SARAH B. COOPER
"'Do the materialistic tendencies of the times weaken your church in America?' I asked a noble Paulist father whom I met once on a railroad train.
"'Oh, no,' said he, 'we Catholics catch our people young and they never get away from us. We hold that if we can have the care and guidance of a child under seven years of age it will always come back to the church in after years, in every important crisis of grief or joy in life. That is why our great church is unaffected by the godlessness that alarms others. We make Catholics of little children and they never cease to grow as the twig was bent.'"—Julian Ralph.
SARAH B. COOPER
THE KINDERGARTEN IN ITS BEARINGS UPON CRIME, PAUPERISM, AND INSANITY
By Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, of San Francisco.
My theme is one in which bright-eyed Hope must clasp the hand of blind Despair, and lead the way to better things.
I am to talk about what can be done for little waifs after they are born. By what process of education and development are they to be made valuable members of society? The doctrine that the hereditary defectiveness of the masses can be corrected by education and hereditary culture is the true doctrine. Any system of education that does not contemplate these results does not deserve the name of education. What the world most needs to-day is character—genuine character. In order to secure this, we must get hold of the little waifs that now grow up to form the criminal element just as early in life as possible. Hunt up the children of poverty, of crime, and of brutality, just as soon as they can be reached—the children that flock in the tenement houses, on the narrow, dirty streets; the children that have no one to call them by dear names; children that are buffeted hither and thither,—"flotsam and jetsam on the wild, mad sea of life." This is the element out of which criminals are made.
It was Juvenal who said, "The man's character is made at seven: what he is then he will always be." This seems a sweeping assertion; but Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Lycurgus, Bacon, Locke, and Lord Brougham, all emphasize the same idea. Leading educators of a modern day are all united upon this point. The pliable period of early childhood is the time most favorable to the eradication of vicious tendencies, and to the development of the latent possibilities for good. The foundations for national prosperity and perpetuity are to be laid deep down in our infant schools. And the infant school, to be most successful, must be organized and carried forward on the kindergarten plan. The kindergarten has rightfully been termed the "paradise of childhood." It is the gate through which many a little outcast has re-entered Eden.
Froebel, that great and beloved apostle of childhood, founded a system that is destined to revolutionize all former methods of developing little children. His battle-cry was, "Come! let us live with our children!"
The simple, salient fact is, we do not get hold of the little children of vice and of crime soon enough. An unfortunate childhood is the sure prophecy of an unfortunate life. "Implant lessons of virtue and well-doing in earliest childhood," says Plato. "Give me the child," says Lord Bacon, "and the State shall have the man." "Let the very playthings of your children have a bearing upon the life and work of the coming man," says Aristotle. "It is early training that makes the master," says the great German poet. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and, when he is old, he will not depart from it," says the Revealed Word. Let us take heed to these entreaties, and work with the children. Work with little children will always pay handsome dividends to the family, to the community, to the State, and to the world.