FRUITS AND FLOWERS. 305 



cherisli patriotism and piety quite as reliable in the hour of 

 trial as that manufactured by political or religious sectarianism. 



It is almost unappreciable how early the minds of children 

 are capable of receiving impressions. At the early age of six 

 months they usually attempt setting up their own wills and 

 establishing their own " peculiar institutions." This is the 

 great and all important crisis with the child, and especially 

 with the parent, which cannot well mistake for one of pain the 

 angry, vindictive cry, with which the demand is made, and can- 

 not produce the spirit of obedience and submission to parental 

 authority, on which domestic peace and happiness so much 

 depend, but by the infliction of physical pain. In a state of 

 angry passion and uncontrolled temper, the tender infant 

 appears almost a demon, and for the time, seems well to merit 

 the character of being totally depraved ; but the decisive and 

 judicious application of " the rod," a small, slender, flexible 

 one to the calves of its fat little legs for instance, till it yields, 

 draws out all the poison, and leaves only an openness to moral 

 suasion and a sweetness of temper which grows with its growth, 

 as the tender plants of the flower l)ed from which all weeds 

 have been faithfully extracted. This is not said from theoreti- 

 cal, but actual, practical knowledge. Try it, young parents, 

 you who have these little unwhipt budgets of immortality in 

 your arms, ripening to fill your hearts and homes with joy and 

 sunshine, or to make night hideous with the angry, turbulent 

 screechings of spoilt children ; and worse than all, who will 

 grow up in society first in tyrannical and unreasonable exac- 

 tions, first in discord and controversy, and first in all the vices 

 which contaminate the world. 



Flowers are the early or infant stage of vegetation, as child- 

 hood is of humanity ; and children seek them as like seeks like, 

 in natural affinities, or as they seek for dolls and little pets on 

 which to shower their fountains of youthful love. 



We would like to see every primary school furnished with 

 grounds, so that both teacher and pupils might have the means 

 of cultivating and enjoying, not the gaudy exotics of hot-house 

 culture, emblems of frail, aristocratic pride, extravagance and 

 folly, but the hardy, ever-enduring, perennial and self-sowing 

 kinds, which should be universal and as free as air, in home 

 and school-house gardens, as they are on mountain tops and in 



