As for physical culture, if your school is without it, your barn, your parlor, and your lawn may supply it in some sort. In the barn may be a trapeze; there is already the ladder and the hay-loft; on the lawn may be a swing, trees to climb, and the tennis court. In your parlor may be a little home dancing school, where for a half an hour or so, the children march, skip, or two-step to music of your making. In the wood shed may be a carpenter's bench with real tools, where he may work and get some of the good of manual training.
Showy Accomplishments
Accomplishments, meaning thereby showy things that children do for the edification of guests, are of doubtful value. It is pleasant, of course, to have your little girl play a piece or two on the piano to entertain your visitors, but it is not nearly so important as health and strength, and a cheerful temper. Sometimes all three of these are sacrificed to the two or three hours' practice a day. Often, too, this extra work after school hours—work full as monotonous and nervous and uninteresting as the school work itself—is just what is needed to transform a healthy young girl into a nervous invalid. This is especially true, if she undertakes, as she usually does, to study music when she is about thirteen years old—the very time when, if wise physicians could regulate affairs to their liking, she would be taken out of school altogether and required to do nothing more than a little light housework every day.
Natural Talent
Of course, if she is naturally musical some kind of help and sympathy must be given her in her attempt to master the piano or violin or to manage her own voice. But while she should be allowed to learn as much as her unurged energies permit her to learn, she should not be required to practice more than a very small amount, say half an hour a day. The bulk of her musical education should be acquired in the vacation time, when she can give two hours a day without overstraining.
The same general rules hold good of dancing, painting, the acquirements of foreign languages, a special course of reading, or any other work undertaken in addition to the regular school work. This latter, as it is now constituted, is quite as severe a nervous and intellectual strain as most young people can undergo with safety.
"Enthusiasms"