, that though noise is a source of
pleasure, generally, to children, especially when they make it themselves,
it is almost always a source of annoyance and pain to grown persons--has
never really entered his mind so as to be actually comprehended us
a practical reality. His ideas in respect to the philosophy of the
transaction are, of course, exceedingly vague; but so far as he forms any
idea, it is that his mother's words are the expression of some mysterious
but unreasonable sensitiveness on her part, which awakens in her a spirit
of fault-finding and ill-humor that vents itself upon him in blaming him
for nothing at all; or, as he would express it more tersely, if not so
elegantly, that she is "very cross." In other words, the impression made
by the transaction upon his moral sense is that of wrong-doing on his
_mother's part_, and not at all on his own.

It is evident, when we thus look into the secret workings of this method
of curing children of their faults, that even when it is successful in
restraining certain kinds of outward misconduct, and is thus the means
of effecting some small amount of good, the injury which it does by its
reaction on the spirit of the child may be vastly greater, through the
irritation and ill-humor which it occasions, and the impairing of his
confidence in the justice and goodness of his mother. Before leaving this
illustration, it must be carefully observed that in the first-mentioned
case--namely, that of Georgie--the work of curing the fault in question is
not to be at all considered as _effected_ by the step taken by his mother
which has been already described. That was only a beginning--a _right_
beginning, it is true, but still only a beginning. It produced in him a
cordial willingness to do right, in one instance. That is a great thing,
but it is, after all, only one single step. The work is not complete until
a _habit_ of doing right is formed, which is another thing altogether, and
requires special and continual measures directed to this particular end.
Children have to be _trained_ in the way they should go--not merely shown
the way, and induced to make a beginning of entering it. We will now try
to show how the influence of commendation and encouragement may be brought
into action in this more essential part of the process.

_Habit to be Formed_.

Having taken the first step already described, Georgie's mother finds
some proper opportunity, when she can have the undisturbe