154 Second Conference 



himself. There is a happy medium which the wise 

 parent should know how to reach. 



I once came across some cultured, educated young 

 women who had spent all their early days in a beauti- 

 ful country home in Surrey, but to whom a sprouting 

 acorn was an unknown treasure. They were most 

 interested in it when they saw it; it was not that they 

 did not care for such things, but for want of a little 

 wise guidance they had grown up in complete igno- 

 rance of nature. The children's natural love of order 

 and classification, which I think is innate in most human 

 beings, will also lead them to enjoy the more truly 

 scientific classification of objects as the years go on. 



Another means of helping children to see is to 

 encourage them in what Miss Mason, in her book 

 Home Education, has called " Sight -seeing ". Let 

 them look well at a view, and shut their eyes, and 

 then describe what they have seen. If several of a 

 party do this, there is a great joy in comparing the 

 different descriptions, and the children's power of 

 narration is helped as well as that of sight-seeing. As 

 Ruskin says: "Thousands of people can talk to one 

 who can think. Thousands of people can think to 

 one who can see, and seeing clearly is poetry, pro- 

 phecy, religion." 



Also, when we are out on a country walk we can 

 let the children go ahead on a " voyage of discovery", 

 and, returning, describe some tree or flower they have 

 met. The accuracy of the description will be tested 

 by the power of the adult companion to guess what 

 the object was. Still, the mother must not forget 

 that, especially for the young child, a judicious leav- 

 ing-alone is a fruitful means of helping a child to 



