44 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



able cheerfulness that shoes replaced slippers to go on a proposed ice 

 cream lark. It was doubtless an effort and some sacrifice, but the boy 

 was worth more to the father than his own ease. His smile and voice 

 made the boy feel his sympathy. Did you ever consider the com- 

 mercial value of a smile? Not the society smile, which is simply a 

 slight muscular action of the lips, but the genuine article. It has 

 helped many a person on to success. And a smile will win Jack's 

 heart when a frown will close the door and shove all the bolts. 



Children are quick to feel intuitively, perhaps like the angels 

 Swedenborg speaks of when he says : " The angels from the sound of 

 a man's voice know his love. From the articulation of sound his 

 wisdom, and from the sense of his words his science." If we are the 

 law-givers we must try to understand the needs. If too tired at one 

 time try to find a time we can be amiable in. Emerson says : " Laws, 

 but those which men make for themselves, are laughable." This is a 

 very clever speech of Emerson's, and I am glad it was not made by a 

 woman. If I put myself in the place of my child and we see that things 

 are thus and thus ; perception is law for him ; we are both there, both 

 act ; but if I glance over into his plot, and guessing how it is with him 

 ordain this or that, while not carrying him into the thought, he will, 

 never willingly obey me. 



Emerson also calls force a practical lie. Certainly 'tis weakening 

 to the character, unless given in homeopathic doses. Through blind 

 obedience he losses the power to exercise his own judgment ; has no 

 chance to learn by experience. He is at a standstill in the process of 

 development. The person training him simply rows with one hand and 

 backs water with the other. What progreiss is there? And time flies. 

 He must some day stand without the prop ; then he will quite likely 

 fall. 



It is quite generally granted that the position of American children 

 compares very favorably with other nations. Large dry-goods stores 

 employing children are obliged to give them two hours at least for 

 study and recreation. Their restaurant rooms are sometimes used for 

 this purpose. This is done not from generous motives on the part of 

 the proprietors, but to escape the law on child labor. Another method 

 is a systematic course of lying done by the children themselves. I 

 have often asked their ages from mere curiosity, only to learn that the 

 smallest little chaps are all ''twelve years old, sure." 



We read with interest that when Sir Romelly, of the British parlia- 

 ment, proposed a bill forbidding parish officers binding children as 

 apprentices at a greater distance than forty miles, it was met with 

 spirited opposition from Sirs Peel and Wortley, who stated that though 



