessary in childhood, but to a certain extent injurious. They excite the nervous system and disorder the digestion. Before the age of puberty, neither tea nor coffee should be allowed.
ON THE TRAINING OF THE SPECIAL SENSES.
The special senses, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, have been called the windows of the soul, by which it observes what passes without. The most noble and intellectual of these are the sight and hearing. Neither of them receives the attention at the hands of parents and educators which it should. Indeed, the Indians who yet inhabit our western plains, have better eyes and ears than we. The reason of this is evident. The savage is obliged to make other use of his eyes than to dreamily admire the beautiful landscape, and other use of his ears than to listen to the singing of birds and the murmuring of wind and stream. These senses are the defenders of his life. He depends upon them for food, clothing, and protection against his enemies. Hence, urged by necessity, he trains them from infancy, and brings them to a perfection which astonishes us. It will be said, however, that we in our civilized life, have no need of any such acuteness of sense. True, but we cannot avoid the consciousness that our organs of sight and hearing do not afford us the service they ought, and that they commence to fail us too early. The remedy is to be sought in the training of the special senses in early life. These senses, which are the first of our faculties to form and develope, should be the first to be educated; yet, as has been well said, they are nearly the only ones which are forgotten, or at least they are the most neglected.
The education of a sense has been compared to the education of a child,—it has its physical, its intellectual, and its moral side. It is necessary to maintain the organ in a condition of health in order that it may perform its work well; this is the physical education of the sense. The mind must learn to properly elaborate the impressions thus conveyed to it, this is the intellectual education of the sense. Finally, in the service of morality and justice, these impressions ought to be turned to the advantage of the good and the beautiful, this is the moral education of the sense. The subject of the training of the special senses is therefore, when properly viewed, a serious and most important one. It might well demand more attention at our hands than we have space to give it here. We will make our remarks as concise and practical as possible commencing first with