Books And Men

CONTENTS. PAGE CHILDREN, PAST AND PRESENT 1 ON THE BENEFITS OF SUPERSTITION 33 WHAT CHILDREN READ 64 THE DECAY OF SENTIMENT 94 CURIOSITIES OF CRITICISM 125 SOME ASPECTS OF PESSIMISM 157 THE CAVALIER 191 BOOKS AND MEN. CHILDREN, PAST AND PRESENT. As a result of the modern tendency to de sert the broad beaten roads of history for the bridle-paths of biography and memoir, we find a great many side lights thrown upon matters that the historian was wont to treat as alto gether beneath his consideration. It is by their help that we study the minute changes of social life that little by little alter the whole aspect of a people, and it is by their help thatwe look straight into the ordinary every-day workings of the past, and measure the space between its existence and our own. When we read, for instance, of Lady Cathcart being kept a close prisoner by her husband for over twenty years, we look with some complacency on the roving wives of the nineteenth century. When we reflect on the dismal fate of Uriel Freuden- berger, condemned by the Canton of Uri to be burnt alive in 1760, for rashly proclaiming his disbelief in the legend of William Tells apple, we realize the inconveniences attendant on a too early development of the critical faculty. We listen entranced while the learned pastor Dr. Johann Geiler von Keyersperg gravely enlightens his congregation as to the nature and properties of were-wolves and we turn aside to see the half-starved boys at West minster boiling their own batter - pudding in a stocking foot, or to hear the little John Wesley crying softly when he is whipped, not being permitted even then the luxury hearty bellow. Perhaps of a the last incident will strike us as themost pathetic of all, this being essentially the childrens age. Women, workmen, and skeptics all have reason enough to be grate ful they were not born a few generations ear lier but the children of to-day are favored beyond their knowledge, and certainly far beyond their deserts. Compare the modern schoolboy with any of his ill-fated predeces sors, from the days of Spartan discipline down to our grandfathers time. Turn from the free-and-easy school-girl of the period to the miseries of Mrs. Sherwoods youth, with its steel collars, its backboards, its submissive silence and rigorous decorum. Think of the turbulent and uproarious nurseries we all know, and then go back in spirit to that severe and occult shrine where Mrs. Wesley ruled over her infant brood with a code of discipli nary laws as awful and inviolable as those of the Medes and Persians. Of their supreme efficacy she plainly felt no doubts, for she has left them carefully written down for the bene fit of succeeding generations, though we fear that few mothers of to-day would be tempted by their stringent austerity. They are to modern nursery rules what the Blue Laws of Connecticut are to our more languid legisla tion. Each child was expected and required to commemorate its fifth birthday by learning the entire alphabet by heart. To insure this all-important matter, the whole house was im pressively set in order the day before every ones task was assigned to him and Mrs. Wesley, issuing strict commands that no one should penetrate into the sanctuary while the solemn ordeal was in process, shut herself up for six hours with the unhappy morsel of a child, and unflinchingly drove the letters into its bewildered brain. On twooccasions only was she unsuccessful...