where the eater ought still to have continued, as I soon had reason to believe.

After a few miles further, my elderly companions left the stage to the sole occupancy of Miss and myself. We had scarcely got our first jolt in the roomy vehicle, before I perceived the child sobbing, and in tears. "What is the matter, my young friend ?" "O, I don't want to go to -; I hate that place. I wish mother would let me stay at home; I want to be with her." And then she sobbed the louder, and the little blue fountains poured out on the bloom beneath, such waters of bitterness, as, long-continued, would have blighted that beauty of health and hue.

But childhood's tear-springs are happily not deep, and are soon exhausted. My sympathies could not but be most keenly awakened. I was led at once to make inquiries about the school to which she was forced to return. In the first place, I learned that the little sufferer loved her mother exceedingly, and her highest happiness was to be in her society. Next, I was told that she was laughed at and treated unfeelingly, by her instructors, when she was homesick, and cried. I inquired minutely into the customs of the school, and I found that they were unfavorable to health. The time after rising, before breakfast, was occupied in their private rooms, the bed-rooms; and the breath of health abounds not, immediately, where the exhalations of sleep have been going on for seven or eight hours. Soon after the first meal, the pupils are imprisoned

in the school-room till mid-day, with the exception of a very brief recess. They must sit just so straight, and in that constrained position by which flexile-framed and many-jointed nature is so sorely pained. A number of the seats were without backs, so that the backbone was the only backing some of the poor creatures had for their aching bodies. Then the half hour before dining, in the summer's hot noon, was not very appropriate for bodily action, and at no season was particularly devoted to needed exercise. The afternoon was passed also in the same dull, uninteresting, and constrained routine. "Oh," exclaimed the little tender-hearted narrator, in describing her seat and posture; "oh, I have such a feeling here," putting her hand to her bosom, "that I can hardly breathe, sometimes. Then I have no appetite to eat, and I am sick after my dinners. Oh, I don't want to go back. Do let me go on with you, sir. No, I beg you would hire a horse and chaise, and carry me back to my home. Or get me a buggy, and I will go alone, if I don't get home till midnight. I had rather do this, than go back to school. I shan't be an atom afraid." And then she cried again, and would not be comforted. My heart was moved. I then resolved that I would tell the story to the public, for the good of poor little sufferers like this.

But why was this lovely child sent away, fifty miles, to a heartless boarding school? Because it was the fashion; and the schools near home, though

some of them were very good, as I had before learned, did not exactly suit the parents, who seemed to be entirely ignorant of the manner in which schools should be conducted. From the little girl's artless account, they had found fault with the very salutary methods of an excellent school. And what were the studies that were pursued at such a distance, and at the cost of nearly two hundred dollars a year? Nothing, I found, but the ordinary pursuits of reading, writing, arithmetic, and grammar, with the exception of a book on commerce. From this she probably learned something about the various productions of different countries. She learned about things appertaining in part at least to the other side of the globe, and which would be better understood at a maturer age; while the phenomena of nature, and the common processes of art, close by, were a perfect mystery. I set to questioning the little student of commerce, and she knew nothing about the common grains, fields of which we were passing, and from which was her daily food. How they differed or grew, how they were sown or harvested, she knew not. Of the clouds over her head, the rains dropping at her feet, and the heat and the cold affecting her body continually, she could give no good reasons. She thought the clouds were great bags up in the sky, holding water which once in a while got loose, through some sort of holes, and tumbled down in the shape of rain. She knew not how butter, or cheese, or a thousand things, were formed, which were made at doors all

around. I asked if she had been in a gristmill. She had only seen the outside of one in the vicinity of her school. Her mind was sent across the ocean faintly to conceive of sugar-making, for instance, while she was not led to observe with her own bodily senses as interesting processes of manufacture taking place within two minutes' walk. At the same time, she was suffering from the want of that exercise which excursions into fields, and shops, and mills, would have afforded, together with valuable and pleasant instruction. The only time at all appropriated to all-important exercise, was a brief period about sundown; and this was occupied, at best, by a short and sauntering walk, and it might be whiled away within doors, if indolence so preferred.

My story is done, excepting to add, that I saw my sweet little companion left at the door of the seminary where, for a moment at least, she forgot the hated school in the welcoming kiss of two or three fellow pupils,—perhaps I ought to say, fellow sufferers. Just at parting from me, she strikingly showed how easily her good affections might be drawn out, instead of being repressed, and her naturally amiable temper kept sweet, instead of being Soured. Among the last words of her truly musical voice, were, "O, sir, I wish you would tell me your name, so that I may write to mother how very kind you have been to me." The name was given friendly and pitying

her, together with a most

good-by. I traveled on to my destination, lament

ing that the subject of education should be so little understood by those who ought to know the most about it-parents. I was more convinced than ever that the most proper place for the first stages of education at least, is within and around an affectionate and a judiciously careful home. For the sake of mere fashion, or acquisitions which the head is not yet old enough to understand or yet to need, why should the tender heart of childhood be wrested out of its warm bosom and cast into the distant cold?

soak write the parents!