396

Moral and Religious Instruction.

After the evening religious services were performed, the children went to bed, and were soon locked in sleep. And the mother, what was now her occupation? To examine her boys' clothes, and see that they were in order for the next day; to wash the spots from their woollen garments; to go through the arduous duty of inspection and repair, where ingenuity and industry are to supply the place of materials, Nobody understood better the use of a " stitch in time;" and no garment was ever lost by want of attention. These duties often carried her late into the night; and the light of her little candle often expired, before her hour of sleep came. But her occupation was one which left her thoughts free; and who shall say what incense they carried towards heaven?

Was this a day of the mother's life? It is only an outline. How much remains untold,-how much of warning, of tender solicitude, of maternal soothing for the aching head! Who that has travelled the long life of toil and disappointment, has not sighed to lay his head in his mother's lap, and become again a little child?

We have given this imperfect sketch, because we think every mother in this land of blessings has the power of accomplishing as much. Mrs Colman was Bible-taught, and taught her children from the Bible.

She did not narrow this sphere of teaching to the letter of the book; but she sought out its sense and spirit. She taught her children, that out of the first great command, of love to God, grew that of love to our neighbor; spoke of the duties they owed their fellow-men; enforced the gratitude they ought to feel for the protection they received from the government and the community; for the laws that guarded their lives; for the voluntary associations that were formed by individuals for the good of the whole; for the proper coercion of the vicious; for stateprisons, hospitals, lunatic asylums and almshouses. "Remember," said she, "that though some of these regulations may press hard upon individuals, they are formed for the good of the whole. Never, my boys, suffer yourselves to be excited by factious spirits, who clamor forth their wrongs, forgetful of the advantages they are daily receiving. Never lose sight of the duty you owe your country; consider her as your second mother, and bear her always on your heart. Every one may do something for the support of the community. Cheerfully give your money, if you are rich; and if you are poor, your labor."

Influence of Grandparents.

397

ERRORS IN FAMILY EDUCATION.

THE ruin of children by grandparents is proverbial. They sympathise with them too much, when any little disaster b fa is them. They pity them when the parent has punished them, and sometimes manifest their pity in the presence of the children. They help them, when it would be far better that they should help themselves; and perhaps, too, when it is a part of the parent's plan that they should help themselves. They give them white bread when the parent prefers they should have brown; butter when the parent prefers molasses; a luncheon when the parent prefers they should wait for dinner; and kisses, when the parent, as a punishment, wishes them to keep them for a time, at a distance. Hard hearted parents! many a grandmother has thought, if she did not say it; and so has given the poor thing, by stealth, some plums, or sweetmeats, though in other instances, when the humor was otherwise, she would complain most bitterly, of parental indulgence, and only wish the children were hers that she might flog them at her leisure; at least, till her temper had time to cool.

But why this almost universal conflict of parents and grandparents, in the government and management of children? Is it that the latter are maliciously disposed? Is it that they are obstinate? Is it that they are, in every instance, unfitted by their age for the management of the young? Is it that they feel less regard for the reputation and usefulness and happiness of grandchildren?

We do not believe it is either of these, or the union of any or all of them. We believe that, as a general rule, an individual is quite as fit to govern and manage children at the age when the author of his nature intended he should become a grandparent, as at any other. Or, rather, we believe that his accumulated experience, in managing his own children, has fitted him to aid them in their new task, in a way which, considering their own want of experience, is of the utmost importance to them. In short, we consider the influence of both as indispensable the grandparent and the parent.

Is it possible to believe, that after fifteen or twenty years of experience in managing a family of children-after having just acquired the art of disciplining and educating-we are to lay aside that experience as useless? True, the younger members of our families, where a family is large, do not get through our hands in exactly twenty years; but, in general, the principal part of parental labor in governing children, as commonly ap

393

Family Board of Education.

plied, is over at about the age of fifty. At this period, every sensible parent has acquired a fund of information-to say nothing of his tact in applying it—which for ten, fifteen, or twenty years longer, till he begins to descend to his second childhood, would be exceedingly valuable. Is this to be thrown away? Can it be right to suffer it to be thrown away? Yet thrown away it must be, generally speaking, if the individual has nothing to do with the education of his grandchildren. We except, of course, the cases where aged people adopt a cid or two from other families, or from the streets.

If there is nothing to be learned in relation to this subject from the fact that the patriarch Joseph assisted in the education of his grandchildren, and from the fact little less obvious that Jacob and other patriarchs co-operated with their sons, as long as they lived under the same roof with them, in the management of their descendants; still, is there nothing to be learned from the nature of the case? If a person has served an apprenticeship of thirty years in learning a trade, and is now just fitted to practise the employment with skill, is it right for him to throw it aside, and do nothing at all? Is it not a waste? What sort of wisdom would it be, in a community, to employ apprentices only, and utterly refuse or set aside inaster workmen? But how much greater is the wisdom of that community which refuses the services of grandparents, in the education of its children! Yet such, in effect, is the wisdom of our own.

