her tolerate in our boys those feelings which make
them free men, and modify our methods accordingly?

Lastly, always recollect that to educate rightly is not a simple and
easy thing, but a complex and extremely difficult thing, the hardest
task which devolves on adult life. The rough-and-ready style of domestic
government is indeed practicable by the meanest and most uncultivated
intellects. Slaps and sharp words are penalties that suggest themselves
alike to the least reclaimed barbarian and the stolidest peasant. Even
brutes can use this method of discipline; as you may see in the growl
and half-bite with which a bitch will check a too-exigeant puppy. But if
you would carry out with success a rational and civilised system, you
must be prepared for considerable mental exertion--for some study, some
ingenuity, some patience, some self-control. You will have habitually to
consider what are the results which in adult life follow certain kinds
of acts; and you must then devise methods by which parallel results
shall be entailed on the parallel acts of your children. It will daily
be needful to analyse the motives of juvenile conduct--to distinguish
between acts that are really good and those which, though simulating
them, proceed from inferior impulses; while you will have to be ever on
your guard against the cruel mistake not unfrequently made, of
translating neutral acts into transgressions, or ascribing worse
feelings than were entertained. You must more or less modify your method
to suit the disposition of each child; and must be prepared to make
further modifications as each child's disposition enters on a new phase.
Your faith will often be taxed to maintain the requisite perseverance in
a course which seems to produce little or no effect. Especially if you
are dealing with children who have been wrongly treated, you must be
prepared for a lengthened trial of patience before succeeding with
better methods; since that which is not easy even where a right state of
feeling has been established from the beginning, becomes doubly
difficult when a wrong state of feeling has to be set right. Not only
will you have constantly to analyse the motives of your children, but
you will have to analyse your own motives--to discriminate between those
internal suggestions springing from a true parental solicitude and those
which spring from your own selfishness, your love of ease, your lust of
dominion. And then, more trying still, yo