LETTER VI.

To the same.

MY DEAR MADAM,

CERTAIN arguments which appear

to have very little that is personal in their nature, or individual in their application, may be urged with effect, when appealing to the judgments of some persons, and endeavouring to interest their feelings. The most forcible reasons which can be advanced in favour of a particular line of conduct, are not such as are peculiarly calculated to affect themselves, so much as those which are connected with the happiness of others, in whose welfare they are greatly interested. This is perhaps more observable with regard to parents than any other description of characters, and is particularly the case with the mother of a family. If you can but convince her that the happiness of her children is affected by what is recommended, although its adop

tion may require a considerable degree of self-denial and personal inconvenience, yet such a forcible motive operates so powerfully upon her feelings that she cannot resist its constraining influence. The fabulous disinterestedness of the Pelican, which is represented as feeding its young with the blood which it has drawn from its own breast, is more than realized in the mental suffering which a fond parent often undergoes, in order to promote the welfare of her offspring; and her constant solicitude and anxiety on their account, form the most pleasing answer to the scripture interrogation, "Can a mother forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?

If the reasons adduced in my last Letter should have failed to produce their designed effect, I hope that those which may be advanced in this will be more successful. I feel that I am venturing upon ground which seems to possess a certain hallowed sanctity, and on which the foot of a stranger may leave a sacrilegious impression. An interference with the edu

cation of the younger branches of a family, is often looked upon as conveying a tacit rebuke and a disguised censure. But I will not act in so covert a manner; I will boldly confess to you that I mean to convey an open rebuke and an undisguised censure. And I do really think, my dear madam, that you will fail in a very essential part of your duty as a parent, if you neglect to invite your children, by the influence of your example, or to urge them by the authority of your commands, to appreciate the value of the habit of early rising.

Much of your attention has been frequently directed to the best method of impressing upon the minds of your youthful charge the value of time. You have endeavoured to enforce upon them a sense of its shortness, and of the necessity of improving each moment ere it be fled, and numbered "with the years beyond the flood." You have accompanied your exhortations with all the earnestness which a

* Young.

D

full consciousness of the importance of the subject could create, and with all the tenderness which an anxious parent could be expected to feel. And you have often considered your own time profitably employed, when searching for the most effectual arguments and the most successful persuasions, to convince others of what experience had taught yourself. But let me remind you, my dear madam, that you have neglected one of the most powerful and convincing means of producing the wished-for result that lies within your reach. If they who are influenced by your example, and willing to obey your injunctions; who are narrowly watching all the minutiae of your conduct, and comparing the probable excellence of your theory with the certain facts of your practice, with an acuteness of observationthat you sometimes little suspect; if they were to see by your daily habits how much you felt the indispensible necessity of that improvement of time which you had inforced upon them; that you denied yourself what they had been accustomed to regard

as an allowable gratification; and if they were to experience, by an obedience to your commands, that they were every morning gaining a few of those hours which you had taught them to look upon as so precious, they would have the value of time brought home to them in a manner that no representations, however just, could so eloquently convey; and no arguments, however irresistible, could so convincingly prove.

There is an error which young persons are very apt to fall into, (and indeed it is very far from being confined to them,) which it should be a great object with a parent to correct. They look upon the larger portions of time as being of considerable importance, and attach to the names by which they are distinguished, ideas of a comparatively commensurate value. If you were to talk to them of shortening their existence, by blotting out a certain number of years, or even of months, they would shudder at the thought, and be alarmed at the suggestion. But if you were to propose that a definite number of moments, or mi