WISE SAYINGS

The first business of a state is the education of its citizens.

Every child has a right to the best education.

The highest motive of school government is to give the child the power and necessary reason to control himself.

We have no right to teach anything that does not go through the intellect and reach the heart.

Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.

LESSON XLIX

WHEAT

Wheat was unknown in America till it was brought over by Europeans, but it is now grown to an immense extent in the temperate regions of both North and South America.  Our country is the greatest wheat granary in the world.  The production of this grain in the United States is over five hundred millions of bushels a year.

The great “wheat belt” of the United States is in the Northwest,—­in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the neighboring states.  California also is a splendid country for this cereal, and California’s wheat crop is every year worth more than were ever her stores of gold.

People who live in cities and towns get their bread for the most part at the baker’s; so that in many families the good old art of bread-making is almost forgotten.  Then it must be said that it is the exception rather than the rule when one finds really good home-made bread.  This is a great pity.

Now, let me add one hint for the benefit of the girls.  In the English language there is no nobler word than Lady.  But go back to its origin, and what do we find that it means?  We find that it means She that looks after the loaf.

WISE SAYINGS

Shallow men believe in luck; strong men in pluck.

If there is honor among thieves, they stole it.

Have a time and place for everything, and do everything in its time and place.

You will never find time for anything.  If you want time, you must make it.

You will always find those men the most forward to do good, or to improve the times, who are always busy.

Trifles make perfection, yet perfection is no trifle.

LESSON L

COUNTENANCE AND CHARACTER

We know men by their looks; we read men by looking at their faces—­not at their features, their eyes, their lips, because God made these; but a certain cast of motion, and shape and expression, which their features have acquired.  It is this that we call the countenance.

And what makes this countenance?  The inward and mental habits; the constant pressure of the mind; the perpetual repetition of its acts.  You detect at once a conceited, or foolish person.  It is stamped on his countenance.  You can see on the faces of the cunning or dissembling, certain corresponding lines, traced on the face as legibly as if they were written there.