A New Professorship

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

THE man who discovers a new profession is manifestly entitled to the gratitude of at least two classes : the people to whose comfort or needs it ministers, and those who find in it an occupation. With a view to serving alike certain of the gifted but unemployed, with whom the present time seems especially well furnished, and a large number of perplexed parents, I wish, in all due humility, to suggest a fresh field of labor.

Everybody who has had to do with children knows how much thought must be expended upon the subject of the reading proper and best for their young minds. In this progressive age it is well-nigh impossible for grown people to keep up with the rapid advance of the youngsters in any field, and it is especially hard to know what to give them that at once they should and will read. If some clever and cultured person were in a position to make this subject the serious business of life, then it might be possible to come to something like a reasonable solution of the problem ; and the thing that follows as the logical sequence is that some such person should be put in a position to give his whole time to it. In other words, there should be at once established professors of children’s reading.

At first blush it may not be easy to take such a proposal seriously, but if one impartially considers the matter a little, it must at least be evident that if the plan is practicable it would bring comfort and aid to innumerable homes. In a society like ours there are many parents who are bringing up their children to fortunes far above those of their own youth. They have never had the training which would fit them to direct the reading of their children, and they are pathetically helpless in face of the necessities of the case. There are others upon whom no amount of education would have bestowed the judgment necessary to choose wisely what children shall read; while for the wisest of us all there is always the difficulty of keeping in mind the books from which we should select, and of selecting with wisdom and discrimination. We are continually saying to ourselves of this or that book that we intended to have the children read it at a certain stage of development, but unluckily we forgot all about it.

Now one whose business it was to keep run of these things, who was trained to observe the influence on young minds of any given course of reading, and who studied the whole matter as a serious profession, could not fail to accomplish wonders in the development and the training of the youthful mind. He must be a person not only of intelligence, but of imagination ; he must be catholic in his tastes and firm in his convictions ; he must be one to whom children would turn naturally, and his knowledge must be as wide as possible.

When such a man is found, what a blessed prospect of relief opens before many a wearied parent! Tom is sulky, or Betty is getting too sentimental to be endured, or Harry is apparently dead to all sense of honor; Kate’s whole small soul is given over to slothfulness, Dick will prevaricate, or Nancy’s temper is the terror of the household. The professor of reading will be called in: he will give a prescription just as the physician does, only that his will go to the book-seller instead of to the apothecary, and, although the days of miracles are passed, and one cannot expect wonders, he will effect results that beforehand one would not have believed possible. To Tom he will perhaps — this is spoken merely in illustration, and the future professor is in no way to be held responsible for it — give a volume of Cooper or Marryatt; Betty will have something jolly, perhaps the Alice books or a volume of Edward Lear; and just the right thing to each. To one will be assigned a fairy story, to another the most matter-of-fact volume of history; to this a book on natural history, to that Scott’s poems, to the third Grimm; and so on for all the innumerable varieties of childish minds.

Not to discuss it at too great length, it certainly does seem as if the scheme were one which has but to be mentioned to commend itself instantly to the intelligence of thoughtful people; and there seems but one difficulty of much magnitude. Children are plenty, parents might be induced to coöperate, books there are innumerable, but where is the professor ?