hours and a half (counting in his recess) out of twenty-four.  Ask any farmer, even the stupidest, how well his colt or his lamb would grow if it had but two hours a day of absolute freedom and exercise in the open air, and that in the dark and the chill of a late afternoon!  In spite of the dark and the chill, however, your boy skates or slides on until he is called in by you, who, if you are an American mother, care a great deal more than he does for the bad marks which will stand on his week’s report if those three lessons are not learned before bed-time.  He is tired and cold; he does not want to study—­who would?  It is six o’clock before he is fairly at it.  You work harder than he does, and in half an hour one lesson is learned; then comes tea.  After tea half an hour, or perhaps an hour, remains before bed-time; in this time, which ought to be spent in light, cheerful talk or play, the rest of the lessons must be learned.  He is sleepy and discouraged.  Words which in the freshness of the morning he would have learned in a very few moments with ease, it is now simply out of his power to commit to memory.  You, if you are not superhuman, grow impatient.  At eight o’clock he goes to bed, his brain excited and wearied, in no condition for healthful sleep; and his heart oppressed with the fear of “missing” in the next day’s recitations.  And this is one out of the school-year’s two hundred and sixteen days—­all of which will be like this, or worse.  One of the most pitiful sights we have seen for months was a little group of four dear children, gathered round the library lamp, trying to learn the next day’s lessons in time to have a story read to them before going to bed.  They had taken the precaution to learn one lesson immediately after dinner, before going out, cutting their out-door play down by half an hour.  The two elder were learning a long spelling-lesson; the third was grappling with geographical definitions of capes, promontories, and so forth; and the youngest was at work on his primer.  In spite of all their efforts, bed-time came before the lessons were learned.  The little geography student had been nodding over her book for some minutes, and she had the philosophy to say, “I don’t care; I’m so sleepy.  I had rather go to bed than hear any kind of a story.”  But the elder ones were grieved and unhappy, and said, “There won’t ever be any time; we shall have just as much more to learn to-morrow night.”  The next morning, however, there was a sight still more pitiful:  the baby of seven, with a little bit of paper and a pencil, and three sums in addition to be done, and the father vainly endeavoring, to explain them to him in the hurried moments before breakfast.  It would be easy to show how fatal to all real mental development, how false to all Nature’s laws of growth, such a system must be; but that belongs to another side of the question.  We speak now simply of the effect of it on the body; and here we quote largely from the admirable article of Col.  Higginson’s, above referred to.  No stronger, more direct, more conclusive words can be written:—­