I see plainly enough that I have been working half an hour or more to no purpose, and that very likely I have made matters worse.  Yet what was my error?

Simply this:  that I spent all my strength at the short arm of the lever.  If I had gone to work with a kind and tender spirit, something as Nathan went to work at David, once on a time, and used the other end of the lever, I should have got a good purchase, at least, and I am not sure but the stone would have yielded.  As it is, however, the troublesome thing is there yet, and it seems to be settling into the ground deeper than ever.

I know some good people, among whom I can count half a score of ministers, who try very hard to keep bad books and periodicals out of the family circle.

There is no end to their talk against these things.  They tell their children that they must never read such and such books, and that if they ever catch one of them reading these books, they shall take good care to punish them for it.

But in spite of all the efforts of these people, they don’t succeed in keeping these bad books out of the family.  In some way or other, they are smuggled into the hands of a boy or girl, and they are read, while the parent, perhaps, knows nothing of it.  That is all wrong, of course.  I don’t mean to say anything to excuse the boy or girl—­nothing of the kind.  But why didn’t these parents go another way to work?  Why, instead of preaching all those long sermons on bad books, and threatening their children with punishment in case they read these books, why did they not provide other books, equally interesting, though innocent and useful?  That would have been a wiser course, methinks.  That would have been the right end of the crow-bar to work at.  The way to get rid of an evil is to find something else to put in its place.  So I think.

But some of these very fathers and mothers, though they cry out so loudly against immoral books and periodicals, say they cannot afford to buy books for their children.  It was only last week that I heard one of them tell a friend, who asked him to subscribe for a magazine for his daughter, that he was poor, and could not afford it.  Poor! he gave one party last winter, on this same daughter’s account, which cost him more than a hundred dollars.  He cannot afford it!  Well, if he does not afford to furnish reading for those children, I am afraid they will afford it themselves.

I have seen a little girl, when her sister had been doing something wrong, run straight to her mother, and tell her of it.  But it only made the little mischief-maker worse.  She went the wrong way to work.  She labored hard enough to come at her sister’s fault; but her labor was all thrown away.  She was at the wrong end of the crow-bar.  If, instead of posting off, as fast as she could run, to her mother, every time that sister did wrong, as if she really liked to be a tell-tale, she had said, as kindly as she could, “Susy, don’t do so; that’s naughty,” or something of the kind, I presume it would all have been well enough.