Year: 1873

10 AOIcUOuAueh Hut lllSls II y AOotleU
by no memories Of outlived sorrow.


George Eliot.


CUnrIvATE HABrrs OF OBSERVATION N
CHIIDREN.-ghe boy who leaves school
with a fixed habit of observation is
really just beginning his education. He
is passing from the tuition Of imperfect
teachers to that Of instructors whose
store of knowledge is boundless, and
whose methods are always the best
There IS really no more curious study
than that of mems habits Ia this particu-
lar. To ordinarily observant people It
seems simply marvel that some men
and women can see so much and learn
so little. We ourselves have known,
for instance, persons Of fne ability, 90
cupying editorial positions, who could
never learn how to indicate a desired
alteration a proof-sheet, and that, too,
when they were called upon to so indi-
cate their wishes every day onproof-slips
on which similar alterations were marked
already. We knew a shipping-clerk
once, who, after dealing directly with
steamboats, for years, was astonished to
learn that a part of every steamboat is
under water. The tendency to this
habit of observation, together with its
consequent habits of comparison and
reflection, nature implants in every
human mind, aud it is this that gives
birth to the perplexing questionings of
II. q ,1l,r--ra - II
velop itself, it becomes the best and
surest of all educators but for the
most part it is rudely repressed in
early childhood by reason of the indo-
lence of parents, and so We find it ex-
isting very feebly, If at aH, in half the
people we meet. Your child wants to
know the facts about everything he
sees, and the reasons for them. He
naturally asks his father or his mother,
who to him are the repositories of all
wisdom. It is not always easy to answer
him; and as the average parent cares a
good deal more for his or her own COM
fort than for the future character to the
child's mind, the matter is commonly
disposed of by an injunction against
questioning, which is as great an out
rage upon the child as anything can be.
He has the right to ask questions. The
God who put It into his mind to ques-
tion you, made it your duty to answer
him to the very best of your ability.
And your ability to answer depends
largely upon your indstry in trying to
learn how. If you do not know the
thing which he asks, and cannot find it
out, or if it be something which you
cannot make him understand, you have
only TO tell him so, leaving him free to
ask about the next thing that interests
or puzzles him. If you repel him with
a-mocking saw, or forbid his further
questioning, you injure him for life,
quite as really and quite as seriously as
if you did him physical hurt.-Hearth
and Home.


THE INFLUENCE OF CHARACTER ON
CHnDREN. chief influence by
which any one can move the world has
no dependence of situation, fortune or
condition, it is character; the principle
controlling us, the affection animating,
the spirit prevailing our lives. In the
little circle where We are best known
this influence remains even after we
have passed away; and upon all those
whom culture has brought into perfect
sympathy with us /; and through these,
whose hands spiritually clasp ours as by
an electric chain, into other hearts and
other homes. First of all, children feel
it. Where the light of noble example
has shone upon their path they AIRY
with them a spiritual illumination,
when the sun has set that kindled them
they beam down as with the soft luster
of the moon. They go. out into the
great world bearing a lofty standard.
They may be assured that such costly
virtues as integrity exirt no longer
they know better they have seen it de
livering from temptation, they have felt
it sustaining under calamity, they have
known it triumph over fear of death. If
it is only to the grave of such parent
that they can go back there is virtue
which blossoms from the dust, which
there reveals its fresh vitality which
springs up thence to a better harvest.
Liberal Christian.