Contents.

The Inhumanities of Parents—­Corporal Punishment
The Inhumanities of Parents—­Needless Denials
The Inhumanities of Parents—­Rudeness
Breaking the Will
The Reign of Archelaus
The Awkward Age
A Day with a Courteous Mother
Children in Nova Scotia
The Republic of the Family
The Ready-to-Halts
The Descendants of Nabal
“Boys not allowed”
Half an Hour in a Railway Station
A Genius for Affection
Rainy Days
Friends of the Prisoners
A Companion for the Winter
Choice of Colors
The Apostle of Beauty
English Lodging-Houses
Wet the Clay
The King’s Friend
Learning to speak
Private Tyrants
Margin
The Fine Art of Smiling
Death-bed Repentance
The Correlation of Moral Forces
A Simple Bill of Fare for a Christmas Dinner
Children’s Parties
After-supper Talk
Hysteria in Literature
Jog Trot
The Joyless American
Spiritual Teething
Glass Houses
The Old-Clothes Monger in Journalism
The Country Landlord’s Side
The Good Staff of Pleasure
Wanted—­a Home

Bits of Talk.

The Inhumanities of Parents—­Corporal Punishment.

Not long ago a Presbyterian minister in Western New York whipped his three-year-old boy to death, for refusing to say his prayers.  The little fingers were broken; the tender flesh was bruised and actually mangled; strong men wept when they looked on the body; and the reverend murderer, after having been set free on bail, was glad to return and take refuge within the walls of his prison, to escape summary punishment at the hands of an outraged community.  At the bare mention of such cruelty, every heart grew sick and faint; men and women were dumb with horror:  only tears and a hot demand for instant retaliation availed.

The question whether, after all, that baby martyr were not fortunate among his fellows, would, no doubt, be met by resentful astonishment.  But it is a question which may well be asked, may well be pondered.  Heart-rending as it is to think for an instant of the agonies which the poor child must have borne for some hours after his infant brain was too bewildered by terror and pain to understand what was required of him, it still cannot fail to occur to deeper reflection that the torture was short and small in comparison with what the next ten years might have held for him if he had lived.  To earn entrance on the spiritual life by the briefest possible experience of the physical, is always “greater gain;” but how emphatically is it so when the conditions of life upon earth are sure to be unfavorable!

If it were possible in any way to get a statistical summing-up and a tangible presentation of the amount of physical pain inflicted by parents on children under twelve years of age, the most callous-hearted would be surprised and shocked.  If it were possible to add to this estimate an accurate and scientific demonstration of the extent to which such pain, by weakening the nervous system and exhausting its capacity to resist disease, diminishes children’s chances for life, the world would stand aghast.