IN

GENTLENESS AND TRUTH.

BY AUNT ALICE.

PUBLISHED BY THE

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY,

28 CORNHILL, BOSTON,

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by

JOHN P. JEWETT & CO.,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

RIGHT OF PUBLISHING TRANsferred TO THE

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.

PREFACE.

C

w pad الله

to

THE first unfoldings of the infant mind are deeply interesting every careful observer. A career of being is started which is to be commensurate with the eternity of God. Moreover, this sublime future is now wrapped up in a little bud of being, tiny as the few trickling drops gushing from the mountain side, and which may be turned in their course by a chance foot astray, or may else proceed mingling with others to form the mighty Amazon.

Who shall guide the embryo immortal? It is a kind and wise providence which commits the helpless, undeveloped one to the arms and the hearts of loving parents. It is a second providence in favor of the infant, and in perfect adaptation to the first, which provides that the moral affections shall be earliest

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developed. Ere a few months have passed, the child learns to look up lovingly and trustingly, and the parents may begin to lead its young affections whither they will.

Pleasant days, and weeks, and months go gliding by, and very many parents are taken by surprise at the progress and hopeful development of their little ones during the first five or six years; thenceforward, in too many instances, there seems to come on gradually, almost imperceptibly, a blight of the moral affections. We are thankful that, in those families where there is conscientious care in training children, this is not decidedly the case; yet how often, even in such families, is the time when the child leaves the parental fireside for the school room marked as a time of change, a time from whence there seems a manifest deterioration of principle!

Whence the cause, and how shall the evil be met? Doubtless there is more than a single cause; but these queries have suggested the following pages, which, if prosperous, shall be but as the foreshadowing of other efforts. The author would say, Let the moral affections continue to be cultivated; let their constant and perfect development be sought in the school room as well as at home; let duty be daily and hourly inculcated by "line upon line, and precept upon precept," with the same good judgment which we manifest in caring for the intellect.