formed in due proportion and harmony, where this separation
long exists.] There are tremendous cases of declension on record, which
establish this point beyond the possibility of debate.

To say that the mother--and indeed both parents--ought to form a part of
the playing circle of the youngest children, in order to watch their
opening dispositions, to check what may be improper, and encourage what
ought to be encouraged, would be only to repeat what has often been
recommended by the best writers on education--but which must be
repeated, again and again, till it leaves an impression, especially on
CHRISTIAN parents. It is strange that many regard this matter as they
do, and appear not only ashamed to be seen sporting with their children,
but almost ashamed to have their children thus occupied. They might as
well be ashamed of the gambols of the kitten or the lamb; or of the
grave mother, as she turns aside occasionally to join in its frolics.
When will parents be willing to take lessons in education from that
brute world which they have been so long accustomed to overlook or
despise?

CHAPTER XVIII.

EMPLOYMENTS.

Influence of mothers over daughters. Anecdote of Benjamin West. Anecdote
of a poor mother. Of set lessons and lectures. Daughters under the
mother's eye. Why young ladies, now-a-days, dislike domestic
employments. Miserable housewives--not to be wondered at. Mistake of one
class of men. Mr. Flint's opinion.

One important and never-to-be-forgotten employment of the young is the
cultivation of their minds; and another, that of their morals. But my
present purpose is only to speak of those employments denominated
manual, or physical.

It is obvious, at the first glance, that the influence of the mother, in
our own country, at least, will be less over boys than over girls. We
leave it to savages and semi-savages to employ their females, and even
their mothers, in hard manual labor. Here, in America, what I should say
on the employment of boys would be more properly addressed to the YOUNG
FATHER.

There are some exceptions to the general truth contained in the last
paragraph. Many a mother has--unconsciously at the time, but with no
less certainty than if she had done it intentionally--given a direction
to the whole current of her son's life; and this, too, at a very early
period. The mother of Benjamin West, the painter, if she did not give
the first tendency to his favorite pursuit, while he was