After a time Hannah, having gathered all the flowers she wished for, came back at her leisure towards her mother.

“I told you not to go to that tree,” said her mother, reproachfully.

“You told me I should certainly get stung if I went there,” rejoined Hannah, “and I didn’t.”

“Well, you might have got stung,” said her mother, and so walked on.

Pretty soon after this Hannah said that she was tired of walking so far, and wished to stop and rest.

“No,” replied her mother, “I told you that you would get tired if you ran about so much; but you would do it, and so now I shall not stop for you at all.”

Hannah said that she should stop, at any rate; so she sat down upon a log by the way-side.  Her mother said that she should go on and leave her.  So her mother walked on, looking back now and then, and calling Hannah to come.  But finding that Hannah did not come, she finally found a place to sit down herself and wait for her.

The Principle illustrated by this Case.

Many a mother will see the image of her own management of her children reflected without exaggeration or distortion in this glass; and, as the former story shows how the freest indulgence is compatible with the maintenance of the most absolute authority, this enables us to see how a perpetual resistance to the impulses and desires of children may co-exist with no government over them at all.

Let no mother fear, then, that the measures necessary to establish for her the most absolute authority over her children will at all curtail her power to promote their happiness.  The maintenance of the best possible government over them will not in any way prevent her yielding to them all the harmless gratifications they may desire.  She may indulge them in all their childish impulses, fancies, and even caprices, to their heart’s content, without at all weakening her authority over them.  Indeed, she may make these very indulgences the means of strengthening her authority.  But without the authority she can never develop in the hearts of her children the only kind of love that is worth possessing—­namely, that in which the feeling of affection is dignified and ennobled by the sentiment of respect.

One more Consideration.

There is one consideration which, if properly appreciated, would have an overpowering influence on the mind of every mother in inducing her to establish and maintain a firm authority over her child during the early years of his life, and that is the possibility that he may not live to reach maturity.  Should the terrible calamity befall her of being compelled to follow her boy, yet young, to his grave, the character of her grief, and the degree of distress and anguish which it will occasion her, will depend very much upon the memories which his life and his relations to her have left in her soul.  When she returns to her home,