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THE
PARENT’S ASSISTANT
OR
STORIES FOR CHILDREN
BY
MARIA EDGEWORTH
“’Tis Education forms the commonmind,—
Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”Pope.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. A.FRASER
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, Limited
Broadway, LudgateHill
MANCHESTER, GLASGOW, AND NEWYORK
1891
PREFACE,
ADDRESSED TO PARENTS.
Our great lexicographer, in hiscelebrated eulogium on Dr. Watts, thus speaks in commendation ofthose productions which he so successfully penned for thepleasure and instruction of the juvenile portion of thecommunity.
“For children,” says Dr. Johnson, “hecondescended to lay aside the philosopher, the scholar, and thewit, to write little poems of devotion, and systems ofinstruction adapted to their wants and capacities, from the dawnof reason to its gradation of advance in the morning oflife. Every man acquainted with the common principles ofhuman action, will look with veneration on the writer, who is atone time combating Locke, and at another time making a catechismfor children in their fourth year. A voluntarydescent from the dignity of science is perhaps the hardest lessonwhich humility can teach.”
It seems, however, no very easy task to write forchildren. Those only who have been interested in theeducation of a family, who have patiently followed childrenthrough the first processes of reasoning, who have daily watchedover their thoughts and feelings—those only who know withwhat ease and rapidity the early association of ideas are formed,on which the future taste, character and happiness depend, canfeel the dangers and difficulties of such an undertaking.
Indeed, in all sciences the grand difficulty has been toascertain facts—a difficulty which, in the science ofeducation, peculiar circumstances conspire to increase. Here the objects of every experiment are so interesting that wecannot hold our minds indifferent to the result. Nor is itto be expected that many registers of experiments, successful andunsuccessful, should be kept, much less should be published, whenwe consider that the combined powers of affection and vanity, ofpartiality to his child and to his theory, will act upon the mindof a parent, in opposition to the abstract love of justice, andthe general desire to increase the wisdom and happiness ofmankind. Notwithstanding these difficulties, an attempt tokeep such a register has actually been made. The design hasfrom time to time been pursued. Though much has not beencollected, every circumstance and conversation that have beenpreserved are faithfully and accurately related, and these noteshave