ch some inmate residing in the family acquires over them by
means so silent, gentle, and unpretending, that they seem mysterious and
almost magical. "What is the secret of it?" asks the mother sometimes in
such a case. "You never punish the children, and you never scold them, and
yet they obey you a great deal more readily and certainly than they do me."

There are a great many different means which may be employed in combination
with each other for acquiring this kind of ascendency, and among them the
use which may be made of the power of the imagination in the young is one
of the most important.

_The Intermediation of the Dolls again_.

A young teacher, for example, in returning from school some day, finds the
children of the family in which she resides, who have been playing with
their dolls in the yard, engaged in some angry dispute. The first impulse
with many persons in such a case might be to sit down with the children
upon the seat where they were playing, and remonstrate with them, though
in a very kind and gentle manner, on the wrongfulness and folly of such
disputings, to show them that the thing in question is not worth disputing
about, that angry feelings are uncomfortable and unhappy feelings, and that
it is, consequently, not only a sin, but a folly to indulge in them.

Now such a remonstrance, if given in a kind and gentle manner, will
undoubtedly do good. The children will be somewhat less likely to become
involved in such a dispute immediately after it than before, and in process
of time, and through many repetitions of such counsels, the fault may
be gradually cured. Still, at the time, it will make the children
uncomfortable, by producing in their minds a certain degree of irritation.
They will be very apt to listen in silence, and with a morose and sullen
air; and if they do not call the admonition a scolding, on account of the
kind and gentle tones in which it is delivered, they will be very apt to
consider it much in that light.

Suppose, however, that, instead of dealing with the case in this
matter-of-fact and naked way, the teacher calls the imagination of the
children to her aid, and administers her admonition and reproof indirectly,
through the dolls. She takes the dolls in her hand, asks their names, and
inquires which of the two girls is the mother of each. The dolls' names are
Bella and Araminta, and the mothers' are Lucy and Mary.

"But I might have asked Araminta herself," she adds;