s hearing long before he himself
had learned to read. Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in
after-life the images first presented to it. The first thing continues
for ever with the child. The first joy, the first sorrow, the
first success, the first failure, the first achievement, the first
misadventure, paint the foreground of his life.

All this while, too, the training of the character is in progress--of
the temper, the will, and the habits--on which so much of the happiness
of human beings in after-life depends. Although man is endowed with
a certain self-acting, self-helping power of contributing to his own
development, independent of surrounding circumstances, and of reacting
upon the life around him, the bias given to his moral character in early
life is of immense importance. Place even the highest-minded philosopher
in the midst of daily discomfort, immorality, and vileness, and he will
insensibly gravitate towards brutality. How much more susceptible is the
impressionable and helpless child amidst such surroundings! It is not
possible to rear a kindly nature, sensitive to evil, pure in mind and
heart, amidst coarseness, discomfort, and impurity.

Thus homes, which are the nurseries of children who grow up into men
and women, will be good or bad according to the power that governs them.
Where the spirit of love and duty pervades the home--where head and
heart bear rule wisely there--where the daily life is honest and
virtuous--where the government is sensible, kind, and loving, then
may we expect from such a home an issue of healthy, useful, and happy
beings, capable, as they gain the requisite strength, of following the
footsteps of their parents, of walking uprightly, governing themselves
wisely, and contributing to the welfare of those about them.

On the other hand, if surrounded by ignorance, coarseness, and
selfishness, they will unconsciously assume the same character, and
grow up to adult years rude, uncultivated, and all the more dangerous
to society if placed amidst the manifold temptations of what is called
civilised life. "Give your child to be educated by a slave," said an
ancient Greek, "and instead of one slave, you will then have two."

The child cannot help imitating what he sees. Everything is to him a
model--of manner, of gesture, of speech, of habit, of character. "For
the child," says Richter, "the most important era of life is that of
childhood, when he begins to colour and moul