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Updated: June 27, 2025
Through the kindness of that nobleman, the poorest among us could stroll at pleasure over the ancient domains of Bothwell, and other spots hallowed by the venerable associations of which our school-books and local traditions made us well aware; and few of us could view the dear memorials of the past without feeling that these carefully kept monuments were our own.
About six tattered school-books, and a few chemical books, Taxidermy, Stanley on Birds, and an odd volume of Bewick, the latter in much better preservation, occupied the top shelves. The other shelves, where they had not been cut away and used by the owner for other purposes, were fitted up for the abiding-places of birds, beasts, and reptiles. There was no attempt at carpet or curtain.
He argues this at length, insisting on the necessity of the preparation of a graduated series of school-books that should supersede the ordinary classics, conserving perhaps the best bits of some of them. If any of the classics were to be kept bodily for school-use, they should be Seneca, Epictetus, Plato, and the like.
But refuse to give him this higher teaching and training; go on, as so many mothers have done, blankly ignoring the whole subject, because it is so difficult to speak to one's boys, as if everything worth having in this life were not difficult! leave him to the teaching of dirty gossip, of unclean classical allusions in his school-books, of scraps of newspaper intelligence, possibly of bad companions whom he may pick up at school or business, and be sure of it, as this side of his nature is awakened in his search after gratified curiosity or pleasurable sensation, in utter ignorance of what he is doing, through your fault, not through his he will use his imagination and his will to strengthen the animal instincts.
Up to this time Johnnie had never taken much interest in school-books beyond scribbling on their blank margins. Was it really worth while, he wondered, "to buckle down" and learn to read?
And they were going to school, and school-books cost money. And somehow, the faster he worked, the faster climbed the prices of things. Even the rent went up, though the house had fallen from bad to worse disrepair. He had grown taller; but with his increased height he seemed leaner than ever. Also, he was more nervous. With the nervousness increased his peevishness and irritability.
Evidently the eldest boy, the owner of the school-books stacked in a corner, was left in charge while his parents were absent at the theatre. In many a French workingman's family, so soon as a child reaches the age of six or seven, it plays the part of mother to younger sisters and brothers.
They did not only form a written language for the Hawaiian race, and painfully write for them school-books, a dictionary, and a translation of the Scriptures and of a hymn-book; they did not merely gather the people in churches and their children into schools; but they guided the race, slowly and with immense difficulty, toward Christian civilization; and though the Hawaiian is no more a perfect Christian than the New Yorker or Massachusetts man, and though there are still traces of old customs and superstitions, these missionaries have eradicated the grosser crimes of murder and theft so completely, that even in Honolulu people leave their houses open all day and unlocked all night, without thought of theft; and there is not a country in the world where the stranger may travel in such absolute safety as in these islands.
The school-books must be made unchristian lest they give offence to the countless sects of Protestantism. Voltaire, Paine, or Renan may be read in the Public Schools, but nothing of God. If our Public Schools differ in any degree from the ancient heathen, it is to our greater shame and confusion, and to their advantage.
Tsing-tau as a seat of deputed government may not have found its way into school-books but the inquisitive traveler in Northeast China readily learns of its existence. Perhaps it is meant to be complimentary to China to retain the name Tsing-tau but that is all about the place that is Chinese, save the coolies executing the white man's behest.
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