MR RUSKIN AND CHILDREN.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2236, 6 November 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

MR RUSKIN AND CHILDREN.

u If I have a faculty for anything in this world," he says, "it i 3 for teaching children, and making thorn good, and perfectly happy going alone. My whole principle is that no Government is of the least use except self-Government, and the worst children will do right, if told what is right and wrong, and they must act for themselves. Then I have a fashion, told be by a friend when Francesca was a baby ; which is this — never see evil, but praise good ; for instauce, if children aie untidy do not find fault, nor appear to notice it, but the first time possiblepi aise them for being neat and fiesh, and they w ill soon becoTie so. I daresay you can account for this. I cannot, but I have tried it many times and have never known ifc fail. I have other ideas, but you might not approve of them — the ' religious instruction I limited to paying my little friends for learning Dr. Watt's ' Though I «m now in younger days,' but I suppose thas, like my system generally, is hopelessly old-fashioned. Vuzvy young children can learn this verse from it :—: — I'll not willingly offend, Nor be easily oifended ; What's amiss I'll htrive to mend, And endme wh.it r\in't be mended. There whs :in old Am ric.m se<i-capt tin who said ho had boon m.my times xo'ind the woild comfortably by the help of thin verse. Suppose you try how far and how comfortably you can gut along that ever widening pathway of jmr own little lives by its aid."