, and most judiciously should it be exercised. God
has given general directions in his word touching the exercise of their
authority. To Him they are amenable. And by all the love they bear to
their offspring, their desire for their welfare, and the hope of the
future approbation of God, they should endeavor to bring up their
children in the "nurture and admonition of the Lord."

But are not parents apt to legislate too much? This is often an error in
all legislative assemblies. Perhaps there is not a State in the Union in
which the laws are not too many, and too minute. Every legislator feels
desirous of leaving his impress on the statute book. And so there is
yearly an accumulation of laws and resolves, one-half of which might
probably be dispensed with, with advantage to the people.

The same over legislation often obtains in the school-room, springing
doubtless from a desire on the part of the teacher to preserve a more
perfect order among his pupils. Hence the number and minuteness of his
rules; and in his endeavor to reduce them to practice, and make
clock-work of the internal machinery, he quite likely defeats the very
object he has in view. A school-teacher who pretends to notice every
aberration from order and propriety is quite likely to have his hands
full, and just so with parents. Some children cannot keep still. Their
nervous temperament does not admit of it. I once heard an elderly
gentleman say, that when riding in a coach, he was so confined that he
felt as if he should die because he could not change his position. Oh!
if he could have stirred but an inch! Children often feel just so. And
it is bad policy to require them to sit as so many little immoveable
statues. "There, sit in just that spot, and don't you move an inch till
I bid you." Who has not heard a parent give forth such a mandate? And a
school-master, too, to some little urchin, who tries to obey, but from
that moment begins to squirm, and turn, and hitch, and chiefly because
his nervous system is all deranged by the very duty imposed upon him.
And, besides, what if Tommy, in the exuberance of his feelings, while
sitting on the bench, does stick out his toe a little beyond the
prescribed line. Or suppose Jimmy crowds up to him a little too closely,
and feeling that he can't breathe as freely as he wishes, gives him a
hunch; or suppose Betty, during a temporary fit of fretfulness, induced
by long setting in one posture, or overcome with the he