standards of good taste in this respect. Good casts and bas-relief,
decorate their halls and class-rooms. There are few homes that cannot
afford to follow their example. But in buying these things be not
misled by sales and advertised bargains. It is more than seldom that
the placques, casts, and vases thus obtained are such as could have
any valuable influence whatever upon the young lives with which they
are brought in contact. Meretricious and showy ornaments, designed to
look as if they cost more than they really do, have no business in the
sincere home where the children are being sincerely educated.

[Sidenote: Music]

The same general laws apply to music. No art has a greater and more
insinuating influence. The very songs with which the mother sings the
baby to sleep have an occult influence which is later revealed and
made plain. Such songs, then, should be simple. They may be nothing
but improvisations, the mother's mind and heart making music, but
they should not be melodramatic songs of the music-hall order. No such
mawkish sentimentalism as that shown in "The Gypsy's Warning," for
example, or other songs which belong to the cheap theater should have
a place in the holy of holies--that inmost self of the child--which
responds to music.

The simple folk-songs of all nations, Eleanor Smith's and most of
Mrs. Gaynor's songs, already mentioned, and the songs collected by
Reinecke, called "Fifty Children's Songs," are excellent for this
purpose. The old-fashioned nonsense songs, such as "Billy Boy," "Mary
had a Little Lamb" and "Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle,"
may also have a pleasant and harmless place of their own.