Ann jumped down, and ran with great alacrity to arrange the books according to the directions.  When she had arranged one shelf, she was proceeding to do the same with the next, but James said she need not do any more then.  She could arrange the others, if she pleased, at another time, he said.  “But come back now,” he added, “and hear the rest of the advice.”

“I advise you to keep your book-shelves in nice order at college,” he continued; “and so with your apparatus and your cabinet.  For at college, you see, you will perhaps have articles of philosophical apparatus, and a cabinet of specimens, instead of playthings.  I advise you, if you should have such things, to keep them all nicely arranged upon their shelves.”

Here James turned his chair a little, so that he and the children could look towards the cabinet of playthings.  Walter climbed down from his cousin’s lap and ran off to that side of the room, and there began hastily to arrange the playthings.

“Yes,” said James, “that is the way.  But never mind that now.  I think you will know how to arrange your philosophical instruments and your cabinet very nicely when you are in college; and you can keep your playthings in order in your room here, while you are a boy, if you please.  But come back now and hear the rest of the advice.”

So Walter came back and took his place again upon James’s knee.

“And I advise you,” continued James, “to take good care of your books when you are in college.  It is pleasanter, at the time, to use books that are clean and nice, and then, besides, you will like to take your college books with you, after you leave college, and keep them as long as you live, as memorials of your early days, and you will value them a great deal more if they are in good order.”

Here Ann opened the book which was in her hand, and began to fold back the dog’s-ears and to smooth down the leaves.

The Principle Involved.

In a word, by the simple expedient of shifting the time, in the imagination of the children, when the advice which he was giving them would come to its practical application, he divested it of all appearance of fault-finding in respect to their present conduct, and so secured not merely its ready admission, but a cordial welcome for it, in their minds.

Any mother who sees and clearly apprehends the principle here illustrated, and has ingenuity enough to avail herself of it, will find an endless variety of modes by which she can make use of it, to gain easy access to the hearts of her children, for instructions and counsels which, when they come in the form of fault-finding advice, make no impression whatever.

Expectations of Results must be Reasonable.