The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1906-10-13
BY MARGARET E. SANGSTER.

are muc0 IN the NdDlC VI 1ud61u1u6
that their children are cleverer and
brighter than ever children were since
the world began. Other people may
find the children tiresome and dis
agreeable, but in the eyes of doting
parents they are without peer, and
their sayings and doings are related
with infinite relish whenever anybody
can be founu who has leisure and pa
thence to listen.
Precocious children fortunately for
themselves and for the race, are the
exception rather than the rule. A
normal child, healthy and sturdy, is
seldom precocious. OF course, there
are on record notable instances of
children who manifested remarkable
traits and extraordinary intelligence
at very early age, and some of them
did not belle their infant promise.
Lord Macauley is a case in point.
When he was somewhere near the
read necessarily and lying on the
hearth rug, at full length, with face
intent on book, he heard little that
was going on around him. On one oc-
casion, having the misfortune to be
badly burned, this unchild-like child
remarked, to a sympathizing friend
that the agony was extreme. Yet
Macauley grew up to be not merely an
eminent historian and man of letters,
but man of universal knowledge, of
profound public spirit, and of notable
loyalty to kith and kin. Though a,
prig in childhood, he was not pedant
IN maturity.
OF Robert Murray McCheyne, IA
nous Scotch clergyman, it is gravely
set down by his biographer, that he
had mastered the Greek alphabet at
the age Of three. I myself have q
friend, woman of brilliant powers
and varied scholarship, who was
taught to read Hebrew by very
learned father before she was allowed
to learn English, SO that as little
thing of six she read the Hebrew
Scriptures, while she did not yet know
the English alphabet. Her early pre-
cocity did her no harm.
Generally speaking, considering the
Importance OF sound mind in d
sound body, it is not worth while to
push children forward intellectually at
the possible expense of future health
and vigor. The brain if unfairly
treated may develop so rapidly that its
power Of assimilation will be early
exhausted and the wonderfully bril-
liant child become in later life medi-
OGRE, dull and commonplace. The boy
and girl who make clean sweep OF
all the prizes in sight during school
days, are often never heard of again.
Some Of our most conspicuous states
men, authors and commanders, on sea
and land, made no show whatever
during the days of their training. and
were graduated in the lowest ranks of
their class.
=
A besetting sin of American parents
is an almost insane ambition in be-
half Of children and desire to push
the Children as fast as they can out of
childhood's quiet round into the tur-
moil Of the arena. Little people are
hurried from the cradle to the kinder
garten, from the kindergarten to the
primary and so on through the sew
eral grades, and frequently to the dis
advantage of the children. I heard
the other day of a young doctor who
matriculated at the medical school
when he was just 16, an age at which
no youth is fit to undertake the seri-
GUS study of medicine, and indeed at
which few boys are sufficiently ma
tured to enter college.
We are in frantic haste to get our
boys and gir4s where they may either
earn their own livelihood, or in some
way compete with others who are
breadwinners in the crowded market
places of the land.
A precocious child is very likely tn
hear so much about his talents and
his attainments that he will look
down condescendingly on the neigh
Dor who is not nearly so far advanced
and still has a pronounced liking for
marbles, kites, balls and robust games.
A boy ought to know how to plav
Play is far more worth while for him
than work In the first ten years of life
One great advantage of athletic
sports, of football, baseball and basket
ball, lies in the fact that the sturdi-
ness and pluck they demand, prolon1
the play-time of the youth. The Dre-
cocious child is seldom or never !
good catcher or pitcher or quarter
back or half-back; he, is on the con-
trary, likely to survey with disdafn
the boyish pride taken by athletes in
their triumphs, and to consider the
time spent in the open air@rather a
waste than the opposite. Ills energies
are bent on acquiring more and still
more culture from the world Of litera-
ture. Often one sees the strange
anomoly when such youth has
grown up, of a man whose information
y prodigious, while his knowledge Of
available tools is academic. In other
words, 1t Is not the youth who. has
made the most rapid strides during his
training who has the requisite stayin1