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office and the aim of a wise benevolence in teachers so to deal with the boys under their care as to make them, if possible, intelligent, thoughtful, sober-minded men, with hearts set and tuned to such services and such pleasures as reason and religion approve; also, to make them prudent, upright, patriotic citizens, with heads so stocked and tempered as not to be "cajoled and driven about in herds " by greedy, ambitious, unprincipled demagogues, and the political gamesters of the day. And here it is to be noted, withal, that any man who gains an honest living for himself, whether lettered or unlettered, is a good citizen in the right sense of the term; and that human slugs and do-nothings, however book-learned they may be, are not good citizens.

As for the women, let it suffice that their rights and interests in this matter are coördinate with those of the men; just that, and no more. Their main business, also, is to get an honest living. And the education that unprepares them or leaves them unprepared for this is the height of folly and of wrong. And I hope the most of them are not going to turn students or authors by profession, nor to aim at eating their bread in the sweat of the brain. For things have already come to that pass with us, that any fool can write a book the great difficulty is in finding people who know enough and have strength enough not to attempt it.

And here let me say that the greatest institution in the world is the family; worth all the others put together, and the foundation of them all. So, again, the greatest art known among men is housekeeping, which is the life of the family. For what are we poor mortals good for, in head, heart, hand, or any thing else, without healthy, eupeptic stomachs? and how are we to have such stomachs without good cooking? So that I reckon housekeeping to be just

the last thing that any lady can afford to be ignorant of. The finest accomplishment too that woman was ever beautified with. This part of woman's education, also, is to be gained at home; it cannot be gained anywhere else. As for those young ladies who are above going into the kitchen, and learning this great art by actually working at it, my advice is, that they forthwith migrate to a world where the home and the family have no place, and where babies are not to be born and nursed.

Our girls in school, then, should, first of all, be fashioned for intelligent, thoughtful, sober-minded women; with souls attempered and attuned to the honest and ennobling delectations of the fireside; their heads furnished and disposed to be prudent, skillful, dutiful wives and mothers and housekeepers; home-loving and home-staying; formed for steady loves, serene attachments, quiet virtues, and the whole flock of household pieties; all suited to the office of

A creature not too bright or good

For human nature's daily food.

The love of home, and the art of making home lovely, must be mainly acquired in the works and enjoyments of home; and the best thing that the school can do is to coöperate with the home to that end.

But the most important item in this account, and that which is the main subject of what I have to say, is yet to

come.

We have reached a stage of civilization and general culture in which both the virtue and the happiness of people depend very much on their intellectual forming and furnishing. And as this holds true alike of both sexes, so both will be included alike in the scope of what I have in mind to

speak further. Books, of one sort or another, are now, on every hand, a common resort for entertainment and pleasure, and are likely to become more and more so. Wealth has greatly accumulated; machinery has come to do a large part of our work; and all sorts of people have more or less of leisure on their hands. This leisure ought not to be spent in idleness, neither will it be. In the vacancy of their hands people's thoughts will needs be busy either for the better or for the worse: if their minds are not dressed for the abode of the Deity, they will be workshops of the Devil. And reading does in fact bear a large part in filling up such vacant time.

Now the world is getting full of devils, very potent ones too, in the shape of foolish and bad books. And I am apt to think the foolish devils in that shape even worse than the wicked for they only begin the work of evil somewhat further off, so as to come at it the more surely; and a slow creeping infection is more dangerous than a frank assault. Nothing so bad here as that which eludes or seduces the moral sentinels of the heart. I am not exactly a believer in the old doctrine of total depravity; but I fear it must be confessed that the greater number of people take much more readily to that which is false and bad than to that which is good and true. Certainly what intoxicates and lowers stands a better chance with them than what sobers and elevates. Virtue and wisdom are an up-hill road, where they do not advance without some effort; folly and vice a down-hill path, where it requires some effort not to advance. quite as true in intellectual matters as in moral. Here, to most people, delight in what is false and bad comes spontaneously; delight in what is true and good is the slow result of discipline and care, and grows by postponement of impulse to law.

And this is

I suspect it has been taken for granted much too generally, that if people know how to read they will be apt enough to make good use of that knowledge without further concern. A very great mistake! This faculty is quite as liable to abuse as any other probably there is none other more sadly abused at this very time; none that needs to be more carefully fenced about with the safeguards of judgment and taste. Through this faculty crowds of our young people are let into the society of such things as can only degrade and corrupt, and, to a great extent, are positively drawn away from the fellowship of such as would elevate and correct. Most, probably not less than seven-eighths, of the books now read are simply a discipline of debasement; ministering fierce stimulants and provocatives to the lower propensities, and habituating the thoughts to the mud and slime of literary cesspools and slop-cooks.

I have indeed no faith in the policy or the efficacy of attempting to squelch these springs of evil by forcible sequestration, or to keep people from eating this poor devil-soup by muzzling them. If they will take to it, probably the best way is to let them have it; perhaps it is best to act somewhat on the plan of glutting them with it, in the hope that so they may outgrow it but something might well be essayed so to fit and prepare them as that they may not take to it, and may even turn away from it with disgust when it comes to them. Surely, at all events, the education that delivers people over to such feeding is a very doubtful good.

In view of all which, it is clearly of the highest consequence, that from their early youth people should have their minds so bent and disposed as to find pleasure in such books as are adapted to purify and raise. I say pleasure, because we cannot rely, neither ought we, on arguments of right in

this matter. Reading even good books without pleasure, and merely from a sense of duty, is of little benefit, and may even do hurt, by breeding insensibly an aversion to what is good, and by investing it with irksome associations. A genial delight in that which is good is what sets the colours of it in the mind without this, the mind grows at odds with it. People cannot be droned or bored into virtue; and if evil were made as tedious to them as good often is, I suspect their hearts would soon be weaned from ugliness, and won to a marriage with beauty. And the pith of my argument is, that it is what people take pleasure in that really shapes and determines their characters. So experience has taught me that the characters of students in college are influenced far more by their reading than by their studies. From the books they take to you may judge at once whither their spirits are tending, and what they are inwardly made of, because here they generally go by free choice and pleasure. In brief, they study what they must; they read what they love; and their souls are and will be in the keeping of their loves. Even the breath of excellence is apt to be lost, if it be not waited on by delight; while, to love worthy objects, and in a worthy manner, is the top and crown of earthly good, ay, and of heavenly good also. Considering how clear and evident all this is, that so little is done, even in our highest seats of learning, to form the tastes and guide the reading of students, may well be matter of grief and astonishment. I have long wondered at it, and often sickened over it.

Now, to fence against the growing pestilence of foolish and bad books, I know of but one way; and that is by endeavouring systematically so to familiarize the young with the best and purest mental preparations, and so to prepossess them with the culture of that which is wholesome and good,

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