Many parents who guard their children with jealous care from the
contamination of rude and vicious society among other children, allow
them to associate with ideal companions of a very degraded kind. The
parent should check the propensity, not only to read bad books, but also
to read idle or foolish books, by exciting the action of the mind
towards something better. Merely to deny improper books is not enough.
Something must be given in place of them, or the craving will continue,
and the child will be very apt to gratify its appetite in secret.
Children are easily led to observe nature, animate or inanimate, with
interest, and there are many simple books illustrating the departments
of natural science which mothers could make interesting to their
children at the same time that they instructed themselves. Juvenile
works on history abound, and through them the child may be led, as
intelligence expands, to seek more extended and thorough treatises; and
the sympathy of the mother should be ready to help him on his way. It is
mere self-deception in those mothers who deny their mental capacity, or
their command of time, to aid their children in their mental progress.
It is a _moral_ want of their own, far more than everything else, that
causes them to shrink from this most important responsibility.
Those who have passed the period of childhood, who have taken upon
themselves the responsibility of all that concerns their own minds, and
who have any desire after upward progress, should remember that the
books they love best are those which reflect their own characteristics.
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