240 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



in all the child's relations to the domestic circle and school asso- 

 ciates. The school, like the family, should be valued as a social 

 institution, constantly furnishing occasion for the culture of social 

 virtues and performance of social duties. Let children early learn 

 that the affections expand as well as adorn the mind, promoting 

 their happiness as well as usefulness, that true enjoyment springs 

 not from selfish pursuits or solitary gratifications, but from sym- 

 pathy and fellowship in happiness. By cheerful obedience to 

 parents and teachers, and by all the numberless opportunities of 

 daily life, let them learn the luxury of giving pleasure — of doing 

 good. For they will please and profit most, both themselves 

 and all around them, who aim not to please, but to give pleasure. 

 There is a heaven-wide difference between these two motives. 

 One may aim to please in order to tempt or cheat. The Devil is 

 the greatest expert in pleasing in order to ruin. But one who 

 habitually strives to give happiness is acting under an ennobling 

 principle. Let our youth be so trained to the practice of truth, 

 honesty, sympathy, and benevolence, that they shall be sponta- 

 neously mindful of the rights, interests, and happiness of all 

 around them. Let them learn in contrast the meanness and mis- 

 ery of greed and selfishness, of rage and revenge, that the churl 

 imbitters first and most, his own life, that all discordant passions 

 bring disquietude and pain, and especially that an irritable spirit 

 is a perpetual fountain of bitterness. Outbursts of passion, like 

 those of Guiteau, are not to be excused as the sole effects of 

 hereditary or constitutional tendencies. Whatever may be one's 

 natural bias, the temper is not fixed by nature like one's, complex- 

 ion, but may be disciplined and should always be under control. 

 Its early restraint or indulgence, largely determines the sunshine 

 or shade of one's future, whether he shall be the child of reason, 

 or the slave of a lawless master, the victim of paroxysms of pas- 

 sion, for when uncontrolled, the temper becomes a petty tyrant, 

 destroying one's influence, happiness, and health and often short- 

 ening life. 



An eminent physician, Superintendent of a State Lunatic Asy- 

 lum, says: " A cross and fretful temper is a fruitful source of in- 

 sanity. Hence when any man finds himself habitually ill-humored, 

 he should employ every means in his power to get rid of the inflic- 

 tion." Tt is the law of our mental constitution, that emotions, 

 propensities, and processes of thought once distinctly manifested, 

 tend to repeat themselves automatically. Hence the urgent neces- 



