cation here or anywhere else has decreased or is likely to decrease
health. And were it not for the respect which we cherish towards those
who hold it, we should say that such a position was as nearly pure
theory or prejudice or opinion founded on fragmentary data as any view
well could be.

* * * * *

But do you mean to assert that there is no such thing as intellectual
excess? that intellectual activity never injures? that unremitting
attention to mental pursuits, with an entire abstinence from proper
exercise and recreation, is positively invigorating? that robbing the
body of sleep, and bending it sixteen or eighteen hours over the desk,
is the best way to build it up in grace and strength? Of course no one
would say any such absurd things. There is a right and wrong use of
everything. Any part of the system will wear out with excessive use.
Overwork kills, but certainly not any quicker when it is overwork of the
mind than when it is overwork of the body. Overwork in the study is just
as healthful as overwork on the farm or at the ledger or in the smoky
shop, toiling and moiling, with no rest and no quickening thoughts.
Especially is it true that education does not peculiarly tempt a man to
excess.

But are you ready to maintain that there is no element of excess infused
into our common-school system? Certainly. Most emphatically there is
not. What, then, is there to put over against these terrible statements
of excessive labor of six or seven hours a day, under which young brains
are reeling and young spines are bending until there are no rosy-checked
urchins and blooming maids left among us? The inexorable logic of facts.
The public schools of Massachusetts were taught in the years 1863-4 on
an average just thirty-two weeks, just five days in a week, and, making
proper allowance for recesses and opening exercises, just five and a
quarter hours in a day. Granting now that all the boys and girls studied
during these hours faithfully, you have an average for the three hundred
and thirteen working days of the year of two hours and forty-one minutes
a day,--an amount of study that never injured any healthy child. But,
going back a little to youthful recollections, and considering the
amazing proclivity of the young mind to idleness, whispering, and fun
and frolic in general, it seems doubtful whether our children ever yet
attained to so high an average of actual study as two hours a day