carry it into effect, will aid very much in accomplishing the result, and in a manner altogether more agreeable to both parties.  The third will make the work of forming the habit of obedience on the part of the mother, and of acquiring it on the part of the child, a source of the highest enjoyment to both.  But then, unfortunately, it requires more skill and dexterity, more gentleness of touch, so to speak, and a more delicate constitution of soul, than most mothers can be expected to possess.

But let us see what the three methods are.

First Method.

1.  The first principle is that the mother should so regulate her management of her child, that he should never gain any desired end by any act of insubmission, but always incur some small trouble, inconvenience, or privation, by disobeying or neglecting to obey his mother’s command.  The important words in this statement of the principle are never and always.  It is the absolute certainty that disobedience will hurt him, and not help him, in which the whole efficacy of the rule consists.

It is very surprising how small a punishment will prove efficacious if it is only certain to follow the transgression.  You may set apart a certain place for a prison—­a corner of the sofa, a certain ottoman, a chair, a stool, any thing will answer; and the more entirely every thing like an air of displeasure or severity is excluded, in the manner of making the preliminary arrangements, the better.  A mother without any tact, or any proper understanding of the way in which the hearts and minds of young children are influenced, will begin, very likely, with a scolding.

“Children, you are getting very disobedient.  I have to speak three or four times before you move to do what I say.  Now, I am going to have a prison.  The prison is to be that dark closet, and I am going to shut you up in it for half an hour every time you disobey.  Now, remember!  The very next time!”

Empty Threatening.

Mothers who govern by threatening seldom do any thing but threaten.  Accordingly, the first time the children disobey her, after such an announcement, she says nothing, if the case happens to be one in which the disobedience occasions her no particular trouble.  The next time, when the transgression is a little more serious, she thinks, very rightly perhaps, that to be shut up half an hour in a dark closet would be a disproportionate punishment.  Then, when at length some very willful and grave act of insubordination occurs, she happens to be in particularly good-humor, for some reason, and has not the heart to shut “the poor thing” in the closet; or, perhaps, there is company present, and she does not wish to make a scene.  So the penalty announced with so much emphasis turns out to be a dead letter, as the children knew it would from the beginning.

How Discipline may be both Gentle and Efficient.