ON THE IMPORTANCE OF AN EARLY CORRECT EDUCATION OF CHILDREN: EMBRACING THE MUTUAL OBLIGATIONS AND DUTIES OF PARENT AND CHILD; ALSO THE QUALIFICATIONS AND DISCIPLINE OF TEACHERS, With their Emolument, AND A PLAN SUGGESTED WHEREBY ALL OUR COMMON SCHOOLS CAN TO WHICH IS SUBJOINED BY WAY OF AN APPENDIX, THE Declaration of Independence BY THE THIRTEEN NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES, 4TH JULY, 1776. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, WITH THAT OF THE STATES OF NEW JERSEY AND NEW YORK, AS LATELY ADOPTED. BY DR. WILLIAM EUEN, OF SHAWANGUNK, ULSTER COUNTY. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR, 1848. PRICE SIXTY-NINE CENTS. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, BY WILLIAM EUEN, M. D., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. gift 12-10-1931 PREFACE. THE author, in giving publicity to the following pages, assures his readers that nothing would have afforded him greater pleasure than to have had his ideas dressed and carried out, on the early and proper training of a child, by some one more intellectually endowed than himself, and one too enjoying sound health and natural vision, which latter blessing he has not possessed during the labor of composing and compiling the subject of present intrusion. Subscribers for this little work were, before its publication, made fully acquainted, by the Prospectus, of the author's sore affliction through total blindness, and the consequent necessity of assistance by a proxy, which has been performed, so far as the mechanical part of the manuscript is concerned, by a son between thirteen and fourteen years of age. And in addition to nearly five years' bereavement of sight, such has been the impaired state of his general health, as to keep him for many months confined to his bed, and no hopes entertained by the most eminent oculists as to a future restoration of sight. Reduced in pecuniary circumstances to the lowest ebb, one of two alternatives appeared only left for him to adopt, either directly to apply for public charity, or, by an amanuensis, so bring in requisition his humble mental powers, as would produce a work on some subject which might serve at least as an apology for a few cents at the hands of an indulgent and charitable public. The latter course proving more congenial to his feelings, and trusting in some measure to an experience of over fifty-two years, during which time he acted three years as principal in two of our common schools, and afterwards one year in an academy under higher regulations, in connexion with rearing and educating eight children of his own, he has been induced to select the subject as named in the title |