the different faculties with which is is endowed; and the part of the mother is to teach it how to use them with the greatest facility, and to the best effect. The toys provided for children in the present day, are generally of so highly-finished and complete a kind, that after the first emotions of surprise and delight have subsided, they fail to afford any further enjoyment; and as there is nothing more to be done toward completing their construction, there only remains one alternative, that of pulling them in pieces. The rudest machine, or the meanest implement of their own construction, has often the power to please for a much longer time, because it continues to be capable of improvement, and is not in itself of such a character as to be removed beyond their hopes of success. Upon the same principle, all playthings which they can use, are infinitely preferable to such as they can only admire; because the faculty of admiration is one, the culture of which belongs only to riper years. Yet care should be taken even in presenting a boy with a book, a barrow, or any other article which has a distinct use, that he is of an age to turn it to some account, otherwise he will bewilder, disappoint and irritate himself, with unavailing attempts to use his newly-acquired treasures as he sees them used by others.
In all manual exercises, as well as in all operations of the mind, we can not keep too constantly in view the benefit, to themselves and to society, of individuals having what is familiarly called. "Their wits about them," or, in other words, being always ready for the occasion, whatever it may be. How much of happiness, as well as of general usefulness, is associated with this habit, it would be impossible to say. Perhaps we can only estimate its real value, when connected in our practical duties with that dreamy, absorbed, and profitless existence, which tends neither to individual nor social benefit. The prompt, the ready, the active, those who are never at a loss, and especially those who are never lost in self—those who abound in resources, and those who know how to use all common means, who never hesitate longer than is necessary to decide, and then act immediately upon their own decisions; it is such persons, taken as a class—and a happy and enviable class they are—who constitute the most valuable
