62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ness, to let the eyes rest upon some distant object, till the optic nerve 

 has recovered from the short-range strain. The hues of the forest 

 have a wonderfully strengthening influence upon weak eyes, almost 

 like its air upon weak lungs ; a woodland excursion is like a return to 

 our native element, the birth-land to whose life-conditions the organs of 

 our ancestors were originally adapted. 



Accidents can not be avoided by keeping a boy in his nurse's arms 

 or in a padded family coach. Sooner or later he will have to rely ou 

 his own limbs, and it is best that time should find him well prepared. 

 Let him rough it, barefoot and bareheaded ; let him climb hills and 

 take short cuts over fences and ravines ; every fall, every skinned 

 elbow and bumped head, will impart a lesson in the art of locomotion. 

 Without apprentice-fees of that sort he will never get to be a master. 

 I would even connive at an occasional rough-and-tumble fight with a 

 wild comrade ; it will acquaint him with what Talleyrand used to call 

 the " esoteric reason for preserving the peace." Constructiveness, too, 

 often the redeeming propensity of a young scapegrace, has its dangers 

 which had better be mastered than avoided. Instead of lecturing a 

 lad or taking away his pocket-knife for cutting his finger, engage a 

 carpenter to teach him the proper use of edge-tools. Let him have a 

 little workshop of his own, with a lot of scrap-tin, boards, nails, and a 

 five-dollar tool-box. Ten to one that those five dollars will save ten 

 cents a week for dime-novels, and, by-and-by, ten dollars a month for 

 beer and tobacco. If your son should manifest symptoms of the col- 

 lecting-mania, try to direct it to objects of natural history herbs, 

 beetles, or butterflies. It may lead to deeper studies, and the love of 

 nature in general. A passion for the study of natural history has 

 often turned the scales in a choice between a farm and a dry-goods 

 prison. 



" On a visit to Paris," says Carl Weber (" Democritos," vol. ix, p. 

 166), "the Mentor of a young man, after a trip to the Jardin des 

 Plantes, should not fail to take him to Bertrand Rival's Anatomical 

 Waxwork Museum. It is no misnomer if Bertrand calls his collection 

 * Musee physiologique, liistorique et morale' intended not only to in- 

 struct but to warn the visitor. Salus tota ilia sapere est." As a last 

 resort, perhaps, but hardly before the twentieth year. Precocious 

 prurience is due to causes which can generally be avoided. If you can 

 educate the younger children at home and select their playmates, there 

 is no real danger before the eleventh year of a boy and the ninth of a 

 girl. After that, the following precautions will suffice in all but the 

 unluckiest cases : Let your children have plenty of out-door play, 

 especially in the evening. Wait till they are really sleepy before you 

 send them to bed. Let every child have its own bed, or at least its 

 own bedclothes. Keep your small boys out of the servants' room, and 

 your girls after their tenth year ; with girls under ten there is less 

 danger : they are quite sure to tell about any improper thing they see 



