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How to Provide
Oood Readmg |
For ClhiiMreini

By LADY SCH5JLTZ

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Read at the National Council of Women of
Canada, at Toronto, 1895.

To be sold in aid of the Talent Fund for the
debt on Hply Trinity Church, Winnipeg.

6 3^7

PRICE 10 CENT^.

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iA> (I-SG

HOW TO PROVIDE (U:)OD READ-
ING FOR CHILDREN.

Some one has said : " Tell nie what
you read, and I will tell you what you
are" ; and hardly a greater truth could be
enunciated, for there is no greater agency
in the world in building up or destroying
character than the books read ; it is, to a
great extent, the pabulum on which the
mind is fed, and it is the material from
which either strength or weakness is drawn;
and if mature minds can be affected by
what is read, how much more so must it
be in the impressionable time of child-
hood, and how lasting the consequences !
The children are either stimulated to
admire and imitate high and noble char-
acters, or they are weakened and dwarfed
by the bad example of the people set
before them, and who have been absorb-
ing their attention. It 1:)ehooves all,
then, who have the welfare of the young
at heart, to watch with care everything

that can affect the youthful imagination or
injure the tender mind.

As a natural starting point, we will
begin with the birth of the young soul
sent fresh from the realms of creation, and
confided to the care of virtuous parentage.
God has entrusted the little creature
entirely to the father and mother, as if
saying, ** Here is one of the most precious
of all gifts committed to your care — a
priceless human soul, to be trained for
eternity." The little creature is very
helpless ; it rests upon its mother's bosom.
Soothing tones address it. warm love pro-
tects it, and every one is fully alive to the
importance of guarding and caring for it
physically. But do they as often realize
the importance of guarding the opening
intelligence of the immortal soul, which
begins as early as, and keeps pace with,
the development of the body ? The whole
being is like a piece of plastic wax, or the
snowy pages of an unwritten book, and the
mother or nurse in charge is leaving indel-
ible impressions which are to last forever,
for good or evil, for weal or woe. How
the little body is guarded from all danger
of contagion ! How alarmed and dis-
tressed would they be if fever or skin
disease should fasten itself upon the tender

>' •

Hesh, sdiile, all unconsciously to them,
the first insidious poison of a deadly dis-
ease may have already made its first
attack upon the soul. The dearly loved
child, the beautiful little creature, is, aftei
all, but the casket of a priceless jewel.
Surely the jewel must be of more conse-
cju'ice than the casket I Indeed, how
often is the finest and loveliest physique
maired by the unruliness of the spirit
within I Hence by far the most impor-
tant duty which the parent or guardian has
to perform is to guard the mental growth
and spiritual welfare of the child.

The first question asked is how to pro-
vide good reading for the child. We
should say, in order to pave the way for
it at as early an age as possible, begin with
a softly-breathed lullaby, for this is the age
when impressions are possible, before there
is any responsive intelligence. Let it be,
then, spiritual as well as tender, so that
the ear may gradually grow accustomed to
the blending of sweet names with equally

sweet strains, as :

" Our Father in heaven, we hallow Thy name,
May Thy kingdom holy on earth be the same,"

etc., sung to a suitable air. Unconscious
impressions are thus made which are after-
wards to influence the tastes and inclina-

tioiis of the child. Then, as intelligence
increases, the little one is told that it must
l)e good, because a loving Father, an all-
seeing Presence, is ever about it. It con-
fides and has implicit faith in these early
instructors, nnd believes and trusts what it
is told, and we know that the very founda-
tion of the future character of a child can
only be well and ha)3pily laid on the prin-
ciples of tnith.

Never to tell a child anything but what
is true is an exceedingly safe course. I
will, I fear, be challenging the prejudices
of many when I condemn entirely all fairy
tales and fictitious literature until the age
of at least eight or ten years, when a child
is old enough to understand what fiction
means. A sensitive child can never for-
get the rude awakening it receives when
it learns for the first time that the enchant-
ing creatures for whom its heart has
throbbed have no real existence. The
child, never before having doubted any-
thing that parents have told it, when
awakened to the fact that these stories, so
sweetly read and told, have no foundation
in truth, is in a maze of perplexity and
doubt, wondering that the teachers of truth
have themselves told them things which
were not true. It is a trying time to a child,

'.ir

and may tend to shake its belief in ihinj^s
of more lasting; imjicirlance, and prove a
shock diflicult to lecover froni.

