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FIRESIDE EDUCATION. |
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plication will be more effectual in fixing it in the mind, and making it a part of its furniture, than double or triple the time, if interrupted by long intervals. Hence it is a great error to begin any study, and then break off to finish at a later period. The ennui is thus doubled and the success greatly diminished. The best way is to begin at the proper age, and to persevere till the end is attained. This accustoms the mind to sound exertion, and not to fits of attention. Hence the mischief of long vacations; and hence the evil of beginning studies before the age at which they can be understood, as in teaching the abstract rules of grammar to children : to succeed in which implies in them a power of thinking, and an amount of general knowledge, which they cannot possess.
"In physical education, we are quite alive to the advantages of repetition and practice. We know that if practice in dancing, fencing, skating, and riding be persevered in for a sufficient length of time to give the muscles the requisite promptitude and harmony of action, the power will be ever afterward retained, although little called into use; whereas, if we stop short of this point, we may reiterate practice by fits and starts, without any proportionate advancement. The same principle applies equally to the mo- |
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