Tell a boy like “Dodd” that he is on the high road to ruin, the prison, or the rope, and the chances are that you puff him up with pride at his own achievement, or fill him with ambition to see the end of his own career carried out in this line.

But grandpa Stebbins gave “Dodd” none of this.  He simply told him that it was the best thing for everybody that he should mind.  He reviewed the facts regarding the waste of the cider, and showed him how bad he had been in doing as he had done, and why he was bad.

The boy offered no word of remonstrance, but, on the contrary, acknowledged his fault, and assured his grandfather that he would “remember” in future.  With a light heart he ran for the cows, which were taking a farewell feed along the banks of the brook that ran across the pasture, and it was with a genuine pride that he headed them for home, especially one contrary heifer, that preferred to have her own way and not obey his command.  He ran after her with much spirit, and was quite delighted when he forced her to do his bidding.

And for you, good people, who do not believe in this sort of thing, what about this case?  It is a hard case, no doubt.  There is no pleasing feature in its early stages, but does not its outcome warrant all its ugly phases?

Grant that it is all old fashioned; that to you it seems silly for the old man to go alone and pray after trouncing the boy, or that you fear the “boy’s will was broken” by this episode, yet review the facts in their entirety, and see if there is not a good in them that you are wont to overlook.

The punishment was harsh, but it was just such as “Dodd” Weaver had been needing for a long time, and the only thing that could reach him just then.  It would have been a crime to treat in like manner a gentle little girl with a sweet disposition, but was it a crime in the case of “Dodd?”

And if not a crime in “Dodd’s” case, why in other cases like his?  And if the punishment was right, inflicted by the hand of the grandfather, why not by the hand of the teacher who shall have occasion to resort, even to this, to put a boy into the right way?  I do not mean a cold-blooded whipping, inflicted by a Principal for a trifling transgression of a rule in some department of school, under one of the assistant teachers, but a retribution, swift, sure, and terrible, that is inflicted by the person against whom the wrong is done, and which falls upon the willful transgressor to keep him from doing so again.

For this is the mission of penalty, to keep the wrong-doer from a repetition of his wrong doing.

“Dodd” Weaver was a wrong-doer, and under the treatment he was receiving from his parents, and had received from Miss Stone, he was waxing worse and worse with each recurring day.  This was really more unfortunate for him than for the people whom he annoyed by his lawlessness.  There was no likelihood of his correcting the fault by his own will, nor could persuasion lead him to reform, this having been worn to rags by Miss Stone, till the boy laughed to scorn so gentle an opposition to his bad actions.