Year: 1862

The following extract is copied from


the "Recreations of a Country Parson.


Il have said that almost every human


being has some intellectual popularity f;


some moral twist, away from the normal


standard of Righteousness. Let ii be adj


ded that it is little wonder that the fact


should be As il is. | do not think merely


of a certain unhappy warping of an old


original wrench, which human nature


long ago received, and from which it new
er has recovered. | am not writing as q
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 before il fell But I may say, look
how most people are educated consider
the kind of training they get, and the in
competent hands that train them what
chance have they of being anything but
screws All, my readers, if horses were
broken hy people as unfit for their work
as most OF the people who form human
minds, there would not be a horse in the
world that would not be dead or lame
You do not trust your thorough bred colt,
hitherto unhandled, to any one who is
not understood to have a thorough knowl-
ChEE III tic GildLOEACLASAAEs sllI CuuCds4OA1
of horses. But in numberless instances,
even in the better classes of society, a
thing which needs to be guarded against
thousand wrong tendencies, and trained
up to a thousand right things from which
it is ready to shrink, the most sensitive
and complicated thing in nature, the Iu-
man soul. is left to have its character form
en- by hands as hOpelessly unfit for the
task as the Lord Chancellor is to prepare
the winner of the next St. Leger. You
find parents and guardians Systematically
following a course of treatment calculated
10 bring out the very worst tendencies OF
the mind and heart that are latent in the
little things given to their care.


Ii a young horse has tendency to shy.
how carefully the trainer seeks to win
him away from the habit But if poor
little boy has hasty temper, you find his
mother taking the greatest pains to irri-
tate that temper If the little fellow has
some physical or mental defects. you have
seen parents who never miss an Opportu-
nifty of throwing it in the boys face: pa
rents who seem TO eXult in the thought
that they know the place where a touch
will always cause him to wince-the SEN
sitive, unprotected point where the dart
of malignity will never fail to get home.


Il say it deliberately, instead of Won-
dering that most minds are suoh screws,
| wonder with indescribable surprise that
they are not a thousand times worse; for
they are like trees pruned and trained in
to ugliness and barrenness. They are
like horses carefully tutOred to shy, kick.
rear, and bite. 1t says sometimes hope
full as to what may yet be made of human
beings, that most of them are no worse
than they are. Some parents, fancying,
too that they are educating their children
on Christian principles, educate them in
such fashion that the children do not
end at the gallows"


If child has said or done some fool
ish thing, you will find parents who con-
stantly take up the remembrance of it,
for the pure pleasure of giving pain
Would any kindly man, who knows that
his horse had just fallen down and cut
himself, take pains. whenever he came
to bit of freshly macadamized road, to
bring down the poor horse on the sharp
stones again with his bleeding knees p
And even where you do not find positive
malignity in those entrusted with the
training of human minds, you find hope
less incomptency exhibited in many other
ways. Outrageous Stiffness, vanity, want of
honesty, and after want n sense.