the highest perfection. They cannot afford to have them otherwise.
Neat cubicles and spotless dimity have beguiled an uninterrupted
sequence of mammas, and have kept alive, and even flourishing,
schools which are in a thoroughly bad moral state and are
hopelessly inefficient in every particular. Of course, many a
parent feels that he ought to judge for himself, and these
mechanical arrangements are too often the only material on which he
can form his judgment. Let me assure him that they are entirely
untrustworthy."

Secondly, do not think to find safety in the choice of a so-called
"religious" school, even though it reflect the exact shade of your own
religious opinions. The worst evils I ever knew went on in a school
where the boys implicated held a weekly prayer-meeting! We must boldly
face the fact that there is some mysterious connection between the
religious emotions and the lower animal nature; and the religious
forcing-house, of whatever school of theology, will always be liable to
prove a hot-bed of impurity. Choose a school with a high moral tone,
with religion as an underlying principle--a practical religion, that
inculcates duty rather than fosters emotion, and embodies the wise
proverb of Solomon, "In all labor there is profit, but the talk of the
lips tendeth to penury."

Only let me beseech you to use your whole influence not to have your
boy sent away at too early an age. Do you really think that the
exclusive society of little boys, with their childish chatter, their
foolish little codes, their crude and often ridiculously false notions
of life, and their small curiosities, naturally inquisitive, but not
always clean in the researches they inspire, and _always_ false in their
results, is morally better for your child than, in Dr. Butler's words,