Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1861-12-05
kxtremes of Disposition.

Bulwer, in one of his novels, represents a
young man sent to London by father who
had lived in retirement for twenty years.
with letters of introduction to those who had
been the friends of his early days. Before
the son sets ont his father gives him minute
account of the peculiarities of each of his
early friends. This one was extremely fru-
gal and parsimonious, and that one profuse
in his expenditure. A third abstemious,
and fourth glutton. To his SURPRISE he
found most of them exhibiting exactly the
opposite traits from those allotted to them.
The miser was prodigal, and the profuse
penurious. The abstemious youth had
become a boon companion over the bottle,
while the bon vivant loved a spare diet,
to save his dyspeptic constitution. Let
any one call to mind the early history
of the men he now knows, and he will
be astonished to find how many Of those who
in early life were notorious for any one ex-
treme of character have become in twenty
or thirty years equally remarkable for just
the opposite, Many a devotee of the in
tensest sort has sprung up at forty from some
gay flirt of the most curious pattern of sew
enteen. Indeed not few of the most ZEAL
Gus of all sects were the most opposite to
what they now are originally. Ignatius
Loyala himself was a gay young knight
once, before he became the champion of his
Order. The greatest misers have often
sprung from the most dissipated and prodigal
youths and paTvtnu rich men are generally
those who spend their money most freely.
The same is true of families and of nations.
There is a law Of human nature lying at
the bottom of all this, that it is important to
bear in mind in the education of the young.
That law may be best represented by the
swinging ofa pendulum, which i5 intended
to vibrate within certain fixed limits, but
which if by any forcing or extreme is brought
to the point of swinging too high on one
side, or beyond the proper and natural de.
gree, will not thereby gain any advantage
permanently, but will only react with pro-
portionable violence, and swing too high in
measure on the other side, until it has by de-
grees recovered the proper equilibrium.
Thus it is in character. 1t is by the proper
and well balanced culture of the whole man,
body, intellect and heart, that the most
wholesome and permanent because natural
development of human character is formed.
Forced culture of the intellect, forced re-
strictions from moderate and wholesome en-
joyments of all kinds, tend very frequently TO
produce just the opposite character from
what they were intended to nourish. Hence
it is that the children of 30 many of the very
best persons fail to come up to the expecta-
ti1ns of their parents and friends, and turn
out just the opposite to what they were ex-
pected to.
AS exhausted land must lie fallow at times,
or the same result be accomplished by a
change of crops, that the exhausted qualities
and powers arising from the production of
OBe crop may be recuperatsd from the slo "
and quiet energies of nature, 50 it would
seem to be in the constitution of man. Every
exertion that is excessive and exhaustive
seems to require that the character and en-.
Payments shall be 30 rested as TO recuperat'
the exhausted elements OF humanity-to liz
fallOw, as it were, until recovered from thu
effects Of its extreme. The chief difficulty
which each parent feels in turn in applyinl
this principle is to make up his mind as L