Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/185

 Rh model mother hesitates to allow her eleven-year-old daughter to climb three rounds of a ladder, and look into a robin's nest, four feet from the ground. It was not a genteel thing for a little girl to do. Even her schoolbooks were not like her brother's schoolbooks. They were carefully adapted to her limitations. Mr. Thomas Gisborne, who wrote a much-admired work entitled "An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex," was of the opinion that geography might be taught to girls without reserve; but that they should learn only "select parts" of natural history, and, in the way of science, only a few "popular and amusing facts." A "Young Lady's Guide to Astronomy" was something vastly different from the comprehensive system imparted to her brother.

In a very able and subtle little book called "A Father's Legacy to his Daughters," by Dr. John Gregory of Edinburgh,—

—we find much earnest counsel on this subject. Dr. Gregory was an affectionate parent. He