The principal objection to all this reasoning is, that the grandparents seldom concur with the parents in regard to the proper methods of management and government; and that they thus do more of harm than good by their attempts to render assistance. This, however, is only to repeat a fact so well known that it has long ago passed into a proverb, and with the announcement of which we commenced the present article. The question is, whether this want of concurrence is necessary; and whether parents and grandparents may not be led to act in harmony. If they cannot, then the objection has weight. We believe that they can.

It is said that the grandparent is apt to set up his own judgment and skill as superior to that of the parent. To this we reply, that this is seldom if ever done until the parent has set himself above the grandparent. Bring us an instance in which the parent has been accustomed to consult the grandparent from the very first, and to make him a distinguished memberthe president-of a board of education for the household, whose council meetings are held daily ;-bring us an instance, we say, in which the elder members of this family board have greatly

Examples and Illustrations.

399

transcended their powers, as a thing of daily habit, and we will consent to give up our opinion at once. It is because we first shut them out of our councils, that they hold a conclave of their own; or what is just the same thing, are governed in their management of our children, whenever they come in contact with them, by different views from those which actuate us, their more immediate parents.

Philosophers say that the love of grandparents for grandchildren is almost as intense as their love for their own children ever was; and this notwithstanding the arbitrary practices of society which so often separate the young from the old. For are they not thus separated, as a general fact? Is it common for an aged pair, from fifty to seventy or eighty, to live in the families of their descendants-and to eat, drink, and converse with them from day to day, in the most familiar manner? Is it not said either that the old dislike the noise of childhood, or that they ruin children by indulgence?-both of which, however, are natural effects of the same cause.

Did young parents rejoice that their aged parents are still living to assist them, by their accumulated experience, in the important duties which now begin to devolve upon them; and did they avail themselves, with eagerness, of their advice, and, at times of their assistance-were they, in short, in the habit of consulting with them from day to day, in deliberating on the various points in relation to the child's management, what an effect it would have on its conduct and character? Whatever is best administered is best,' is at least as true in relation to family government as any other; and we cannot bring ourselves to doubt that inferior management, if co-operated in, is better than a superior course or mode of management about which there is disagreement of opinion, and consequently inconsistency of practice.

To illustrate our views by a few examples. We can easily conceive that aged grandparents might have doubts of the utility of a child's playing in the open air, in the piazza or door yard, without a hat on, while the parents might wish to have it do so; and might be able to justify the practice on the authority of a judicious medical adviser. But if not apprised of the existence of a medical prescription of this kind, nothing would be more natural than for the aged grandmother, in the overflowing of a kind heart, to seize every opportunity, in the absence of its immediate parents, to put on a thick heavy hat. As a consequence, not only the plan of the physician would be defeated, but the child's head might be kept hot, perhaps in a profuse perspiration, an hour or two; after which the hat is

400

Wisdom of Grandmothers.

taken off by the father or mother, and he is sent out, just at evening when the dew is beginning to fall, or a damp south wind to arise, to play without a hat, and perhaps to take a cold, whose effects, in the end, may cost him his life.

Or the child may be troubled with a complaint which renders it necessary for the physician to prohibit, for a short time, the use of butter, as well as the use of all food between his regular meals. Of this prohibition the good grandmother knows nothing. She only observes that the poor child eats dry bread, and in the exuberance of her love and pity, she seizes every opportunity to give him a nice slice of bread and butter. She thus, at a single blow, transgresses both rules of the physician; and not only defeats his purpose, but leads him to consider the disease obstinate, and instead of pursuing nature's plan any longer, to take the disease out of nature's hands, and unnecessarily expose the child's system to the action of poisonous drugs and medicines.

Perhaps these examples are sufficient to show what we mean; though they might be multiplied indefinitely. How much better would it be, that the grand parents should understand, and have an opportunity-to say the least-of co-operating in the general plan for the management of the child! Is there one grandmother in a hundred, who, in the cases we have mentioned, would counteract the united efforts of parents and physician? What motive has she to injure the child? And what reason has she to be obstinate? Does she not love the child, and seek its best good, according to her own judgment of the case?

What is wanted-we repeat it-is that parents and grandparents should co-operate in the work of education. It should be the leading business of both. At present the education of children is made a very small and unimportant concern. They are dressed in the morning-by whom, and how? Sometimes by the parent; sometimes by a hireling; sometimes well, and sometimes ill; usually however, in accordance with the fashion and the parents' convenience. One advantage to be hoped from the co-operation of grandmothers with mothers in the work of education, is a check to certain pernicious modes of torture which prevail, and which are so fashionable that most young mothers have not moral courage enough to oppose them.

But we are wandering; let us return. Children we say are dressed according to fashion. They are then breakfasted according to fashion, modified by convenience. Next they are sent to school, according to fashion. There is no thought—no anxiety about it, nor about the other things of which their lives are All is a heartless routine; and if it is not a monoto

made up.