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HOW often, when anything has been said of teaching little boys to be useful, have we heard mothers exclaim,
" What an idea! Teach boys to be useful! I wish you would tell me how; for of all the restless, awkward, mischievous,
troublesome comforts on the face of the earth, I do think boys are the most trying. I am sure I love my boys just
as much as I do my girls; but it is so much harder to manage them, to keep them out of mischief, to know what to
do with them. They were vexatious, enough when we were boarding; but now, when, with four children on my hands,
I am but just entering upon my novitiate as a housekeeper, feeling my way step by step, they fret me woefully.
They are under my feet all the time. Too young to be sent to school more than a few hours a day, or to be turned
out unattended, to play with chance companions, they hang about me, uneasy, restless, fractious, teasing for something
continually. I often think it would be a comfort could we put them on a shelf to sleep through the unquiet, turbulent
period of childhood, to, wake up full-grown men. My little girls can always find something to do, but the boys
make boys useful, indeed I It would be a true benefactor who could teach mothers how to accomplish such a marvelous
thing! " Well, I notice that you very wisely and skillfully combine instruction with amusement .in your management
of your little girls. I watched with much interest how pleasantly you were teaching them to be useful, while they
found work to be only amusement. " I wonder which of these little girls would 1ike to run and bring mamma
a few apples" and away, in great glee, trotted little three-year-old Kitty, with her little basket."
Would Mary like to help mamma pare this nice red apple ~ Which, think you, can make the largest paring without
breaking ~ " How happy the little lady was to leave her play and make the trial! Why not make the same effort
to amuse and instruct your little boys " Would you have me teach them to set the table, wash dishes, sew;
or try to work ~ "Do you not believe they can be taught all this as easily as girls ~ We hold that, in a large
family, each one, boy or girl, should be taught to be useful ; to help their mother indoors and out, and, above
all, learn to help themselves. This they cannot do if allowed to be idle. In the city, and in families that depend
entirely on hired help, it is more difficult to train children to be industrious and useful. It is not well to
let the young, imitative little ones be much with servants, certainly not unless the mother is there also ; and
all instructions of a practical nature should be given by her, and practiced under her eye. Wealth is by no means
to be despised; but when it is so employed as to remove all labor from us, or to so free us from care that we do
not teach our children how to make themselves serviceable, it is no blessing, and may become a curse. Those who
have begun life poor, and worked their way to wealth by real hard labor, forget, when their children start up around
them, how much true, solid pleasure was, in their struggle for this well-earned prosperity, and as they relax their
exertions and begin to feel the enervating effects of wealth, they remember only the hardship, forgetting the pleasure
Because there is now no absolute necessity for it, they shrink fro1ll permitting their children to follow in their
early footsteps, and so cheat them out of the strength and independence for which no amount of gold can in any
way compensate. But we are neglecting the boys. We will give you an example which will explain somewhat our idea
of making children useful, boys and girls alike.
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