“Earnest won’t play with me,” replied the child, still crying.

“Come up into my room, and see if there isn’t something pretty there to play with.”

“No—­I don’t want to,” was the crying answer.

“Yes; come.”  And Mrs. Fleetwood led along the resisting child.

“No—­no—­no—­I don’t want to go.  I want Earnest to play with me.”

“Humph!  I’d stop that pretty quick!” remarked Miss Spencer to herself, as the petulant cry of the child grew louder.  “I’d never allow a child of mine to go on like that.”

Mrs. Fleetwood felt disturbed.  But experience had taught her that whenever she spoke from an irritated state, her words rather increased than allayed the evil she sought to correct.  So she drew the child along with her, using some force in order to do it, until she reached her chamber.  Her strongest impulse, on being alone with Ellen, who still continued crying, was to silence her instantly by the most summary process to which parental authority usually has resort in such cases; but her mother’s heart suggested the better plan of diverting Ellen’s mind, if possible, and thus getting it into a happier state.  In order to do this, she tried various means, but without effect.  The child still cried on, and in a manner so disturbing to the mother, that she found it almost impossible to keep from enforcing silence by a stern threat of instant punishment.  But, she kept on, patiently doing what she thought to be right, and was finally successful in soothing the unhappy child.  To her husband, with whom she was conversing on that evening about the state into which Ellen had fallen, she said—­

“I find it very hard to get along with her.  She tires my patience almost beyond endurance.  Sometimes it is impossible to bear with her crying, and I silence it by punishment.  But I observe that if I can produce a cheerful state by amusing her and getting her interested in some play or employment, she retains her even temper much longer than when she has been stopped from crying by threats or punishment.  If I only had patience with her, I could get along better.  But it is so hard to have patience with a fretful, ever crying child.”

Of the mental exercises through which Mrs. Fleetwood passed, Miss Martha Spencer knew nothing.  She saw only the real and supposed errors of her mode of government, and strongly condemned them.  Her doctrine was, in governing children, “implicit obedience must be had at all hazards.”  At all hazards, as she generally expressed or thought it was only meant for extreme or extraordinary cases.  Obedience she believed to be a thing easily obtained by any one who chose to enforce it.  No where, it must be owned, did she see children as orderly and obedient as she thought they should be.  But that she did not hesitate to set down to the fault of the parents.  Her influence in the family of her sister was not good.  To some extent she destroyed the freedom of Mrs. Fleetwood, and to some extent