for some minutes, and she had the philosophy to say, "I don't care; I'm so
sleepy. I had rather go to bed than hear any kind of a story." But the
elder ones were grieved and unhappy, and said, "There won't _ever_ be any
time; we shall have just as much more to learn to-morrow night." The next
morning, however, there was a sight still more pitiful: the baby of seven,
with a little bit of paper and a pencil, and three sums in addition to be
done, and the father vainly endeavoring, to explain them to him in the
hurried moments before breakfast. It would be easy to show how fatal to
all real mental development, how false to all Nature's laws of growth,
such a system must be; but that belongs to another side of the question.
We speak now simply of the effect of it on the body; and here we quote
largely from the admirable article of Col. Higginson's, above referred to.
No stronger, more direct, more conclusive words can be written:--

"Sir Walter Scott, according to Carlyle, was the only perfectly healthy
literary man who ever lived. He gave it as his deliberate opinion, in
conversation with Basil Hall, that five and a half hours form the limit of
healthful mental labor for a mature person. 'This I reckon very good work
for a man,' he said. 'I can very seldom work six hours a day.' Supposing
his estimate to be correct, and five and a half hours the reasonable limit
for the day's work of a mature intellect, it is evident that even this
must be altogether too much for an immature one. 'To suppose the youthful
brain,' says the recent admirable report, by Dr. Ray, of the Providence
Insane Hospital, 'to be capable of an amount of work which is considered
an ample allowance to an adult brain is simply absurd.' 'It would be
wrong, therefore, to deduct less than a half-hour from Scott's estimate,
for even the oldest pupils in our highest schools, leaving five hours as
the limit of real mental effort for them, and reducing this for all
younger pupils very much further.'