Physical culture, heretofore neglected among us--the body being left to grow up as it may happen or chance--will form a prominent feature of training in every well-ordered school. All the muscles of the body will be in turn exercised, developed. The ancient Greeks afforded us here also a wise example, which we have signally failed to imitate.
Let us secure for our children all the advantages we can from an enlightened and natural system of education, and do all we can to perfect both mind and body. How often is the cry repeated, "Mamma, tell me a story," and mamma, tired and weary, says she is too busy, or, for the want of a better, tells over again for the hundredth time, "Little Red Riding Hood," or some other equally foolish or more injurious tale, such as Bluebeard or Cinderella. Anecdotes of great men, suitably arranged, events in history and biography, carrying with them valuable and important morals, will afford all the amusement the child desires, without developing a love for the marvellous and false, which leads it away in infancy from the simple, truthful, and natural. If children are to be taught to think naturally and truthfully, we can not begin too young, and it is the duty of parents to remember that Valentine and Orson, Cinderella, Bluebeard, and such stories, are a web of false and exaggerated statements that will, and do produce injurious effects upon the child's mind. The story of Aladdin's Lamp has made many a child desire to enjoy wealth without labor, and has exerted a most pernicious, though unsuspected, influence upon his future. Children, not less than men, seek an easy road to the objects of their desires; and while works of imagination are to be by no means discarded in mental training, such should not be selected as give false notions of the busy and industrial life into which the child is to be introduced. Even in the choice and use of the finest works of fiction, the greatest caution is necessary. The little one can hardly distinguish between a fable that amuses it, and a lie told to shield it from punishment. If it hear nothing but truth, it will know nothing but truth; and a truthful mind is a glorious thing to behold in children as in men. "An idle brain is the devil's workshop;" therefore let there be no idle brains, but let all work usefully and pleasantly. Usefully we say, for even amusement is useful. We live in a world of use, in a world of beauty, a world that can be greatly improved, and human happiness largely increased, according as we avail ourselves of the knowledge already acquired for the right teaching and training of the young, so that they may grow up and develop into happy, self-supporting men and women, diffusing happiness to all around, themselves happy in proportion to the happiness they cause.