In some cases, the sin of the
parent is visited upon the children, and the measure of life meted out
to them is limited and insufficient. In other cases, the individuals,
first yielding in their own persons, are the victims of positive vice,
or of some of the evils stated. Civilization is not an unmixed good; and
we cannot offer to the city or the factory any adequate compensation for
the loss of pure water, pure air, and the healthful exercise of body,
which may be enjoyed in the country villages and agricultural districts
of the state.
Yet even in cities and large towns the culture of home and school should
diminish these evils; and it is a pleasure to believe that our system of
domestic and public education is doing something at the present moment
in behalf of the too much neglected body; but nowhere, either in city or
country, do we observe the evidences of juvenile health and strength
that a friend of the race would desire to see. And it is, I fear,
specially true of schools, and to some extent it is true of teachers, as
a class, that too little attention is given to those exercises and
habits which secure good health. There are many causes which tend to
lower the average health and strength of our people. 1st. The practice
of sending children to school at the tender age of five, four, or even
three years. Every school necessarily imposes some restraint upon the
pupils; and I assume that no child under five years of age should be
subject to such restraints.
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