272 APPENDIX. 



encouragement to choose the least of two evils, the 

 author avers, that the boy under proper direction 

 is fully equal to all the work of the garden, with 

 the exception of three or four days in the year, 

 when better hands, whether as to strength or skill, 

 may be required to lay up a winter furrow of deep 

 dicing, or to train a fruit tree round the stalk of 



OO O * 



a chimney a height too great, it may be, for the 

 minister's nerve, and perhaps for the decencies of 

 his calling. This sufficiency of the boy, however, 

 presupposes on the part of his master the posses- 

 sion of " My Book," together with such work of 

 his own hand as, giving health to his frame, shall 

 be found also a pleasure to his heart. But it is 

 further to be understood, that the following direc- 

 tions with regard to the improvement and use of 

 the boy, are made some matter both of care and 

 of conscience. 



In general boys are plagues. Something above 

 what is usually denominated an urchin, and beneath 

 a varlet, they are of the most impracticable age 

 an age when wit is the weakest and will is the strong- 

 est when independence, as an end, is desired the 

 most, and character, as means, regarded the least. 

 They have escaped from school at a time when, 

 conscious of strength, they begin to despise the 

 master of a lowly seminary; and the parental 

 authority to which they are required to submit 

 is rarely good. The father being himself a ser- 

 vant, his children, by an instinct that needs to be 

 amended, fail of respect; and he, most of his 



