Year: 1863




''Recreations of a Country Parson:"


l have said that almost every human
being has some intellectual popularity;
some moral twist, away from the moral
standard of righteousness. Let it be
added, that it is little wonder that the
fact should be as it is. do not think
merely of certain unhappy warping
of an old original wrench, which hu-
man nature long ago received, and
from which it never has recovered. I
am not writing to theologian; and so
lido not suggest the grave considera.
ton, that human nature, being fallen,
need not expect to be the right work
ing machinery that it might have been
before it fell But may at least say,
look how most people are educated;
consider the kind of training they get
and the incompetent hands that train
them. What chance have they of be-
ing anything else but screws2 Ali
my reader, if horses were broken by the
people, as unfit for their work as the
most of the people who form human
minds, there would not be horse in
the world that would not be dead lame
You do not trust your thorough bred
colts, hitherto unhandled, to any one
who is not understood to have O
thorough knowledge Of the character
istics and education of horses. But in
numberless instances, even in the better
classes Of society, thing which needs
to be guarded against thousand
wrong tendencies, and trained up to q
thousand right things from which it is
ready to shrink, the most sensitive and
complicated thing in nature, the hu
man soul, is left to have its character
formed by hands as hopelessly unfit
for the task as the Lord Chancellor is
to prepare the winner of the next ST.
Lcgor. You find parents and guardi.
ans systematically following a course of
treatment calculated to bring out the
very worst tendencies of the mind and
heart, that are latent in the little things
given to their care.


If strong horse has tendency to
shy, how carefully the trainer seeks to
win him away from the habit. But il
poor boy has hasty temper, you
may find his mother taking the greatest
pains so irritate that temper. If the
littls fellow has some physical or men
tai dcfacts, you have seen parents who
never miss an opportunity of throwing
it into the boys face; parents who seem
to exult'in the thought that they know
place where touch will always cause
to wince--the sensitive, unprotected
point, where the dart of malignity will
never fail to get home,


If child has said or done some
wrong or foolish thing, you will find
parents who are constantly raking vi
the remembrance of it for the pure
pleasure of giving pain.


Would any kindly man, who knows
that his horse has just fallen down unc
cut himself take pains, whenever h
came to bit of freshly macadamize'
road, to bring down the poor horse on
the sharp stones again with his bleed
ing knees2 Aud even where you dc
mot find positive malignity in those in
trusted with the training, of huma
minds. you fnd hopeless incom stoncy
exhibited in many other ways, outra
geous Stiffness, and vanity, wan,
of honesty and utter want of sense.


say it deliberately, instead of won
dering that such minds are sucl


screws,I wonder with indescribsble SUI
prise that they are not a thousan
times worse, for they are like tree
pruned and GRAINED into ugliness an


barrenness. They are like horse


carefully tutOred to shy, kick, reu
and bite. 1t says something hopefr
as to what may yet be made of HI
man beings, that most of them are n


worse than they are. Some paren