The Memories of Fifty Years: Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men; Interspersed with Scenes and Incidents Occurring during a Long Life of Observation Chiefly Spent in the SouthwestSparks, W. H. (William Henry)
History
The Memories of Fifty Years: Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men; Interspersed with Scenes and Incidents Occurring during a Long Life of Observation Chiefly Spent in the Southwest
Sparks, W. H. (William Henry)
Georgia -- History -- 1775-1865; Southwest, Old -- History; United States -- Biography
The home circle is select and chaste--the promiscuous intermingling
with the world meretricious and contaminating. The mother not trained
to the appreciation and discharge of the domestic duties, was never the
mother of a great representative mind; because she is incapable of
imparting those stern principles of exalted morality and fixity of
purpose essential in forming the character of such men. The mother of
Cincinnatus was a farmer's wife; of Leonidas, a shepherdess; and the
mothers of Washington, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, William H, Crawford, and
Andrew Jackson were all the wives of farmers--rural and simple in their
pursuits, distinguished for energy and purity; constant in their
principles, and devoted to husband, home, and children. They never
dreamed it was woman's vocation or duty to go out into the world and
mingle in its strifes and contentions--but at home, to view them,
reflect upon their consequences to society, and upon the future of
their sons and daughters, and warn them what to emulate and what to
shun. They, as did their husbands, felt the necessity of preserving
that delicacy of thought and action which is woman's ornament, and
which is more efficient in rebuking licentiousness and profligacy in
the young and the old than all the teaching of the schools without such
example. Such were the mothers of the great and the good of our land,
and such the mothers of those men now prominent and distinguished in
the advocacy and support of the great principles of natural rights and
humanity.
It is a mooted question whether the purposes of human life demand a
high, classical education among the masses; or whether the general
happiness is promoted by such education. In the study of the human mind
in connection with human wants, we are continually met with
difficulties arising from the want of education; and quite as
frequently with those resulting from education. So much so, that we
hear from every wise man the declaration that as many minds are ruined
by over-education as from the want of education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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