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Show SHUT THE DOOR. The education of our youth is sadly neglected in one direction, and that is in closing and fastening doors after them. Careful observation has satisfied us there is no use in trying to teach some people that accomplishment. It appears to be a natural and, probably, an inherited inability, just as with some people there is no such thing as knowing one ?[lane] from an other, as with others it is impossible to acquire facility and handiness in the use of tools. Modern ingenuity has tasked itself to make up to a suffering world for the incapacity of negligence of people who never close a door by the application of weights or springs that will automatically do what every man, woman, and child ought to do instinctively. But these appliances themselves shirk their duties, and they are not susceptible of universal application. There ought to be a through course of instruction in our schools in the art of shutting doors. The first lesson would ?[inculcate] the elemental ?[and] simple duty itself. Boys and girls should be kept passing a doorway, each one opening and closing the door for himself and herself, until not a mother's son or daughter of them could leave a door ajar. Then the finer features of the accomplishment might be introduced. There are people who always slam a door; there are others who hold it open and close it so slowly that a whole procession of diseases, including colds in the head, catarrh, sore throat, diphtheria, inflammation of the lungs and the ?[epizootie] can march through, and the mercury of the thermometer has time to get down into his boots. But without becoming too fastidious, it is important that everyone should be taught to close the door and fasten it in some way. The amount of time a professional man spends, and the distance he travels in his office, in jumping up and closing the door after people who neglect that duty would astonish one who had never given the matter thought. Be kind enough to shut the door. |