ork itself--is just what is needed
to transform a healthy young girl into a nervous invalid. This is
especially true, if she undertakes, as she usually does, to study
music when she is about thirteen years old--the very time when, if
wise physicians could regulate affairs to their liking, she would be
taken out of school altogether and required to do nothing more than a
little light housework every day.

[Sidenote: Natural Talent]

Of course, if she is naturally musical some kind of help and sympathy
must be given her in her attempt to master the piano or violin or to
manage her own voice. But while she should be allowed to learn as
much as her unurged energies permit her to learn, she should not be
required to practice more than a very small amount, say half an hour
a day. The bulk of her musical education should be acquired in
the vacation time, when she can give two hours a day without
overstraining.

The same general rules hold good of dancing, painting, the
acquirements of foreign languages, a special course of reading, or
any other work undertaken in addition to the regular school work. This
latter, as it is now constituted, is quite as severe a nervous and
intellectual strain as most young people can undergo with safety.

[Sidenote: "Enthusiasms"]

There is one characteristic in young people which needs to be noted in
this connection:--the desire to take up some form of work, to strive
with it furiously for a brief while, to drop it unfinished; take up
another with equal eagerness, drop that in turn and go on to a third.
This performance is peculiarly irritating to all systematic and
ambitious parents. Sometimes they rigidly insist that each task shall
be finished before a new one is assumed. But in reality, is this
necessary? It seems to be as natural for a young mind to set eagerly
to work for a short time at each new bit of knowledge, as it is for a
nursing child to require refreshments every two or three hours. It is
an adult trait to stick to a task, even though a very long one, until
it is accomplished. The youthful trait is to take kindly to a clutter
of unfinished tasks.

The youthful consciousness is of a world full of jostling interests.
Why not let the children alone, and allow them to spring lightly from
one enthusiasm to another? Of course you will help them to finish,
either at the first sitting or at the second or at the third, the task
that was undertaken when that particular enthusiasm wa