70 THE HOME, FARM AND BUSINESS CYCLOPEDIA. 



ing upon him ; but, his native shrewdness having found them out to be 

 correct on this one important fact, he believed them in future, and accept- 

 ed B and C as parts of a system, occult and difficult to remember, but 

 still as facts. 



We must remember, when in the first youthful ardour of our systems 

 and schemes of education, that costly apparatus and splendid cabinets have 

 no power to make scholars. The little scholar says to his teacher, " Will 

 you tell me what time it is ? " as he looks at the clock. " No," she should 

 say ; " I want you to tell me what time it is." 



In a half hour the most slow and unimpressionable boy can learn to tell 

 time, and so on. His books and teachers must be his helpers, but the work 

 must be his. As Daniel Webster said : " A man is not educated until he 

 has the ability to summon in an emergency his mental powers in vigorous 

 exercise to effect its proposed object. It is not the man who has read the 

 most or seen the most who can do this; such a one is in danger of being 

 borne down like a beast of burden by an overloaded mass of other men's 

 thoughts. Nor is it the man who can boast merely of native vigour and 

 capacity. The greatest of all warriors who went to the siege of Troy had 

 not the preeminence because Nature had given him strength, and he car- 

 ried the longest bow, but because self-discipline had taught him how to 

 bend it." 



It is this power of raising a boy's mind to the ability to work for itself 

 which is the highest achievement of education, and mothers are sometimes 

 inspired with it. 



And, as curiosity is the first feeler which the youthful brain puts out, 

 the mother should be very patient in answering questions. This is, per- 

 haps, the hardest trial which a mother has to meet. To answer the ques- 

 tions of a tireless crowd of children is enough to drive a nervous woman 

 insane. But, as long as her strength lasts, she must try to do it, and as 

 long as she knows what to say. When they begin with those unanswer- 

 able questions upon theology which they always ask, and which she can 

 no more answer than they can, then she must stop. 



" Mamma ! why did God make the devil if he didn't want any evil in 

 the world?" 



" I do not know, my dear ; you must ask your father," has been said to 

 be the most powerful lecture upon woman's cunning and man's limitations 

 which was ever preached. 



Curiosity being once excited, the field is ploughed, and the seeds of 

 learning can be dropped in. Unhappily for the poor boy, he has got to 

 learn many things by rote -the multiplication table, the spelling-book , 



