Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1899-06-28
crease is appalling. Even paralysis

everything except what IS contained In
Judge Baldwin's admirable answer to
the question, "should manners be
taught in our public schools ?" Four,
or at the utmost, five hours are full
days study if one,is to have health in
this exhaustive climate. Under our
forcing system the time demanded is
nearer 10 hours. Foreign children
may study harder, but they do not
come of fathers consumed by ambi-
tion, and mothers trying to do the i'm
possible.
The girls break first because of
greater capacity for suffering in nerves
alive and quivering that with boys are
insensible as telegraph wires. Besides,
girls are more tractable, and take to
music, embroidery and painting, while
boys play ball. In sanitariums, rest
cures, water cures and other refugees,
forlorn wrecks of women lie on beds of
pain, swallowing cod-liver oil, matted
milk, and beguiling "foods" and drugs
in order to build up. But there are no
IOuUudllOIlS W Uullu upous
There are limits to geography since
literature has possessed the public
mind there are no boundary lines. To
be sure it is fine thing to read Brown
ing at sight, and to know what Carlyle
means by "hell.queller," but these
delights may be reserved for mature
intellect; something might be left un-
done in the schools. A pupil must
read paradise Lost" and write an es-
say on the poem within six days; a
composition for scholars and that few
scholars do read. I learn with pain
that Dante has been added to the
course in some states. The dead cat
lasted only a day; Dante goes through
whole term. Let the great poets
come in later years, royal guests, not
taskmasters appointed to afflict us
with burdens. Be sure if your chill
dren want Milton they will find him,
and oh, do not make a study of "Childe
Harold"
Back of all, and harder than un-
bending rules, is the merciless ambition
of parents. American children must
do, be and have everything. Propose
to cut down, drop the least congenial
study, and there is an outcry-"Why,
then Mary could not get her diploma ~
What will she do with it if she does
get it? Lay it away in forgotten top
drawer, or frame and hang it in the
guest chamber-a costly document
bought with a great price,"
Said a tender mother to me, "The
air of the schoolroom is so foul that
my boys heads smell of it,"
"And you continue to send them P"
"Oh, yes; you know they must
pass"
They are passing.
The mother of a girl with lips color
less as her forehead declared, 81 have
high standard of education for Julia. "
"But health, if she leave that in the
textbooks, though she speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, it pro-
fiteth nothing"
"I mean," determinedly, "for her to
have advantages, and when she gets
her diploma she can rest"
So she sums along till she can null
tiply three figures by three figures in
her head, day and night thinking and
thinking. One soft Sunday afternoon,
when even the day laborer was having
bis leisurely stroll, asked why she
was not out with the rest of the fami-
ly. She was at home writing an essay
on Gray's Elegy.
"Oh, it's no trouble for her to do it.
I don't see how she writes so easily.
This is her last year; she has seven
studies; then comes the finishing
school at New Haven"
doesn't her head ache?"
"Sometimes she talks in her sleep"
(again the proud look y "it's Latin, l
think"
She was already in the finishing
school, and what she now says in her
sleep we shall not know till we learn
the language of the dead.
That is not the only house where
there is drawer scented with tuberose
and heliotrope, and opening it is like
opening the grave.
Easy for her to have seven studies
under seven different teachers Try
it yourself.
Said one of my neighbors, "Here
are two diplomas; they represent my
two daughters educated to death"
Death by freezing is easier. One of
the most foolish sights l have ever
seen was a feeble country girl who ex'
pected to earn a living. she hardly
knew how, puzzling over Cicero's
orations.
Latin is part of the treadmill stairs
all must climb. Well has it been said
of the Romans that had they been
obliged to learn their own language
they would never have been able TO
conquer the world. The dull girl
pulls through grades high and low,
and when the time comes to take a
teething baby through dog days and
nights how goes the battle? Down
with nervous prostration, she would
give Euclid, Cicero, even the seventh
book of Thucydides, for days re-
lease from the pangs of neuralgia.
Baby is predestined, one of the never
sleeping sort, doomed to nerves tense
as fiddle strings.
TO get through in given time the
rate of speed is like the French
woman's who, at dinner, whispered to
the philosopher, "Now, while the
plates are changing, be quick and tell
me the history of the world"
1 knew one type of a class. She