Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/774

762 write by encouraging children to send play-letters to each other, or to absent members of the family. Governesses have hitherto steadily set their faces against their pupils' learning to write in any but the orthodox way of copying a foolish sentence, with long words, in a ruled book. They persist in saying that allowing them to scribble in their own way on stray pieces of paper or on a slate "cramps" their hands, and prevents them from ever learning to spell correctly. This is a pernicious and widespread delusion. Even if the notion had any truth in it, all objections might be got over by encouraging the children to copy printed letters — an excellent plan by the way to form a legible hand. There is nothing that cultivates a boy so rapidly and in so satisfactory a direction as being able to put into writing anything he wants to say. The inscription so oddly composed, so phonetically spelled, which adorns the fly-leaf of the Tennyson presented last birthday to his mother, the first lisping numbers in which mine rhymes to Valentine, the magniloquent prose epitaph on a dog or canary bird loved and lost — all such things maybe utterly ridiculous, and may bring a blush in after years to the downy cheek, but the time devoted to their composition was not thrown away. It is very desirable that when a boy goes to school writing home should present no difficulties. A few lines in pencil to tell how he has gained a place in his class, or had a splendid paper-hunt, the power of easily replying to a little sister's letter, will keep up the close ties of home which ought not to be undervalued. We have known educated gentlemen who would rather walk a mile to answer a letter than write half-a-dozen lines. The strange compositions that may often be seen in the newspapers, with respectable names appended to them, show how very useful a little early education and practice in letter-writing would be to public men. A little practical knowledge of arithmetic also is very easily acquired. The first three rules can be taught by a few pieces of paper torn up and made into sums, so as to give the pupil something more than an abstract idea of what figures mean. Many young men get into debt because they have never been accustomed to manage an allowance; everything has  been paid for them. The number of pence in a shilling, of shillings in a pound, is not to be acquired by learning tables, but by spending money and keeping an account of it. The boy who is accustomed to provide himself with certain articles out of a fixed sum will, by the time he is grown up, have an idea of what things cost. A regular allowance can scarcely be begun too soon. Parents might perhaps confide to their elder children the actual state of their finances more frequently than they do. They would often be rewarded for their confidence by a sense of chivalry amongst the boys preventing them from spending at college more than was necessary. The lads would be ashamed to encroach, as they so often do, on the slender portions laid by for their sisters. In families not engaged in business there is no possible reason why the children should not know a good deal about income and expenditure. A profound mystery is generally made of the subject. The consequence is that the young people think their father is a sponge full of gold-dust, out of whom as much money as possible is to be squeezed. They are often greatly surprised when upon his death they find how little remains to be divided amongst them.

To be shut up in a small town house during wet weather with half-a-dozen youths home for the holidays is not always heaven upon earth. The principal use they make of their fingers is to produce disagreeable and unearthly noises. Their feet are employed in wearing out the carpets and shuffling on and off their slippers. They cannot even strum a popular tune on the piano to amuse themselves, nor join together in a simple glee. Writing letters they find such hard work that they would prefer to spend a day on the treadmill rather than compose one. Reading is a bore after the story books have been exhausted. To get up a charade would be too much trouble, and in order to kill time they are reduced to counting the raindrops on the window and beggar my neighbour, or to teasing their sisters and playing practical jokes upon the servants. It is not to schools that we ought to look for the practical and primary education which is imperatively necessary for boys who are to make their own way in the world in this country or in the colonies. It ought to be given at home, principally before they go to school, but partly during the long vacations which are now the rule. No doubt the boys will grumble at having to work in the holidays which are all too short for the amount of listless lounging, the busy idleness which must be crammed 