Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/37

32 The wisest women are not always best acquainted with the language of infant thought, nor is it the most pious who are quickest to delect the indications of peculiar character and temperament in early life. It is a lamentable fact, that half the excellent advice of good people addressed to children, as well as to the illiterate and the poor, falls from their lips unheeded, for want of being adapted to the understandings and habits of their hearers. "To-morrow is my birthday," said a little girl of my acquaintance to a friend who had placed her on his knee. "Shall I come and help you to keep it?" asked the gentleman. "Oh!" replied the child, with the utmost astonishment, "we don't keep it. It goes away again directly." Now, if, in so common and familiar an expression as that of keeping a birthday, there could be so total a want of understanding betwixt the two parties referred to, how often must such misapprehensions take place on subjects less familiar, and in themselves less comprehensible, to the young!

It is thus that the highly gifted, whose ideas are accustomed to flow through lofty or intricate channels, so often fail to produce the anticipated results in their tuition of the young; while persons with common abilities and simplicity of character are frequently able to engage their attention and obtain their confidence, simply from the fact of their being understood. Thus, then, we clearly perceive, that in our means of conveying instruction to children, there must be a certain degree of adaptation to the germes of thought and feeling already beginning to unfold themselves in their characters. There must be adaptation to their half-formed impressions, and to the limited scope of their ideas, in order to our certainty that their mental faculties are going along with us in our efforts to impart instruction.

But far beyond this, in our endeavors to obtain influence, is the power of sympathizing with those whom we would instruct or guide; and in this instance, above all others, we see that from her natural endowments, especially from her capability both for profound and lively sympathy, woman is admirably fitted for the part she has to fill in social life. If influence be the secret of her power, sympathy is the secret of her influence—sympathy with nature in its