Southport telegraph. [volume] (Southport, W.T. [i.e. Kenosha, Wis.]) 1840-1850, 1847-05-19

II subject to 'ctich the attention Of our citizens is par
ticularly bsrited.
In abiding to our village schools, a few DAYS
since we spoke of the great need of reform in the
system of instruction. friend suggests that
it is hardly proper to apply the word system where
the rant Of it is great and so obvious Perhaps
it would have been correct to say, :" our sys-
tenn of instruction needs creating;" and we thus
amend, for system, far as schools in this locality
are concerned has, yet, never been brought into
existence. We improve town. we improve our
houses, shops and stores, we improve our streets
sidewalks and gardens, our furniture and apparel
we improve cattle and horses, swine and poul-
try, improve our social and business relations,
and yet, with a most marvellous inconsistency of
procedure, we neglect, or overlook, the formation
of mind and character in the rapidly increasing hun
dreds of our juvenile population. All and each of
our interests as community are receiving greater
and more earnest attention than that one, most i'm
poitant OF ALL the forming, furnishing and directing
of the youthful mind And can we assign any val
id reason for this neglect? Is the intellectual the
spiritual, the immortal, the only department in
.
! prodigal waste, with unconcem? And is that por
ton of our population which is now in its plastic
! and forming state, which is fast receiving Its
complexion and cast Of character, the one Of all
Others to be neglected 1t is sickening to compare,
or rather to contrast the unWearied pains, the I'M
sparing expense bestowed upon what has for its ul-
innate object to feed and clothe, 10 pamper and
adom, the persons Of youth and children and to pro-
vide for the sustcnance and the riot of their animal
nature, with the grudgng stint and parsmonious
ness exhibited, by most in regard to any thing like
an endeayor to mould into fair proportions and to
n'igorate and enrich their higher nature. Ii their
bodily wants slendery prov ided for as their
mental and moral improvements, the squalid fam
shing children of the destitute in Ireland would
hardly surpass them in point Of wretchedness and
neglect. Suppose such thing, 1--WE quote par
| agraph two from President Everett, of Harvard
Uni' ersity-( Suppose such thing, without actu-
ally starving to death human creature, as to keep
him in being for the usual term of existence, with
out the supply OF accustomed food which is neces
sary for health, strength and comeliness. Suppose
| such thing a community OF men, capable o:
subsiStng and continuing their race, but who, from
| poverty OIL Incidence from want OF means or of the
knowledge to use them, should pass through life
without any development of the great vital powers;
who should just be alive and no more who should,
in the language Of scripture have eyes but not,
but hear not their senses all torpid their limbs
and organs useless and incapable of any efficient ac-
ton; the entire system languid, pinng, cataeptc;
all but lifeless and yet alive. What should we
think of such beings? What should we think Of
the faulty and madness OF those who, with natures
abundant stores about them would voluntarily keep
themselves in such awretchcdly reduced and AFFECT
condition? And now TO the point which am seek
ING to Illustrate. What none but a mailman would
knowingly do to his body what no community,
even of savages reduced to- in respect to the
pershing corporal frame, when the means Of avoid
ing it arc within their reach; what father could
witness without frantic desperation, if it were the
lot of beloved chd that is DONE and permitted to
be done, even in this enlightened community, and
suffered to pass without rebuke, lnasmuch as it is
not the animal, bat only the SPIRITUAL intellectual,
ana immortal part of complex humanity that
is doomed to pine and tamsh in neglect Facul-
ties capable of being nurtured into the vigorous APP
prehcnsion Of all TRUTH remain unimproyed and tor
pd. at the mercy of low prejudice and error Ca
pacities which might have explored nature, master
ed her secrets, and unlocked her ample treasures,
driyeling through life, aiming nothing ennobling
or improving, sunk in superstition and ignorance,
and with no consciousness or conceptions of their
own heavenly nature. henatural eye cannot take
cognzance of the blighted distorted sicllly under
standing, and thus cause the heart to recol at the
revolving spectacle; and yet how many parent,
who could not see his child deprived of a single
meal, can deliberately starye and tamish his mind,
and even to the extent of its permanent uncon-
sciousness of its miserable restitution