The responsibility which is incurred by every mother imperatively calls
upon her to seek the best means of making her children good and rational
beings. This is not to be done by merely sending them to school for
instruction. Education must be continued at home, or otherwise its most
important results are left to chance, and it mainly depends upon
accident or circumstance whether the child becomes vicious or virtuous.
All persons may not have the power or the opportunity to direct the
infant mind with sufficient steadiness and judgment to produce certain
effects. It is much more within the ability of a mother to make her
children good-tempered, and to endow them with cheerful, contented
dispositions; but even in this, with the best intentions, she may fail
from want of understanding the means. It is, however, in the power of
all mothers--the learned and the unlearned, the rich and the poor--to
have the most _decided_ influence on the _moral_ character of their
children, and to make them virtuous members of society. To this end
children must be educated by example as well as by precept. Let not
parents believe that they are discharging their duty by admonishing
their children to do right, while they act at variance with those
principles they would inculcate. Children are peculiarly quick-sighted
in this respect, and detect the smallest contradiction in act and word
with surprising acuteness. That which we wish our children to become,
that we should endeavour as much as possible to be ourselves. This is a
maxim in parental management which would tend more than any other course
to ensure success.
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MEANINGS OF WORDS.--No. 3.
Grammarians have divided words into various classes, called parts of
speech, an arrangement that has some advantages, and also some
inconveniences. The advantages are the same that we derive from
classification in all sciences, where we have a great number of objects
which we wish to have some ready means of referring to: the
disadvantages are, that the _names_ of the parts of speech have often
been an obstacle to our right understanding of the true nature and
meaning of the words themselves. For our present purpose it will be
enough to speak of _nouns_, _adjectives_, and _verbs_; or, if our
readers prefer it, we will use the term _noun_ as including that of
_adjective_.
A _noun_, as the word imports, is a _name_ for something, whether it be
a thing immediately open to the examination of the senses, or an object
which we contemplate only by the mind. We propose to distribute some of
these nouns into classes, in order that by a comparison their meanings
may be better understood.
Nouns in _er_.
Work-er. Hunt-er.
Kill-er. Speak-er.
Slay-er. Carri-er.
The meaning of this termination in _er_ is obvious: it expresses the
_do-er_ of a thing. These words in _er_ may be considered as formed by
adding the termination _er_ to such words as _work_, _kill_, _carry_,
&c. In the last instance it will be observed that the _y_ is changed
into an _i_ in the new word.
There are some words in _er_[1] which do not signify a _do-er_, such as
_murder_, _slaughter_, _laughter_. But we have the word _murder-er_, and
we might have such a word as _slaughter-er_: the word _laugh-er_ is
formed regularly from the word _laugh_.
This termination _er_ is found in the German language in the same sense;
and also in the Latin and Greek, where the termination _or_, with the
same signification, is also of frequent occurrence.
Nouns in _or_.
Act-or. Prosecut-or.
Doct-or. Orat-or.
Visit-or. Curat-or.
We believe these words in _or_ are all derived from the Latin, while the
words in _er_ are genuine Saxon. _Visit-or_, and other words of the
class, are sometimes written _visit-er_; but it would perhaps be a good
rule to confine all the terminations in _or_ to words really derived
from Latin; for it may be laid down as a general rule that the nouns in
_or_, as the reader will see them in our common books, are of Latin
origin, while those in _er_ are of genuine Saxon growth.
Female nouns in _ess_ and _ix_.
Some nouns in _or_ and _er_ have special terminations to denote the
female _doer_, thus, _hunt-ress_, _murder-ess_.
The second example shows that these words are simply made by putting
_ess_ to the end of the word in _er_; and that in _hunt-ress_ the vowel
_e_ has been dropped, the word having been originally _hunteress_. Some
words in _ess_ change the termination of the masculine a little, as
_abbot_, _abbess_. This termination _ess_ is found in the Greek language
with the same signification.
We have also feminine nouns in _ix_, formed from the Latin, such as
_executrix, prosecutrix_: in _ine_, such as _hero_, _hero-ine_.