He listened closely and asked many intelligent questions. He had received a lesson in politics which he did not forget, as his chance remarks showed for months afterward. He talked the matter over with his younger brothers, and they, too, began to ask questions. During the next few years that mother gave her boys brief talks on arbitration, the tariff, public education and its bearing on democracy, street-cleaning, road-making, silver and gold money, and many other topics of current politics. She was careful never to force them, for she knew that it is only when the mood is upon him that a boy likes to discuss serious subjects. The terms she used were of the simplest; and her husband, who was deeply interested in her efforts, and helped her whenever he could, supplied her with many illustrations, such as children could understand. Especially did she impress upon her children's minds the true and striking saying of a great Frenchman, that "governments are always just as bad as the people will let them be"; and that, as a part of the people, it was their duty to see that the government was made and kept good.
By "line upon line, precept upon precept," knowing that opinions are formed
"As boys learn to spell,-- By reiteration chiefly."
this mother tried to impress upon those children the duties of good citizenship. They are grown up now and show the effects of their training.
Many of us feel that more upon the subject of politics,--again we should remind ourselves that politics and patriotism are very nearly the same thing,--might easily and properly be taught in our public schools; for the foundation principles of politics are only those of ordinary ethics. In this way, morality, which is far more necessary than book-learning for the perpetuity of our institutions, would take that dominant place in our educational system, so strongly advocated by that prince of educators, Horace Mann. "Among all my long list of acquaintances," he says, "I find that for one man who has been ruined for want of intellectual attainments, hundreds have perished for want of morals. And yet we go on bestowing one hundred times more care and pains and cost on the education of the intellect than on the cultivation of the moral sentiments and the establishment of moral principles." He insists that morals should be regularly taught, and not "left to casual and occasional mention."