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“Oh! happy age, when harmless pleasures please,

Gay as the lark, and fickle as the breeze:

Well may we sigh, in after years of pain,

To think that hour will never come again.

How small the grief that dims the sunny eye—

How light the thoughtless tear—how quickly dry;

A toy, a butterfly, thy smiles renew,

As from the flow’r the sunbeams chase the dew.”

Parents are too apt to overlook these, to them, unimportant little things, and it is for this reason that the author calls attention to it, and shows us that rational amusements not only develop the physical, but exert an immense influence on the intellect of the child.

The views of the author in regard to the education of the child are clearly given. In this country children are sent to school far too young. The mind is overtaxed before the body has had time to develop, and a debilitated constitution is too often the result. It is of little consequence whether a child reads at six years or not until it is ten. First develop the physical, then at the proper time the vigorous intellect will climb the hill of knowledge, leaving far behind the student whose constitution was destroyed by overcrowding the brain during the tender age of childhood.