more than the girl the right to leave his hat on the parlor table, his gloves on the mantel, his coat on the newel-post, and his over-shoes in the middle of the floor?  They are left there, and there they remain until some long-suffering woman puts them away.  From hut to palace, and through uncounted generations, by oral and written enactment, as well as by tacit consent, whatever other innovations are made, the custom holds that man can upset without fault, and his nearest of feminine kin is blamable if she do not “pick up after him.”

Teach your son that it is his business to keep his own room in order, and that there is no more reason why his sister should follow him up, replacing what he has disarranged, than that he should perform the same office for her.  Inculcate in him habits of neatness.  In acquiring an “eye” for the disorder he has caused, and deftness in rectifying it, he is taking lessons in tender consideration and growing in intelligent sympathy for mother, sister and the wife who-is-to-be.

CHAPTER XX.

CHILDREN AS BURDEN-BEARERS.

Those of us who are mothers would do well to read carefully and ponder deeply St. Paul’s assertion that when he was a child he spoke as a child, and felt as a child, and thought as a child; and that when he was a man, and not until then, he put away childish things.

Can the same be said of the child of to-day?

In this “bit of talk,” I want to enter my protest against thrusting upon children the care-taking thought that should not be theirs for years to come.  When the responsibility that is inseparable from every life bears heavily upon us, we sigh for the carefree days of childhood, but we do not hesitate to inflict upon our babies the complaints and moans which teach them, all too soon, that life is a hard school for us.  A child must either grieve with us or become so inured to our plaints that he pays no attention to them.  In the latter case he may be hard-hearted but he is certainly happier than if he were exquisitely sensitive.

“What a pretty suit of clothes you have!” said I to a four-year-old boy.

The momentary expression of pride gave way to one of anxiety.

“Yes; but mamma says when these wear out she does not know how papa will ever buy me any more clothes.  I am a great expense!  Oh!” with a long-drawn sigh of wretchedness, “isn’t it awful to be poor?”

The poverty-stricken father was at this time managing to dress himself, wife and baby on an income of four thousand dollars per annum.  In her desire to make her child take proper care of his clothes, the mother had struck terror to the little fellow’s heart.  Such childish terror is genuine, and yet hard to express.  The self-control of childhood is far greater than the average father or mother appreciates.  Some children seem to have an actual dread of communicating their fears and fancies to other people.