Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 192, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1911 — The Care of Children. [ARTICLE]

The Care of Children.

The care of children Is not properly subject to theory, but to a consideration of conditions. Childhood Is the season of impressions, of plastic submission to these, of backward-looking nad waiting, as youth is the season of forward-looking impulses. Nature has made this distinction, and If in childhood she makes preparation for the blossoming of youth, her processes are hidden. We are advancing no theory, but only reorganising this distinction of teitna, when we plead for the child’s free and full indulgence of the backward regard. It Is ours to help him to his natural birthright, to lead him Into the field of the past, with some aenee of what calls him thither—a sense which determines the contacts we give him—and there we leave him free to drive his own impressions from the scene, the persons—all that makes the play. We burden him with no technicalities, which he no more needs than when he is brought into contact with natural objects; and w<e refrain from distracting him by ulterior meanings or analytical Interpretations, which he may himself seek later. The past Is not cherished because it la past. In the lines of culture the duet of antiquity has been most diligently sifted for its hidden wealth; and this wealth Is not that of the market-place, but of the clearinghouse of the Imagination.—H. M. Aldan. in Harper's Magazine for July.