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It is right to rebuke some fathers who, after entrusting their sons to attendants and masters, do not themselves take cognizance at all of their instruction by means of their own eyes or their own ears. Herein they most fail in their duty; for they ought themselves every few days to test their children, and not rest their hopes upon the disposition of a hired person; for even those persons will devote more attention to the children if they know they must from time to time render an account. And in this connexion there is point as well as wit in the remark of the groom who said that nothing makes the horse so fat as the king’s eye.Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 12. 20.
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Above all, the memory of children should be trained and exercised; for this is, as it were, a storehouse of learning; and it is for this reason that the mythologists have made Memory the mother of the Muses, thereby intimating by an allegory that there is nothing in the world like memory for creating and fostering. This, then, is to be trained in either case, whether one’s children be naturally gifted with a good memory, or, on the contrary, forgetful. For we shall thus strengthen nature’s generous endowment, and thus fill out her deficiency; and while the first class of children will excel others, the second class will excel their former selves. The saying of Hesiod Works and Days, 361; Many a little makes a mickle. is admirably put: If even small upon the small you place And do this oft, the whole will soon be great. Nor should parents forget that those branches of instruction which involve memory make no small contribution, not merely to education, but also to the practical activities of life; for the memory of past activities serves as a pattern of good counsel for the future.
