“Yes, mother,” says he, “and I mean always to open and shut the door as still as I can.”

“Yes, I know you mean to do so,” rejoined his mother, “but you will forget, unless you have some plan to make you remember it until the habit is formed.  Now I have a plan to propose to help you form the habit.  When you get the habit once formed there will be no more difficulty.

“The plan is this:  whenever you come into a room making a noise, I will simply say, Noise.  Then you will step back again softly and shut the door, and then come in again in a quiet and proper way.  You will not go back for punishment, for you would not have made the noise on purpose, and so would not deserve any punishment.  It is only to help you remember, and so to form the habit of coming into a room in a quiet and gentlemanly manner.”

Now Georgie, especially if all his mother’s management of him is conducted in this spirit, will enter into this plan with great cordiality.

“I should not propose this plan,” continued his mother, “if I thought that when I say Noise, and you have to go out and come in again, it would put you out of humor, and make you cross or sullen.  I am sure you will be good-natured about it, and even if you consider it a kind of punishment, that you will go out willingly, and take the punishment like a man; and when you come in again you will come in still, and look pleased and happy to find that you are carrying out the plan honorably.”

Then if, on the first occasion when he is sent back, he does take it good-naturedly, this must be noticed and commended.

Now, unless we are entirely wrong in all our ideas of the nature and tendencies of the infantile mind, it is as certain that a course of procedure like this will be successful in curing the fault which is the subject of treatment, as that water will extinguish fire.  It cures it, too, without occasioning any irritation, annoyance, or ill-humor in the mind either of mother or child.  On the contrary, it is a source of real satisfaction and pleasure to them both, and increases and strengthens the bond of sympathy by which their hearts are united to each other.

The Principle involved.

It must be understood distinctly that this case is given only as an illustration of a principle which is applicable to all cases.  The act of opening and shutting a door in a noisy manner is altogether too insignificant a fault to deserve this long discussion of the method of curing it, were it not that methods founded on the same principles, and conducted in the same spirit, are applicable universally in all that pertains to the domestic management of children.  And it is a method, too, directly the opposite of that which is often—­I will not say generally, but certainly very often—­pursued.  The child tells the truth many times, and in some cases, perhaps, when the inducement was very strong