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23.

The system of giving attention to the elementrry principles of education,
and calling on all the members to bear a part,both with tongue and
pen, in calaulated to be highly improving. The written essays have
possessed real merit, and there are several young writers thus
developed by learning their own powers, who, after aquiring by
practice the grand atteinments of compression and brevity, will be
able to sustain and increase the literary reputation of the neighborhood.

Others have talked about establishing a paper at Sandy Spring;
but these young people of ours have got it up, and very creditably
too. Possibly it may be the germ of a large enterprise of this sort.
Were it only as easy to suppor a paper pecuniarily as to fill its
columns with good reading matter, the thing were very practicable
here.

The juveniles of the Sociable naturally took up the subject
of amusemants for discussion. Youth and amusements have a natural
connection. they seem to have carried on the disscussion with the
freedom that belongs to the times, yet with the apperant desire
to bring the questions involved to thattest of reason and truth.
The day has passed when these or any other questions can be
settled by tradition or authority. Let the young people examine and
freely test for themsevles! It has become a very interesting problem
at this time, in which the old as well a the young are concerned,
and in which the views peculiar to both are entitled to consideration,
to determine the nature and limits of rational recreation. Your
historian will now only observe, in his effort to impress the
lessons of history touching the subject, that all amusements should
be brought to these tests: Do they tend to promote health or endanger
it? to refine the feelings, or to render them more coarse? to