7s6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fer entertaining employments to tedious ones. Youngsters under five 

 years gambol instinctively like young puppies, in order to acquire the 

 art of locomotion, but soon afterward they begin to play with a con- 

 scious purpose, and do not object to playing at something profitable ; 

 young savages and peasant-boys join in the labors of their parents 

 with an eagerness that vindicates human nature against the charge of 

 innate frivolity. Make your boy a Jack-of -all-out-door-trades before 

 you make him a classic polyglot, and, if you destine him for any trade 

 in special, let him play with the tools of that special trade. " The 

 best plan of education," says Goethe, " is that of the Hydriotes, the 

 Greek trading-sailors, who take their infant boys out to sea and let 

 them sport around amid oakum and belaying-pins before they learn to 

 handle them with a business purpose. Such a school has graduated 

 the heroes who with their own hands could grapple the fire-boat to 

 the flag-ship of the enemy." 



Even for their children's sake, married men should never quarter 

 their families in the heart of a great city. Not everybody can own a 

 farm, but, wherever the suburban cottages adjoin waste building-lots 

 and dry ravines, there will be no lack of opportunities for out-door pas- 

 times. Let the girls make weed-brooms, and the boys construct for- 

 tifications, a la Uncle Toby, if they can do no better, and miss no 

 chance to send them out in the country for a day or two. Our town 

 l^arks are too exclusive ; sauntering between inviolate grass-plots and 

 prohibitory placards is dull work for urchins that long to commit 

 horse-play ; but there are few cities, even on the Atlantic seaboard, 

 where the " open country " woods, fallow fields, and hillsides could 

 not be reached by a two hours' walk. There let your children spend 

 every sunny afternoon ; make arrangements with your neighbors, and 

 engage a guide if you can not afford to go yourself ; teach the young- 

 sters to collect beetles and butterflies, encourage the fern mania if 

 your girl has outgrown the buttercup period, connive at a bird's nest or 

 two, do anything to keep them out of the tenement dungeons. If you 

 are blessed with a farm (or a tolerant country cousin), haymaking, 

 apple-gathering, turkey-herding, repairing of ditches and garden-walls, 

 will make earth an Elysium to every normal child ; never mind the 

 weather ; a summer shower, a chilly morning, or a hot afternoon will 

 not hurt a healthy boy, and the girls will take care of themselves or 

 rather of their dress if the grass is wet. If you send them to school 

 before their teens, give them at least the full benefit of their vacations 

 and of every free Saturday. In fall and winter a day of athletic field- 

 sports will keep a boy in tolerable health for the rest of the week, and 

 a vacation tour of six or eight weeks may atone for many months of 

 sedentary life. 



In the preceding chapter I have pointed out the main cause of 

 catarrhal affections. "With the exception of deep-seated breast-coughs, 

 " colds " may be nipped in the bud by a few hours of hard, sudorific 



