The daily Green Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1861-1865, 1862-10-21
Training of Children.

have said that almost every human be-
ing has some intellectual popularity some
moral twist away from the normal standard OF
righteousness. Let il be added, that it is
little wonder that the fact should be as it is.
do not think merely of a certain unhappy
warping Of an old original wrench, which hu-
man nature long ago received, ami from which
it never has recovered. am not writing as
theologian and SO | do not suggest the
grave consideration that human nature, being
fallen, need not be expected to be the right
working machinery that it may have been be-
fore il fell. But l may at least say, look how
most people are educated consider the kind
Of training they get and the incompetent
hands that train them what chance have
they of being anything but screws? All,
my reader, if horses were broken by people
as unfit for their work as most of the people
who form human minds, there would not be q
horse in the world that would not be dead
lame. You would not trust your thorough
bred colt, hitherto unhandled, to any one who
is not understood to have thorough knowl>
edge of the characteristics and education Of
horses.
But in numberless instances even in the
better classes of society thing which needs
to be guarded against thousand wrong ten
dencles and trained up to o thousand right
things from which it is ready to shrink, the
most sensitive and complicated thing in nature,
the human SouI, is left to have its character
formed by hands as hopelessly unfit for TIE
task as the Lord Chancellor is to prepare
the winner OF tho next St, Lager. You fad
parents and guardians Systematically follow
ing a course CT treatment calculated to bring
out the very worst tendencies Of the mind and
heart that are latent in the little things
given to their care.
If a young horse has a tendency to shy,
how clofuIiy the trainer seeks to win hm
away from tne habit. But if poor little
boy has a hasty temper, you may find his
mother taking the greatest pains to irritate
that temper. II the little fellow has some
PHYSICAL or mental defects, you have seen pa
rents who never miss an opportunity Of
throwing it in the boys face parents who
always seem to exult in the thought that they
know the place where touch will cause to
wince-the sensitive, unprotected point where
the dart OF maignity will never fail to get
home.
II child has said or done some wrong or
foolish thing, you will find parents who are
constantly rakins up the remembrance of it,
for the pure pleasure of giving pain. Would
any kindly man. who knows that his horse
has just fallen down and cut himself take
pains when he came to Bit of freshly ma
cadamized road, to bring down the poor
horse On the sharp stones again with his
bleeding knees And even where you do
not Gnd positive malignty in those intrusted
with the training Of human Minds you find
hopeless incompetency exhibited in many
other ways; outrageous Stiffness, and vanity,
want Of honesty, and utter want Of sense.
| say deliberately, instead of wondering
that most minds ale such screws, wonder
with indiscribablc surprise that they are not q
thousand times worse ; for they are like trees
pruned and trained into ugness and barren
ness. They are like horses carefully tutored
to shy, kick, rear, and bite. 1t says some
thing hopeful as to what may yet be maze of
human beings, that most OF them are no
worse than they are. Some parents, iancying
too, that they arc educating their children on
Christian principles, educate them in such a
fashion that the only wonder is that the chill
dren do not end at the gallows. -Country
ParSon.