Until the child is taught deference, it is idle to teach it Latin; until it sees the necessity of self-control, and the beauty of self-denial, grammar and mathematics are to be dispensed with. In one word, the foundation of all true development lies in preserving the natural relation of parent and child. Whatever turns the child into a tyrant and the mother into a slave, degrades the ideal of both, and makes any true progress impossible. To do what is difficult and disagreeable with a faithful and cheerful spirit, is the first great achievement, remembering, nevertheless, that God is a loving Father, not a hard Master. Yet, loving as he is, his laws are inexorable. The baby stumbles, and bruised limbs or swollen lips warn it against the second careless step. Young and tender as it is, severity encircles it on every hand. Is it possible that we are no longer "perfect even as he is perfect" in this regard? But let us suppose this point gained, a foundation laid, what obstacles lie in the way of the teacher of to-day? The conscientious and well-meant answer to this question, from the majority of persons is, the health of the pupils. Worst of all, this answer comes from the physicians. We are often told that the health of women now is not as good as it was generations ago, and this has been repeated and repeated until everybody believes it. A long time ago, I was walking through Broad street in company with John Collins Warren, when I alluded hastily to a severe attack of croup from which my little boy was suffering, and said, impatiently, that it seemed as if all my care might secure for him as happy a babyhood as that of the little things whose frozen heels were at that moment hitting the curbstone. "You do not ask how many of these children die," replied my friend, "and if your boy had been born down here, he would not have lived six months." We are apt to ignore the large class of existing facts of this same kind. Civilization has done so much for human health that the invalids who once died, survive; nay, they do more, they marry, and bring into the world other invalids, who need special care; and, whereas, in the old time, out of a family of twelve, five or six would die in infancy with a persistency worthy of a better cause, the whole twelve would be saved by modern science; and not only that, but enter into the statistics which are intended to show how much worse off we are now than the typical men and women of the past. A few years ago I watched beside the death-bed of a woman who was the only child of an only child of an only child. I mean that for three generations the mother had died of consumption after the birth of her first-born, and in the first instance was herself the sole survivor of a large family. When my friend was born, it was said at first that she could not live, but her father was a physician, and his care in the first place, and removal from a country to a city life in the second, conquered fate.