To this day, also, the old tingling pain burns my cheeks as I recall certain rude and contemptuous words which were said to me when I was very young, and stamped on my memory forever.  I was once called a “stupid child” in the presence of strangers.  I had brought the wrong book from my father’s study.  Nothing could be said to me to-day which would give me a tenth part of the hopeless sense of degradation which came from those words.  Another time, on the arrival of an unexpected guest to dinner, I was sent, in a great hurry, away from the table, to make room, with the remark that “it was not of the least consequence about the child; she could just as well have her dinner afterward.”  “The child” would have been only too happy to help on the hospitality of the sudden emergency, if the thing had been differently put; but the sting of having it put in that way I never forgot.  Yet in both these instances the rudeness was so small, in comparison with what we habitually see, that it would be too trivial to mention, except for the bearing of the fact that the pain it gave has lasted till now.

When we consider seriously what ought to be the nature of a reproof from a parent to a child, and what is its end, the answer is simple enough.  It should be nothing but the superior wisdom and strength, explaining to inexperience and feebleness wherein they have made a mistake, to the end that they may avoid such mistakes in future.  If personal annoyance, impatience, antagonism enter in, the relation is marred and the end endangered.  Most sacred and inalienable of all rights is the right of helplessness to protection from the strong, of ignorance to counsel from the wise.  If we give our protection and counsel grudgingly, or in a churlish, unkind manner, even to the stranger that is in our gates, we are no Christians, and deserve to be stripped of what little wisdom and strength we have hoarded.  But there are no words to say what we are or what we deserve if we do thus to the little children whom we have dared, for our own pleasure, to bring into the perils of this life, and whose whole future may be blighted by the mistakes of our careless hands.

Breaking the Will.

This phrase is going out of use.  It is high time it did.  If the thing it represents would also cease, there would be stronger and freer men and women.  But the phrase is still sometimes heard; and there are still conscientious fathers and mothers who believe they do God service in setting about the thing.

I have more than once said to a parent who used these words, “Will you tell me just what you mean by that?  Of course you do not mean exactly what you say.”

“Yes, I do.  I mean that the child’s will is to be once for all broken!—­that he is to learn that my will is to be his law.  The sooner he learns this the better.”

“But is it to your will simply as will that he is to yield?  Simply as the weaker yields to the stronger,—­almost as matter yields to force?  For what reason is he to do this?”