of the physical body. Children
fed upon such diet would become weakly. There is also a certain kind of
literature that contains no brain nutriment. Reading such degenerates the
mental powers. Stimulants or excitants are hurtful to the physical system.
All fictitious, exciting tales are hurtful to the mental system. We are
persuaded it were better if the unreal, fairy stories were excluded from
our common school readers and supplanted by something real. Select such
literature as is pure. Reading that produces pure thought in the child's
mind not only improves his moral state, but furnishes the best mental
food.

Educate your children as well as you possibly can. It is a duty you owe to
them and to God. Keep before them the ultimate object--a developed mind for
the glory of God. Encourage your children to an education. Do not think
the buying of a good book an unnecessary expenditure. Better make a
physical sacrifice than a mental one. Keep your children away from the
physical, mental, moral and spiritual destructive party and dance by
interesting them in sound and pure literature and providing it for them.
If your children show a disposition to love and desire to spend the
evening at the "parties" or the "balls," get up a "reading circle" or
"composition exercise" at home. God will bless you and reward you in all
your efforts in this direction. Much more of importance could be said upon
this subject, but with these few suggestions we will leave the interested
and inventive mind to enlarge.

Moral Training.

Man is an intellectual and a moral being. By his intellectual powers he
gains a knowledge of facts. By his moral faculties he experiences a sense
of responsibility and a feeling of certain relations existing between him
and some higher power. Your child possesses an intuitive knowledge and
upon this is where your moral training begins. The little brother knows it
is wrong to injure his little sister. He does not have to acquire that
knowledge, he knows it intuitively. This is the foundation for your moral
training, and--of course--spiritual training naturally hinges upon this; but
we shall speak of that in a separate chapter.

The wisest man that ever lived said, "Train up a child in the way he
should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Prov. 22:6. So
many having failed, some have been almost persuaded to doubt this man's
wisdom. The saying is true: the failures arise from the lack of
under