out. Poor little child! she
will be dieted soon enough on "stewed prunes." Children need air and
water,--milk and water won't do. They are longing for our common mother
earth, in the dear, familiar form of dirt; and it is no matter how much
dirt they get on them, if they only have water enough to wash it off.
The more they are allowed to eat literal dirt now, the less metaphorical
dirt will they eat a few years hence. The great Free-Soil principle is
good for their hearts, if not for their clothes; and which is it more
important to have clean? Just make up your mind to let the clothes go;
and if you can't afford to have your children soil and tear their laced
pantalets and plumed hats and open-work stockings, why, take off all
those devices of the enemy, and substitute stout cloth and stout boots.
What have they to do with open-work stockings?

"Doff them for shame,
And hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs."

Believe now, instead of learning by sad experience, that tin trumpets
and torn clothes do not necessarily signify depravity, and that quiet
children are not always free from deceit, cruelty, and meanness. The
quiet, ideal child, of whom Mr. Abbott thinks so highly, generally
proves, in real life, neither more nor less than a prig. He is more
likely to die than live; and if he lives, you may wish he had died.

These models not only check a child's spirit, but tend to make him
dishonest. Ask a child now what he thinks, and, ten to one, he mentally
refers to some eminent exemplar of all the virtues for instructions,
and, instead of telling you what he does think, quotes listlessly what
he ought to think. So that his mincing affectation is not merely
ungraceful, but is a sign of an inward taint, which may prove fatal to
the whole character. It is very easy to make a child disingenuous; if he
be at all timid, the work is already half done to one's hand. Of course,
all children are not bad who are brought up on such books,--one
circumstance or another may counteract their hurtful tendency,--but the
tendency is no less evident, nor is it a vindication of any system to
prove that some are good in its despite.

Again, the popularity of these tame, spiritless books is no conclusive
evidence of their merit. The poor children are given nothing else to
read, and, of course, they take what they can get as better than
nothing. An eager child, fond of reading, will read the shipping
intelligence in a newspaper, if