, 1886-06-02
ONES MEAT is ANorHeR's POISON


Some Valuable Hints concerning !"
Training and Education of Children.
@Of all things" said the family physi-
clan to a young married woman oil my
ACQUAINTANCE solicitous about the vel
fare of her ~offspring-"of all things,
never take the advice OF experienced
mothers. In the first place, no two OF
them will agree about anything, and
your mind will be kept unsettled all the
time. Then, if they do agree, what is
true of their children may not be at all
true of yours But" she pleaded, "are
not measles, and humps, and whooping-
cough, and all those dreadful things very
much the same in all cases?7 They are
never precisely the same" he insisted.
-in any two cases, either as TO origin, or
symptoms, or treatment indicated. Do
not you know" he added, that what is
n mans meat is another mana
poison"
1t sometimes seem as if, instead of the
old medical methods of cast-iron, we had
come upon n new method of mini
variation; each doctor asks his patient
30 many questions, and consults the in
dividual peculiarities 30 much, that he
bttHio dllllpSt W itputot IL 10 a lawn Vi
each, first to indicate" what medicine
he needs, and then to take it. As civil
cation advances, Municipalities develop.
and science grows more humble; ii
studies, instead of debating. On my
%cautioning a lady at a party the other
evening against a second cup of strong
coffee, and advising chocolate as a bet
ter sleeping d%raught, she informed me
that she was so constituted as to be kept
awake 10y chocolate and put to sleep by
coffee. She too has n family of young
children, part of whom probably inherit
this trait, and the others the more ordin-
airy habit, and such a direct divergence
might well run through the whole
physical structure. How, then, can any
one method of treatment possibly suit
them all?
1t is really very inconvenient. 1t would
be much easier if everybody needed the
same thing, was reached by the same
medicine, needed the same advice; but
what are we to do about it? / knew a
conscientious mother who had two chill
dren of about the same age, and o in
the high school-a boy and girl. The
boy hated study, and the girl studied
herself i'll; yet they were inseparable
companions at home, and could rarely
be caught apart to lecture them separately
"When l dwell,n said the poor
mother. ION the importance of study, ]
do it for Eddie's benefit, but he never
needs it, and Emily takes it to heart,
and studies harder than ever. If l re
monstrate with her on the danger Of
overwork, she keeps on Just the same,
but Eddie takes that part of the advice
to himself, and assures me that he will
never hurt himself with books" The
meat for one was the poison for the
other.
The the stress laid of late years on
what it is now the fashion to call "hered-
ity" comes in to limit the value of the
best advice hat we could give one an
other. In one of Bret Harte's burlesque
novels he makes Victor Hugo lay it down
as the key to human progress, Educate
your grandmother and we all now rec
ognize the need of adapting the training
of each person to his or her inheritance.
For a young girl whose parents died OF
consumption we prescribe an outdoor
life instead of indoor needlework.
A young man whose father and grand
father died of heart-disease would
be cautioned against rowing boat
races. On the same principle you can
not deal with n boy who has in his very
blood the hereditary craving after strong
drink as you would Zeal with the scion
OF a sober race. The heaven that lies
about us in our infancy does rot spread
its full heavenliness over the poor, terri
BILE little jesse Pomeroys. born with the
homicidal mania strong in them. Just
when the world too hastily fancied itself
outgrowing what the pious Scotch
woman called "the guild aud doctrine o
original sim the fact itself looks at lis
unexpectedly in the recorded history Of
the Jukes family, with its 200 criminal,
descended from a single neglected girl.
The observant parent sees, as time goes
on, the strong and weak points of his
own character, or perhaps those of some
remoter ancestor r~eappearing in the
child, and the questions are countless to
which the situation leads. Are these
manifestations of temper, for instance,
of the kind that must be met outright
and conquered, or of the kind that are
only strengthened by resistance, and
must be borne with in the knowledge
that they will be outgrown? Is this sud
den tendency to disregard the truth the
sign of real laxity, or only of a toe
lively Imagination How many n con-
scientious parent has lain awake at night
with anxiety over some fancied moral
depravity that really was n thing rs