The Portland daily press., 1891-07-06
TIE HO NJ e.

HOW TO MAKE COUNTRY LIFE MORE AT
TRACTIvE.
Practical education is needed in the
country as we'll as In the city. There has
been too much brain.culture In the past,
with too little sense development and mind
training. With all the opportunities for OBJ
jectiye teaching and manual training, but
little of it has come to the country. and yet
the boys and girls there need this training as
much as children in crowded city tenements.
Successful experiments In these directions
are being made in many country neighbor-
hoods; groups of ladies are inaugurating
cooking. carpentry and clay-modeling classes,
and sending to the cities for teachers. In
these neighborhOods boys who expected to
become clerks, and In consequence to leave
their homes for city clearinghouse, are be-
coming impressed with the Interest as we'll
as the value of tools. Girls are ENJOYING
lessons In hygiene and the chemistry of food,
IS we'll as practical demonstrations of cook
ing. Sewing is also growing more and more
doing with the learning.
Take, for example, two neighborhoods on
the Hudson, near New York. In one
library association was started few years
ago by some ladies. There seemed but few
pCOPio dlOuuu WIN COulU UT WOulu uLlllZo a
library or reading room but soon many men
and boys gathered nightly. A sewing school
was started for Saturday upon strictly bust
ness principles, and within month was
over-crowded. II was hard to tell where the
hundred or more girls came from, but there
they were, eager to learn. A boys class for
modelling or carpentry started, then cook
ing class for girls, and all were successful,
Monthly entertainments were held, when an
admission fee of 10 cents was charged, and
the rooms were crowded.
In the other neighborhood practical classes
have also started, and are all crowded. In
this small settlement are now being held
three weekly cooking classes for different
groups OF girls, two large sewing classes,
classes.
Village bands and choruses are valuable
In one place large group of boys are kept
interested by their weekly band practice.
A right feeling of pride is aroused when they
are called upon to lead local professions. to
play at entertainments, etc. Here also the
teacher OF the village school has started
gymnasium, and Is training boys and girls
alike in the Swedish movements. Country
children need to be physically developed by
training, and taught graceful movements as
well as city children. Village volunteer
companies OF boys can be organized and
maze mac power, Dy furnishing practical out
lets OF energies, physical as well as mental,
-, Interest in surroundings should be reused.
The country, with its woods, rocks, trees
and plants, should be studied intimacy with
the beautiful variety of animal and insect
lie should be encouraged. Through such
attractive and happier. Happiness means
contentment, and contentment comes from
health, occupation and interest. Country
contentment will be the result when young
people become stronger, keep brain as well
as hand busy, and are interested In Others.
r.. xDh IN liun ffr for
house or village could learn from examples
like these to adopt as basis of action the
principles OF agitation, education and &C.
operation, thus r0using from inactivity of
MIND ana spirit to educate themselves by
finding out what can be done and combining
to do 1t. they will find that cooperative
methods are adapted to country and village,
and through such methods will realize a
practical solution Of the dullness of rural
life, from which so many wish to escape
Lippincott's Magazine.
A HARMFUL PRACTICE.
Drs. d wight and Rotch of Harvard Uni
versity. take occasion to disapprove of
practices far too prevalent in the treatment
OF infants. A practice still more dangerous
to the infantile spine is the severe jouncing
which the child sometimes gets, held upright
on the knee of the father or the nurse.
1.-The young infant. at the very age when
the superintendent weight of the large head
is the greatest, and would greatly exaggerate
the physiological spinal curves which come
from sitting and standing. is in state of
nature unable to sit or stand. The progress
OF the spinal development In the latter part
OF the first year, and again in the third year,
corresponds closely to the periods when the
infantile spine is called upon to exercise its
functions for sitting and standing. Arti-
hclal methods of making the young infant,
az period OF DEVELOPMENT when the spine