The youthful consciousness is of a world full of jostling interests.  Why not let the children alone, and allow them to spring lightly from one enthusiasm to another?  Of course you will help them to finish, either at the first sitting or at the second or at the third, the task that was undertaken when that particular enthusiasm was at its height.  The drawing which has remained on the easel during the foot-ball season may be suggestively brought to notice again in the quiet times between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The boat begun last summer may well be finished in the days of the succeeding Spring when all the earth is full of the sound of running water.  Thus each task, though not completed at once, gets done in the end; and the youthful capacity for many sympathies and many desires has not been narrowed.

[Sidenote:  Parental Vanity]

Such a line of conduct presupposes, of course, that the parent considers only the child’s best welfare, and not his own parental vanity.  He is not desirous that his son shall do anything so well as to attract the attention and admiration of the neighbors.  He is desirous merely that the boy shall grow up wholesomely and happily, showing such superiority as there may be in him when the fitting time and opportunity present themselves.  He will not attempt to make a musician of an unmusical child, nor a mechanic of an artistic child.  He will not object to the brilliant and impractical dreams of the young inventor, but will help to make them practicable; and though he may squirm at some of the investigations of the budding scientist, he will not forbid them.

[Sidenote:  Development of Intellect]

For such a parent recognizes that the important thing, educationally, is to secure the reaction of expression upon thought and feeling.  That is, he is not trying to secure at this time—­at any time during youth—­perfect expression of any thought or feeling, but only to deepen feeling and clarify thought by encouraging all attempts at expression.  He does not wish his child to make a finished picture or a perfect statue, but to acquire a greater sensitiveness to color and form by each attempt to express that color and form which he already knows.  Thus whatever studies and accomplishments his child may be in the act of acquiring are seen to be nothing as acquisitions, but the child himself is seen to be growing stage by stage within the clumsy scaffolding.

FINANCIAL TRAINING

The financial training of children ought really to be considered under the head of moral training, but in some respects it can come equally well under the head of intellectual training; for to spend money well requires both self-control and intelligence.  Some persons seem to think that all that a child can be taught in this regard is to save money, and they meet the situation by purchasing various shapes and styles of savings banks.  But it is entirely possible