of unfinished tasks.

The youthful consciousness is of a world full of jostling interests.
Why not let the children alone, and allow them to spring lightly from
one enthusiasm to another? Of course you will help them to finish,
either at the first sitting or at the second or at the third, the task
that was undertaken when that particular enthusiasm was at its height.
The drawing which has remained on the easel during the foot-ball
season may be suggestively brought to notice again in the quiet times
between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The boat begun last summer may
well be finished in the days of the succeeding Spring when all the
earth is full of the sound of running water. Thus each task, though
not completed at once, gets done in the end; and the youthful capacity
for many sympathies and many desires has not been narrowed.

[Sidenote: Parental Vanity]

Such a line of conduct presupposes, of course, that the parent
considers only the child's best welfare, and not his own parental
vanity. He is not desirous that his son shall do anything so well
as to attract the attention and admiration of the neighbors. He is
desirous merely that the boy shall grow up wholesomely and happily,
showing such superiority as there may be in him when the fitting time
and opportunity present themselves. He will not attempt to make a
musician of an unmusical child, nor a mechanic of an artistic child.
He will not object to the brilliant and impractical dreams of the
young inventor, but will help to make them practicable; and though he
may squirm at some of the investigations of the budding scientist, he
will not forbid them.