This is the true secret of making a man. What would Columbus, or Washington and Franklin, or Webster and Clay, have accomplished had they proceeded on the principle of John Easy? No youth can rationally hope to attain to eminence in any thing who is not ready to "open the gate" for himself. And then, poor Mrs. Easy, how she did misjudge! Better for her son, had she dismissed her servants—or rather had she directed them to some more appropriate service, and let Master John have remained at the gate day and night for a month, unless willing, before the expiration of that time, to have opened it for himself, and by his own strength. Parents in their well-meant kindness, or, perhaps, it were better named, thoughtless indulgence, often repress energies which, if their children were compelled to put forth, would result in benefits of the most important character.
It is, indeed, painful to see boys, as we sometimes see them, struggling against "wind and tide;" but watch such boys—follow them—see how they put forth strength as it accumulates—apply energies as they increase—make use of new expedients as they need them, and by-and-by where are they? Indeed, now and then they are obliged to lift at the gate pretty lustily to get it open; now and then they are obliged to turn a pretty sharp corner, and, perhaps, lose a little skin from a shin-bone or a knuckle-joint, but, at length, where are they? Why, you see them sitting in "the gate"—a scriptural phrase for the post of honor. Who is that judge who so adorns the bench? My Lord Mansfield, or Sir Matthew Hale, or Chief Justice Marshall? Why, and from what condition, has he reached his eminence? That was a boy who some years since was an active, persevering little fellow round the streets, the son of the poor widow, who lives under the hill. She was poor, but she had the faculty of infusing her own energy into her boy, Matthew or Tommy; and now he has grown to be one of the eminent men of the country. Yes; and I recollect there was now and then to be seen with Tommy, when he had occasionally a half hour of leisure—but that was not often—there was one John Easy, whose mother always kept a servant to wait upon him, to open and shut the gate for him, and almost to help him breathe. Well, and where is John Easy? Why there he is, this moment, a poor, shiftless, penniless being, who never loved to open the gate for himself, and now nobody ever desires to open a gate to him.
And the reason for all this difference is the different manner in which these boys were trained in their early days. "Train up a child," says the good book, "in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Analyze the direction, and see how it reads. Train up a child—what? Why train him—i.e., educate him, discipline him. Whom did you say? A child. Take him early, in the morning of life, before bad habits, indolent habits, vicious habits are formed. It is easy to bend the sapling, but difficult to bend the grown tree. You said train a child, did you? Yes. But how? Why, in the way in which he ought to go—i.e., in some useful employment—in the exercise of good moral affections—pious duties towards God, and benevolent actions towards his parents, brothers, companions. Thus train him—a child—and what then—what result may you anticipate? Why, the royal preacher says that when he is old—of course, then, during youth, manhood, into old age, through life he means, as long as he lives he will not—what? He will not depart from it, he will neither go back, nor go zig-zag, but forward, in that way in which he ought to walk, as a moral and accountable being of God, and a member of society, bound to do all the good he can. And thus he will come under the conditions of a just or honest man, of whom another Scripture says, "His path is as the shining light, which shineth brighter and brighter unto the perfect day." The perfect day! But when is that? Why in it may mean the day when God will openly acknowledge all the really good as his sons and daughters. But I love to take it in more enlarged sense—I take the perfect day to be when the good will be as perfect as they can be; but as that will not be to the end of eternity, those who are trained up in the way they should go, will probably continue to walk in it till the absolutely perfect day comes which will never come, for the good are going to grow better and better as long as eternity lasts. So much for setting out right with your children, parents!—bringing them up right—and this involves, among other things, teaching them to "open the gate for themselves" and similar sorts of things.
Gratis.
Original.
FEMALE EDUCATION.
BY REV. SAMUEL W. FISHER.
The nature of female education, its influence, its field of action, comprehending a wide range of the noblest topics, render it utterly impossible to do justice to the entire theme in the brief limits here assigned to it. Indeed it seems almost a superfluous effort, were it not expected, nay, demanded, to discuss the subject of education in a work like this.
Thanks to our Father in Heaven, who, in the crowning work of his creation, gave woman to man, made weakness her strength, modesty her citadel, grace and gentleness her attributes, affection her dower, and the heart of man her throne. With her, toil rises into pleasure, joy fills the breast with a larger benediction, and sorrow, losing half its bitterness, is transmitted into an element of power, a discipline of goodness. Even in the coarsest life, and the most depressing circumstances, woman hath this power of hallowing all things with the sunshine of her presence. But never does it unfold itself so finely as when education, instinct with religion, has accomplished its most successful work. It is only then that she reveals all her varied excellence, and develops her high capacities. It only unfolds powers that were latent, or develops those in harmony and beauty which otherwise would push themselves forth in shapes grotesque, gnarled and distorted. God creates the material, and impresses upon it his own laws. Man, in education, simply seeks to give those laws scope for action. The uneducated person, by a favorite figure of the old classic writers, has often been compared to the rough marble in the quarry; the educated to that marble chiselled by the hand of a Phidias into forms of beauty and pillars of strength. But the analogy holds good in only a single point. As the chisel reveals the form which the marble may be made to assume, so education unfolds the innate capacities of men. In all things else how poor the comparison! how faint the analogy! In the one case you have an aggregation of particles crystallized into shape, without organism, life or motion. In the other, you have life, growth, expansion. In the first you have a mass of limestone, neither more nor less than insensate matter, utterly incapable of any alteration from within itself. In the second, you have a living body, a mind, affections instinct with power, gifted with vitality, and forming the attributes of a being allied to and only a little lower than the angels. These constitute a life which, by its inherent force, must grow and unfold itself by a law of its own, whether you educate it or not. Some development it will make, some form it will assume by its own irrepressible and spontaneous action. The question, with us, is rather what that form shall be; whether it shall wear the visible robes of an immortal with a countenance glowing with the intelligence and pure affection of cherub and seraph, or through the rags and sensual impress of an earthly, send forth only occasional gleams of its higher nature. The great work of education is to stimulate and direct this native power of growth. God and the subject, co-working, effect all the rest.