The story is told of a brijrhl little ])oy
who was once teased at Sunday-school for
helievinii in Santa Claus. l^ein^ an only
child, he was no doubt kept more petted
and under the influence of childish fancies
than he otherwise would have been. I le
protested that he believed in Santa Claus
and knew it wa • true about him — " because
his father and mother had told him, and
they would not tell him anything that was
not true." (ioing home, he demanded of
his mother about Santa Claus, and she had
to tell him it was a fiction : the child was
greatly grieved, and said: "Oh, mother,
you have told me about God^ too ; how am
1 to believe that that is true ? "

I would advocate that the first reading
for the young should always be taken from
the Bible, that marvellous book, the
grandeur of whose imagery and the purity
of whose diction is unrivalled in all the
world. In it can be found incidents of the
most stirring and interesting character,
well suited to please and satisfy the most
exacting and imaginative of children, and
which are at the same time true and unde-
niable, and more interesting than any that

could he woven from the fanciful l>riin of
man. Wc can read or tell them'*of the
little child from heaven, lK)rn in a stal)le,
an<l laid in ;i manger, with a star placed in
the heavens to "keej) sentinel over His
birthplace, while, not far from it, the gates
of heaven opened, and the shepherds he-
held the angels, and heard them singing
and praising (iod. Or we can read to
them of Joseph and his coat of many colors ;
of the shepherd king, David, the sweet
singer, who, with his pebhle and sling,
went forth and slew the giant who had
defied the armies of Israel— surely no
giant of fairyland could equal the thrilling
narrative connected with this one ; of
Daniel, and of Samuel, that sweet child,
who, as soon as he was weaned, was pre-
sented to Ine Lord, and became of such
an exalted character that, when in his old
age, challenging Israel to bear witness
whether he had ever injured any one or
not, they had to declare his blameless life.
There is also the story of Moses, placed in
his little ark of bulrushes, watched by his
sister and found by a princess. (What
fairy tale contains more to excite the im-
agination than this ?) My firm conviction
is, the early years should be entirely filled
with Bible st y, so that the good obtained

I
4

may l)e tlic nv>st laslini;. Charles Dudley
Warner says " he believes that the present
state of ij^norance of the Bible on the part
of collejre students is to be corrected only
by attention to the fundamental cause of
this ipjnorance — the neglect of th<i use of
the Bible in the home in childhood " ; and
he adds, *' In the family is where this edu-
cation must begni, and it will then be as
it used to be, an easy anrl unconscious edu-
cation." We are I old that in old age, when
incidents of the moment make little or no
impression on the mind, the aged person
lives again in whatever constituted the
earliest impressions of his or \v^\' life. Thus it
is a safe thing to begin and end with the
teachings of the sacred book.

But when the little one has come to the
age when you must tell it of the things
which pertain to material life, why not
substitute for the "Babes in the Wood "
the story of the " Princes in the Tower,"
and, instead of fairy princesses, let them
learn of our own '* Victoria the Good,"
who, when a little princess, was trained
day by day to fit her to rule the greatest
empire the world has ever seen ; and so on,
making history easy for them ? Then there
is fairyland in nature. You can let them
read of all the wonders of the field and

forest, of which there are innumerable
graphic and entertaining writers, of r'ver
and lake, of bird and l)ee, ever keeping
closely to the truth, and I do not think the
little ones will ask for anything more inter-
esting or exciting if they should teach
them of the starry heavens above, with its
myriads of worlds and suns, and there
surely will be enough in all this to feed the
most ardent imagination. We have be-
gun with the theory of keeping closely to
the truth, and I believe it will bear fruit.
An eminent divine has said, " Give me the
first seven years of a child's life, and I will
not feel so anxious for the future."

