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MENTAL AND SOCIAL CULTURE:

A TEXT BOOK

FOR

SCHOOLS AND ACADEMIES.

BY

LAFAYETTE C. LOOMIS, A. M., M. D.,

PRESIDENT OF WHEELING FEMALE COLLEGE.

NEW YORK:

J. W. SCHERMERHORN & CO.,

430 BROOME STREET.

1867.

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

LITTLE, RENNIE & Co.,

PRINTERS, STEREOTYPERS & ELECTROTYPERS, 430 BROOME STREET, N. X.

PREFACE.

WHAT are the means by which my mental faculties may be best developed and strengthened? What is the most successful mode of study? How much, and when, and how? How shall I learn the principles of politeness, of personal accomplishment of rendering myself agreeable? What are the errors into which I am most liable to fall? what the habits I should seek to avoid?

These are questions that come home to every youth, but on which instruction has been greatly neglected. With no word of counsel in his whole course of instruction, the youth is expected to develop for himself mental success and social excellence.

To present the leading principles of mental and social culture, is the object of this work. The first thirteen chapters, excepting the eighth, are abridged from Dr. Watts' inestimable Improvement of the Mind. Many of the maxims and rules of conversation and politeness are from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son. A few paragraphs have been taken from other standard authors. For the remainder of the work, as well as for its general arrangement, the author alone must be responsible.