CHAPTER XXII.

THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN.

The Horse Trainer's Method. The Training Which Develops Talents. When Child-training Should Begin.-The Training of Her Children the Mother's All-important Calling.-The Influence of the Mother's Own Character and Life.-The Children Imitators of their Parents.-Importance of Earliest Training. Spoiled Children. Children's Rights.-The Proper Correction of Children.Broken Promises and Parental Falsehoods.-Value of Tact in Parental Discipline.-Value of Parental Sympathy.-The Mother, Herself, the Best Gift to Her Children.-The Choice of Books and Stories. The Choice of Companions for the Children.Toys, Sports and Amusements.-An Appeal to Mothers.

MOLDING THE CLAY.

Within their tiny hands my children hold
A ball of yielding clay,

And, as they try some dainty form to mold,
I hear them softly say,

"What shall we make? an apple or a vase?
Some marbles, or a fan?"

One little boy, a smile upon his face,

Says, "I shall make a man."

Straightway, with lengthened face, he, at his

task,

Begins, and 'neath the hands

Unskilful, weak, and yet too proud to ask

For aid, a form expands,

Crude, and yet not too poor to show the man
Hid in the maker's thought —
How different yet if some skilled artisan

The ball of clay had wrought.

To-day within my hands my children lie,

I shape them as I will,

And seek for aid from Him that is on high,

That He may with His skill

Teach my weak, willing hands to rightly mold
The clay that I have sought,

That in true forms of beauty may unfold

The Maker's highest thought.

-TRANSCRIPT.

"I regretted that you had no child, because I thought your heart would not receive that education for heaven which the care of children alone can give. You are surprised perhaps, for you are thinking only of educating your child; but let me tell you that we parents are as much indebted to our children as they to us."-ANNA E. PORTter.

"Who is sufficient for these things?"

IN a recent magazine article, on the training of horses, I found the following: "The thoroughly competent trainer considers the colt's individuality and breeding, for upon

these depend the measures to be taken to develop the animal into a race-horse. Every good or bad quality in a race-horse is inherited from sire or dam; courage, endurance, extreme speed, action, ability to carry weight, soundness or unsoundness, good or bad temper, all these are matters of inheritance, and must be carefully looked for by the trainer as he develops his horses. The trainer is constantly devising schemes to counteract the faults and to make the best use of the good points of his horses.

"The making of a thoroughbred race-horse cannot be called an exact science. It develops, however, an amount of patience, courage and self-denial that is rarely engendered in callings better understood and more highly esteemed by the general public. The trainer's life is a hard one and vicarious in the extreme."

It strikes me that in this we, as parents and teachers, have a grand suggestion in the right training of children. With us a vicarious life would count for the coming generations of the human family.

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it," has been invested with a new meaning to me these past few years. It not only

means train him up in the correct moral way, reverencing things sacred, respecting father and mother, being a pleasing child, a good son, a law-abiding citizen, a blessing to home and society; but it means as well, train him up in the way he was intended to go, from the endowment of birth, heredity and education. In other words do not warp, from his birth, a mechanic by trying to make a minister of him. Do not try to crowd a farmer into a lawyer's mold. Do not attempt to train into a carpenter one who is a born artist. Do not force your boys and girls through a literary college, if a bent in some particular direction inclines them toward a technical education. In short, "Train up a child in the way he should go," as well as in the way he should go.

The mother of the Wesleys was once asked when she should begin to train the little three months' old baby she held in her arms. "Begin?" she replied, "why I began three months ago." Her answer was admirable, but she did not place the time sufficiently far back by many months. When our daughters are rightly trained, they will all the way along, from the time that marriage enters their minds, be consciously educating themselves for motherhood, and thus be in a large

measure training their little ones even before they are promised.

Does this seem too ideal to our young mothers, and not at all practical? It should not, and I believe will not when it is carefully considered. If any who reads these pages is already anticipating early motherhood they need not be discouraged, for every succeeding child should be better than the one before. Every lesson she learns in the care and training of the first children should but make her the stronger for the duties of future mothering. The trouble too often is that she allows her time and attention to be taken up with less important things, and the fixing of the earlier lessons and learning new and better ones are neglected. In other words, motherhood is not to-day considered her allimportant calling, and the little ones suffer from the mothers having fallen too deeply in love with other and less noble things.

All will agree with me, when I say, that we can only with great difficulty train in our children, what we do not know as a part of ourselves. Are you calm and self-possessed? Then you can with little effort teach your children this valuable and telling characteristic. Are you governed by reason and judgment, not impulse? Then you can train