Is this not an assumption by the State of most, if not all, the duties that belong to parents? Who better than they can teach "courtesy of manner, politeness of speech, refinement of thought, and genuine culture of life"? Who better than they can inspire them "with the spirit of honesty, with the love of truth and purity, with integrity of thought and action"? Who better than they can see to it that "children are taught the highest and purest morality"? The association of parents with a child is constant and extends over many years; that of any public-school teacher, intermittent and very brief. There are the ties of an affection that bind them to it and impel it to obey them that do not exist, except feebly, between it and the teacher. These ties are of the utmost importance. Nothing should ever be said or done to weaken them. On the contrary, everything should be said and done to strengthen them for use in the guidance of the footsteps during impressionable years. It was by the pursuit of this course that Alphonse Daudet was enabled to enjoy the complete and loving confidence of his children as long as they remained under the parental roof, and to shape their lives in a way that, when they passed from his wise and gentle direction, there was no tendency to revert to barbarism, such as we see today everywhere in the United States.
If an end is to be put to this evil, the preaching and practice of the vicious doctrines that pervade the address of Superintendent Skinner must cease. When any work for the betterment of the moral and physical welfare of children is to be undertaken, it must not be thrown upon the State, which has come to consist of nothing more than the politicians, whose violation of all the virtues he enumerates with such eloquence is the theme of countless philippics in pulpit, press, and conversation; it must be assumed by parents, who alone have the power to inculcate those virtues with any degree of success. While we do not believe with Professor Norton that there should be a restoration of Puritan discipline with the theology left out, we do believe that there must be a restoration of Puritan responsibility toward children, tempered with love and unfailing patience. It will lead parents to assume a vastly larger share in the work of education than they now do, thus strengthening the ties of affection so potent for moral control, and making it impossible for children to desire or parents to allow them to go on the streets to take "their first lessons in hoodlumism."
SPECIAL BOOKS.
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN KIPLING'S WORK.
The collected edition of Mr. Kipling's prose and verse[1] published by the Messrs. Scribner presents the successful execution of a singularly felicitous idea. The Soldiers Three stories, which first made known the appearance of a new genius, were scattered in various legitimate and pirated editions like the tales of social and of native life in India. Even the Jungle Books
- ↑ The Works of Rudyard Kipling. Outward Bound Edition. Large 12mo. Uncut, gilt top. Illustrated by Lockwood Kipling. Volumes I to X. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
