Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/58

 permeated by Protestantism. A little child was once asked why John was such a good man, and the answer came swiftly: "Because he was a Baptist." That is the right spirit, and I want to see it diffused through all that we teach our children. I want the children to grow up with the love of the healthier England of to-day; I would sternly restrain the teachers who proposed to bewilder those infant minds with the catalogue of crimes and villainies which masquerade as history. It may be necessary for them to learn these things, when they are older: when in the poet's words "shadows of the penitentiary" close around them; it is, unfortunately, necessary that we should make ourselves acquainted with many forms of evil as we descend through the vale of life. But why should we perplex and distress these tender little souls with the "deeds which are little short of ruffianism"—to use the words of the author I quoted a little while ago? We do not teach the little ones the story of Charles Peace or of Sixteen-String Jack, we do not force them to acquire the