When they have arrived at the stage
when it is better for them to vary their
reading, and they must have fiction, let
them read such conscientious writers as
'* A.L.O.E.," Elinor Lewis, Hesba Stret-
ton. Miss Mulock, Sir Walter Scott, Mrs.
Stowe, and many others. The Rev. Dyson
Hague tells us in Parish and Home of
some of the dangers of reading fiction, even
of tLe best. In the first place, he tells us,
it is a waste of precious time to give as
much as is frequently done to a custom,
which, when indulged in, creates a slavish-
ness of anxiety for a still greater waste of
valuable time, to the exclusion of serious

♦ I

♦ t

engagements and duties. In concluding
the article, however, he says that he does
not condemn the reading of fiction alto-
.gether, but begs that wise selections be
made from such writers as Dickens, Thack-
eray, George Eliot, Stanley J. Wfjyman,
Lew Wallace, and others. I would include,
such stories as "Black Beauty" and
*' Beautiful Joe," stories which interest the
youthful mind, while teaching them to
know more of the nature of dumb animals,
and to be kinder to them than they other-
wise would. Annie E. Chase, in her
*' Stories from Animal Land," gives a
pathetic little incident, which may not be
inappropriate, and of which many thou-
sands must occur daily, and which could be
averted by making the children more fami-
liar with their lives and habits. Then
there is that sweet songstress, Frances Rid-
ley Havergal, who must not be forgotten,
and whose ** Little Pillows" are read by
myriads of children to-day ; I would also
advise selections from the poets Words-
worth, Longfellow, Whiitier, Tennyson, etc.
There are also the church papers and parish
magazines, of which we cannot speak too
highly. I again repeat that the power for
good or evil which good or bad literature

exerts over the youthful mind cannot be

f)ver-estimatecl. A writer in the Methodist
Protestant said : " A pastor found many
of his parishioners who were too poor to
take their church paper, but who took
several secular pa])ers and tales of fiction,
that cost four or five times as much.
Cause : they had little relish for religious
reading. Effect : their relish for religious
reading lessened every year. Mystery :
they wondered why their spirituality was
so dull, and that their children loathed
everything of a religious character. Re-
sult : those children who married and
left home ceased church attendance alto-
gether."

A deeply pious clergyman told me that
one of the greatest men of the age, and a
seeker after truth, had told him that he
would give all he was possessed of if he
could disabuse his mind of the evils in-
stilled into it by the early reading of skepti-
cal works, but there is no room for skepti-
cism, and no taste to read of it, if the mind,
in its opening years, has been fed upon the
Word of God. Shaftesbury, the great
philanthropic earl of that name, was con-
verted by his pious nurse at the age of
seven years, and dying at the age of eighty-
four years, after a life of usefulness, would
fain have lived longer, there was still so

much to be done in the Master's vineyard.
One of our own bright jewels in the philan-
thropic field, Miss Bertha Wright, of
Ottawa, who has achieved so much in the
service of God, told me that she was
deeply impressed at the age of eight years.
Lincoln, the great emancipator of millions
of slaves, lost his mother at the age of
seven years, and yet he tells us, after over-
coming,, with herculean strength and cour-
age, the many difficulties that beset his
path, that he owed everything to his
mother. To mothers and to those who
have the care of the young, I would beg,
begin with the prayer at the cradle, thus
seizing the first and earliest opportunity
for impressing good ; with the sacred hymn
for a lullaby, and the Book of Books for
primary instruction ; and the character
thus built on truth will be strong and self-
reliant. The tastes formed aright will
guard them for the future. And I urge upon
the parents, at the same time, to be as
vigilant in guarding what their children
shall read as though the child was to pass
through a plague-stricken country, and
could only escape by the most watchful
care of mother or guardian. Sin is a
hydra-headed monster, ever on the alert to
ensnare the innocent and capture the un-

wary and unsuspicious, and thoughtful
womanhood can have no higher aim or
object in life than to do all in their power
to protect and guide the helpless and to
form the tastes and inclinations of the
young aright, so as to keep their minds
pure and spotless, while being intelligent
and well-informed, and to fit them to take
their places in the world, when the time
shall arrive for it, as young men and wo-
men, strong, intelligent, pure, and se'."-
reliant. A. S.