, perhaps,
among the Jews, in the earliest periods of the history of that wonderful
nation--a strange disposition to overlook the happiness of the young. It
is not necessary to represent this dereliction as peculiar to modern
times, for we find traces of the same thing thousands of years ago.

The Roman emperors--Dioclesian in particular--could make provision for
bathing, to an extent which now astonishes us; but for whom? For whom, I
repeat it, was incurred the enormous expense of fitting up and keeping
in repair accommodations for bathing at once 18,000 people? For adults;
and for adults alone. I do not say that children were not admitted, in
any case; but I say they were not contemplated in these arrangements.
Nothing was done--not a single thing--that would not have been done, had
there been no child under ten years of age in the whole empire.

And what better than this do WE, now? We make provision for the
happiness of the adult. The most indigent person will find time and
money to spend for the gratification of his own senses, his pride, or
his curiosity; but his children--they may be overlooked! Or, if he has
an eye to the future happiness of his child, he conceives that he is
promoting it in the best possible degree, by endeavoring to lay up a few
dollars for his use, after his character is formed--at a period, as it
too often happens, when money will do him little good, since it can
neither purchase health, peace of mind, nor reputation.

Far be it from me to say, that the poor--ground into the dust as they
are, by the force of circumstances operating with their own concurrence,
to make them ignorant, vicious, or miserable--can do for their children
all that is desirable. By no means. But they have it in their power to
do much more than they are at present doing. They have it in their
power, at least, to use the same good sense in the management of the
human being that they do in that of a pig, a calf, or a colt, or even a
young vegetable. No parent, let him be ever so poor, is found in the
habit of neglecting either of these in proportion to its infancy, and of
exerting himself only in proportion as it grows older. Common sense
tells him that the contrary is the true course; that however poor he may
be, he will be still poorer, if he do not take special pains with the
young animal, to rear it and with the young vegetable, to give it the
right direction, by keeping down the weeds, and pruning and watering it.