INTRODUCTION.
13
the education of their children shall do it as wisely
as the fondest affection and the maturest judgment
can dictate, and then place them under the care of
the public teacher, who is properly fitted for, and
alive to the great responsibilities of, his work, then a
brighter era will dawn upon our educational interests,
and a nobler race of men and women will bless the
world. It is wrong to reproach the teacher for not
completing with becoming beauty and symmetry a
work characterized in its early stages by so many de¬
fects.
It is a crime for parents to allow their children to
go from the fireside to the cold world with bad habits
and wicked propensities. With the best preparation
possible, life is a bitter struggle against temptation
and vice, and early religious training and Christian
character furnish the only safeguards against the per¬
ils to which the young are exposed.
R. S. RUST,
Corresponding Secretary of the Freedmerit Aid Society of
the Methodist Episcopal Church,
Cincinnati, Ohio, March, 1885.
Permalink: http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/n8j5j