the measure of life meted out
to them is limited and insufficient. In other cases, the individuals,
first yielding in their own persons, are the victims of positive vice,
or of some of the evils stated. Civilization is not an unmixed good; and
we cannot offer to the city or the factory any adequate compensation for
the loss of pure water, pure air, and the healthful exercise of body,
which may be enjoyed in the country villages and agricultural districts
of the state.

Yet even in cities and large towns the culture of home and school should
diminish these evils; and it is a pleasure to believe that our system of
domestic and public education is doing something at the present moment
in behalf of the too much neglected body; but nowhere, either in city or
country, do we observe the evidences of juvenile health and strength
that a friend of the race would desire to see. And it is, I fear,
specially true of schools, and to some extent it is true of teachers, as
a class, that too little attention is given to those exercises and
habits which secure good health. There are many causes which tend to
lower the average health and strength of our people. 1st. The practice
of sending children to school at the tender age of five, four, or even
three years. Every school necessarily imposes some restraint upon the
pupils; and I assume that no child under five years of age should be
subject to such restraints. But the education of the child is not,
therefore, to be neglected. Parents, brothers and sisters, may all do
something for the young inquirer; but he should never have lessons
imposed, nor be subject to the rules of a school of any description. The
moment of his admission must be determined by circumstances, and the
force of the circumstances must be judged of by parents. If a child is
blessed with kind, considerate, intelligent parents, the first eight
years of his life can be spent nowhere else as profitably as at home.
The true mother is the model teacher. No other person can ever acquire
the control over her off-spring that is her own rightful possession.
When she neglects the trust confided to her, she is guilty of a serious
wrong; and when she transfers it to another, she takes upon herself a
greater responsibility than she yields up. The instinctive judgment of
the world cannot be an erroneous judgment. The mother has always, to a
great extent, been made responsible for the child; and the honor of his
virtues or the disgrac