Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/814

794 too, must be varied according to the age and tastes of the child. Rightly presented, any one of the subjects named will soon win the respect, love, and enthusiasm of any child not hopelessly spoiled by too early dissipation in artificial social life. Such studies are one of the best correctives of this evil, and I have seen them cure some painful cases of it.

To a school where I was teaching there once came a child of nine, with manner and face plainly stamped with artificial life, and for weeks her teachers despaired of ever seeing any genuine, simple feeling. The child did not for a moment lose a painful self-consciousness which did not forget to air her charms at the entrance of a visitor, or when she wore a new article of apparel, as she frequently did. The first time she was asked to make a bill of materials which she might buy—materials of any kind—simply to show how bills are written, her bill began:

and proceeded through eight or ten similar items of fancy and expensive dress. After our first vacation of one week this child returned with a glad, eager look on her face, and, going close to her teacher, said: "I am so glad school has begun again. There is nothing interesting going on at home." From that day her manner gradually changed; she came to love the stones, flowers, and animals wmich we studied, and her face lost its blank, soulless look and became sweet and gentle. This change in expression was so marked as to be spoken of by a frequent visitor.

Materials for study in any department of natural science are so abundant that it seems almost unnecessary to touch upon this topic. The greater abundance of botanical and zoological material in summer invites to those studies at that season, while physical and chemical studies may quite as well receive attention in winter; but with care and a small outlay in money any of these studies may be pursued at any season. A window garden, where a child may plant seeds at varying intervals and then pull them up and examine the whole plant at different stages of growth, is possible at any season; but this had better be done in early spring, when the vegetation starting out of doors increases the interest of the child and supplements his work.

The preservation of materials and the formation of collections are important. Encourage the child's efforts in this direction. Let the boys and girls make shelves, boxes, or cabinets in which to keep the collections. A set of wood-working tools and ability to use them will be a useful adjunct to natural-science study.

Whatever a child collects should be received with a smile of encouragement, no matter how worthless it is, until he has gained some power of discrimination. Let a mother refrain from