"I speak of that period of life to which I have before alluded. Is the child ever told what that is which is beginning? I mean, has it full, absolute knowledge? does it know what temptations will come, or why they will come? Has it learned how they are to be met? or how at that time it can create conditions for health, and through its health its character, good-humour, happiness?--that on that time hangs its future life, nay, that of its offspring? Is that taught in such a way as to be branded, so to say, into the child's will? Have the subjects of which I spoke been raised to a level of one which here, and now, might guide the scholar's fancy by noble incentive, strong purpose, enthusiasm? for children, especially young girls, can be made enthusiastic. "Or, to come down to what every one is capable of forming a judgment about, do the parents at home know that at that age certain sorts of food, certain seasonings, are baneful to some natures? That for some a special diet is necessary? What sort of diet that should be? Is it known in schools that a special course of gymnastics may be of great assistance? Children are not all alike in respect to the amount of watchfulness and management which they require; some few require no special attention. But that most do need it, is a fact upon which I confidently appeal to the experience of this meeting, whose members have all been young once and have had young companions." [He made a pause and looked round the room; a little bird could be heard twittering in the distance.] "A further question: Is it not at that period of life that those, who had not learned to do so before, now learn to deceive? To act secretly, with a bashfulness which wounds the sense of honour and thus injures the character? If one thing can be admitted, another cannot--to the destruction of the character. Quietly, and as a rule quite unsuspected, at that age the powers of self-destruction begin to work in body and character; no one will dare to contradict me." [The terrible pauses which he made were almost worse than anything he said; here he made one again. But he now passed on to something else.] "But is there no place in the world," he asked, "where the schools are arranged as these experiences demand?"