Child training is the most important work committed to parents. Like clay in the hands of the potter, the plastic mind of the child readily yields to any and every impression. Into this mind the wise and careful parent may implant the noble qualities of love, reverence, charity, and purity; or by careless training instill the ignoble qualities of anger, hatred, envy, strife, and malice, etc. The impressions thus made are never to effaced, except by a miracle of divine grace. It is said that what a child learns before he is seven years old will never be forgotten, and will in a great measure determine his future character. How important, then, that the lessons taught him in that period be those of truth and uprightness! James Edson White was one of the best children's authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His books sold into the hundreds of thousands.
