"Where," asks Mr. James Payn, "is the children's fun? Boys are now crammed with knowledge like turkeys (but unfortunately not killed at Christmas), and there is absolutely no room in them for a joke." An idol called "success" is put up for worship, and fathers are ready to sacrifice the health and happiness of their children upon its altar. "The educational abomination of desolation of the present day," says Professor Huxley, "is the stimulation of young people to work at high pressure by incessant examinations." Some wise man (who probably was not an early riser) has said of early risers in general, that they are "conceited all the forenoon, and stupid all the afternoon." Now whether this is true of early risers in the common acceptation of the word or not, I will not pretend to say; but it is too often true of the unhappy children who are forced to rise too early in their classes. They are "conceited all the forenoon of life, and stupid all its afternoon." How much unhappiness might children be spared if fathers would goad them less, and sometimes cheer up that dulness which has fallen to most of us, by saying: "Be good, dear child, and let who will be clever; Do noble things--nor dream them all day long; And so make life, death, and that vast for ever One grand, sweet song." What to do with our boys and girls is certainly a serious question, but the last thing we should do with them is to make them miserable. Why not disregard all false notions of gentility, and have each child well taught a manual trade? Then they will have riches in their arms, and you will have escaped the unpleasant alternative of the Jewish proverb, which says that he who does not teach his son a trade teaches him to steal.