annot be more usefully employed than in thus
laying the foundation of health, upon which alone can rest the physical,
mental, and moral well-being of after-life.

No greater mistake can be made by parents than to deprive the young of
the innocent pleasures of childhood. Yet there are persons occasionally
met with who think it their duty to check the natural lightness and
gaiety of heart of their children for fear that they shall become too
fond of pleasure. In this way great harm is done to both mind and body,
and the very fault created which it is desired to avoid.

The wise parent sees in the games and plays of childhood not only
necessary recreation and exercise, but a valuable means of education--of
moral, mental, and physical training. He also seeks to impress early
upon the young mind that play is most enjoyed when it has been earned by
work, and that pleasure flies from those who continually pursue it.

The faculties of _memory_ and _attention_ can be called upon and
developed by proper games in a most satisfactory manner. These exercises
are all the more effective because the pleasure conceals, as it were,
the mental labor, and the intellectual efforts are made, in a sense,
unconsciously, though none the less efficiently.

Certain plays form a valuable means of educating the eyes and other
senses. Such, for instance, are the toys which represent objects of
natural history or of different trades and arts; the pictures which
teach through the quick eye of the child what no dry descriptions could
ever convey; and the games which develope closeness of observation and
habits of order. A genial French physician has happily said, 'Every time
I see a toy based on the reproduction of a scientific fact or of an
industrial process, and which pleases while it enlightens, I feel a
sentiment of real gratitude to him who has designed it.'

We are glad to see that each year more and more attention is being paid
to the utilization, as it were, of the games of infancy. Although all
education can never be made a play, all play can be made an effective
education. Do not therefore, reader, restrict the games of your
children, but direct them; do not render them less amusing, but seek to
make them more instructive.

The schooling afforded by instructive plays should be the only schooling
of the first seven years of life. Late springs produce the most abundant
harvests in the mind as in the field. Precocious and delicate children