takes charge of our cattle, our trees, our flowers, must know how,
must have been especially prepared for his calling. It is only
character-moulding, only shaping the destinies of immortal beings, for
which we demand neither preparation nor a knowledge of the business.
It is only of our children that we are resigned to lose nearly
one-fourth by death, "owing to ignorance and injudicious nursery
management." Were this rate of mortality declared to exist among our
domestic animals, the community would be aroused at once.




CHAPTER III.

CULTURE PROVED TO BE A NEED OF THE CHILD-TRAINER.


Perhaps some day the community may come to perceive that woman
requires for her vocation what the teacher, the preacher, the lawyer,
and the physician, require for theirs; namely, special preparation and
general culture. The first, because every vocation demands special
preparation; and the second, because, to satisfy the requirements of
young minds, she will need to draw from almost every kind of
knowledge. And we must remember here, that the advantages derived from
culture are not wholly an intellectual gain. We get from hooks and
other sources of culture not merely what informs the mind, but that
which warms the heart, quickens the sympathies, strengthens the
understanding; get clearness and breadth of vision, get refining and
ennobling influences, get wisdom in its truest and most comprehensive
sense; and all of these, the last more than all, a mother needs for