I must needs say, my dear Mr. B., that this is a subject to which
I was always particularly attentive; and among the charities your
bountiful heart permits me to dispense to the poor and indigent,
I have had always a watchful eye upon the children of such, and
endeavoured, by questions put to them, as well as to their parents,
to inform myself of their little ways and tempers, and how nature
delights to work in different minds, and how it might be pointed to
their good, according to their respective capacities; and I have for
this purpose erected, with your approbation, a little school of seven
or eight children, among which is four in the earliest stages, when
they can but just speak, and call for what they want and love: and I
am not a little pleased to observe, when I visit them in their school
time that principles of goodness and virtue may be instilled into
their little hearts much earlier than is usually imagined. And why
should it not be so? for may not the child, that can tell its wants,
and make known its inclination, be easily made sensible of _yours_,
and what you expect from it, provided you take a proper method? For,
sometimes, signs and tokens (and even looks), uniformly practised,
will do as well as words; as we see in such of the young of the brute
creation as we are disposed to domesticate, and to teach to practise
those little tricks, of which the aptness or docility of their natures
makes them capable.
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