Suggestion:—Objects: A yard-stick, pocket-rule, tape-measure and any measure or scales convenient.
Use the measures and scales for measuring the height and weight of the different children, and explain to them that if they continue to grow, they will eventually become full grown men and women. So God measures them to-day in moral things, and if they will learn what God requires and be obedient to their parents, they will increase in moral stature as well.
MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS: I am sure you will be able to tell me what these are which I hold in my hand. This you would call a yard-stick; the other, because it folds, you would call a pocket-rule, and here is another, which you would call a tape-measure.
Yard-Stick, Pocket-Rule and Tape-Measure.
Farmer's Measures.
Now, if I were going to measure any of you, to tell how tall you are, I would use one or the other of these rules; as each is divided into even inches, I could use any of these three I should prefer. I would say one boy is four feet two inches, another four feet nine inches and another five feet four inches, and so on according to the height of each person. We speak of this kind of measure as feet and inches. When it is used in measuring cloth, or other goods in a store, we speak of it as yards and parts of a yard. Then there are also other forms of measures, dry measure—quarts, pecks, bushels; and liquid measure—quarts, gallons and barrels. There is also a standard of weight—ounces, pounds and tons.
It is necessary to have standards of weights and measures. This is absolutely necessary, or we could not tell in purchasing cloth or lumber, in buying sugar or molasses, or other things, whether we are getting the right quantity, or whether we are not getting the right quantity. So, everywhere you go in the United States we have the same size or standard of weights and measures, and the Government appoints men in each city to go about and examine whether the scales which the storekeeper uses for weighing sugar, and the measures which he uses when he sells vinegar and molasses—whether these are perfectly accurate, as the law requires.
