but crackers and cheese, it being served daintily and with a gracious welcome, there is nothing of which to be ashamed. One's table appointments should always be such that they will bear the scrutiny of an unexpected guest. It is not advisable to permit young people to pass the night away from home; the habit is open to so many abuses.

The drama, also, by judicious selections may be employed not only for pleasure but also for profit; but parents must carefully choose plays containing the right elements. The average play is not, it is to be regretted, of an elevating character, and many are undisguisedly immoral; therefore it is most unwise to permit young girls and boys to attend them indiscriminately. There are, however, dramatic productions that are as powerful pleaders for good morals, elevated sentiment, high-minded determination, as many sermons one hears in the pulpit, and when the stage can, like good literature, exert such a potent ethical influence, it is lamentable that it does not do more in that direction. One may as well say, because there are pernicious books, that one will not read at all, as to decline to discriminate in the matter of the stage. Since the quality of the supply must under existing conditions be regulated by the demand, the present predominance of the unfit and the superficial would indicate a de

generate public taste. The drama can never become the educational elevating amusement it should be until it is subsidized by government or private endownment. It should be lifted above the pecuniary necessity of catering to the uncultured, sensuous public, under whose patronage it must continue to degenerate. All who desire its reform and its great educational possibilities should support only clean elevating plays and encourage all effort to render it independent financially.

There are many amusements harmless, even beneficial in themselves, that are condemned because of the abuse to which they are subject, but it is much wiser to strike directly at the wrong, and not let the abuse of a good thing vitiate the right and legitimate use of it.

Paul Bourget says that America's greatest social vice is her excessiveness; this is a weakness of new countries as well as of the new rich; they incline to overdo. It has its root in social rivalry, struggle for prestige, and love of display. Next to charity and self-sacrifice, moderation is the greatest social virtue, and indicates good taste, good sense, and refinement, in all who practice it.

VIII

SELF-RELIANCE

ROUTINE is the method by which the child's habits are established, but an excess of routine kills spontaneity and renders him mechanical. This was the serious defect of the old educational method; routine, unmeaning words and empty forms directed the child's mental and moral life; he was treated as a machine and no account taken of his nature or individual needs.

The basis of modern education is the unfolding of the child's powers in proportion to his age, the measuring of his ability, the arousing in him of the spirit of the pioneer and of the discoverer rather than that of an imitator. It looks toward the creation of an accountable being who understands rather than memorizes, who knows things rather than their signs.

A well regulated liberty from the first should be accorded him. That which he desires to do and which is within reason, grant at the first asking, without urging or entreaty on his part. Consent with pleasure, and refuse unwillingly, but if wisely, then also irrevocably. If his importunities cause you to yield once, he will forever after strive, by importuning, to weaken

your decisions, and this conflict and wavering between the child's and parent's will is the worst possible training; it were almost better to let the child be master all the time than for first one and then the other to assume the supremacy.

Both in thought and conduct the child should depend upon himself as much as possible; the parents should guide his thoughts rather than inflict their own on him; they should, when necessary to aid him, instruct rather than accommodate him. Parents seem to enjoy the child's dependence on them and to defer the period of self-reliance as long as possible, thinking perhaps, that the child may, at a later age, be spared the unpleasant consequences of inexperience; but as he learns mainly by experience, and cannot altogether escape the rude teacher, he in reality gains nothing by a longer period of helplessness. His faculties grow by self-activity alone, and neither his mother's perception nor her experience can be a total substitute for his own.

The more perfect the child's knowledge of the material world, the more he perceives, compares, and discovers, the relations and uses of the concrete, the greater will be his mental power when he begins to judge and to compare ideas. If he employs his own intelligence, learns by his own efforts, is not ruled by the

opinion of others, but by his reason and insight, he will attain a mental vigor and understanding which is never possessed by those who receive and depend on the authority of other people. Be his knowledge ever so little, let it be so far fundamental; let it be largely self-perceived and free from prejudice. He should understand and value at first those things that are most useful to him and depend on himself for all that is within his capabilities, for self-reliance is the basis of strength and power. While books and traditions contain valuable truth, they contain no truth which is not discernible at its source, and the child should glean his knowledge as often as is possible by his perception of the first truth whence the book was derived. He should verify opinions and traditions by passing them through the crucible of his own understanding and judgment, he should let the light of his own thought flash on the so-called truth he would re-discover, else as Emerson says, "Tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."

The child's knowledge is not large enough, his power of thought is not mature enough to create perfect or final judgments or weighty opinions, but if, during his years of training and formation he acquire the habit of a blind