A child may be educated at the best schools without acquiring any taste for good literature. The way a parent treats a child in relation to its books has far more influence in this respect than a teacher can possibly possess. A mother, even if she is not an educated woman, can learn to read understandingly, and can teach her child to read in the same way. She can talk to it about its books, and awaken a desire in its mind to understand what it reads. Children are always curious in regard to the phenomena of nature, and whether this curiosity lives or dies depends very much on the answers it receives to its first questions. If the mother cannot answer them herself, she can help the child to find an answer somewhere else, and she should beware how she deceives herself with the idea that she has not time to attend to the moral and intellectual wants of her child. She has no right to so immerse all her own mind in the cares of life that she cannot, while attending to them, talk rationally with her children. The mothers who best fulfil their higher duties towards their children are quite as often found among those who are compelled to almost constant industry of the hands, as among those of abundant leisure. There is nothing in the handiwork of the housekeeper or the seamstress that need absorb all the mental attention; and hers must be an ill-regulated mind that cannot ply the needle, or perform the more active duties of the household, and yet listen to the child as it reads its little books, and converse with it about the moral lessons or the intellectual instruction they contain. The mother has it in her power to influence the mode in which the child makes companions of its books more than any other person; and the character of its Companionship with them through life will generally depend in a great degree on the tastes and habits acquired in childhood. Many parents who guard their children with jealous care from the contamination of rude and vicious society among other children, allow them to associate with ideal companions of a very degraded kind. The parent should check the propensity, not only to read bad books, but also to read idle or foolish books, by exciting the action of the mind towards something better. Merely to deny improper books is not enough. Something must be given in place of them, or the craving will continue, and the child will be very apt to gratify its appetite in secret.