hat he will not wear it, and
throws it down upon the floor. The temptation now is for the mother,
indignant, to punish him, and then to order him to take up the cap which he
had thrown down, and to feel that it is her duty, in case he refuses, to
persist in the punishment until she conquers his will, and compels him to
take it up and put it upon his head.

But instead of this, a safer and a better course, it seems to me, is to
avoid a contest altogether by considering the offense complete, and the
transaction on his part finished by the single act of rebellion against her
authority. She may take the cap up from the floor herself and put it in its
place, and then simply consider what punishment is proper for the wrong
already done. Perhaps she forbids the boy to go out at all. Perhaps she
reserves the punishment, and sends him to bed an hour earlier that night.
The age of the boy, or some other circumstances connected with the case,
may be such as to demand a severer treatment still. At any rate, she limits
the transaction to the single act of disobedience and rebellion already
committed, without giving an opportunity for a repetition of it by renewing
the command, and inflicts for it the proper punishment, and that is the end
of the affair.

And so a boy in reciting a lesson will not repeat certain words after his
mother. She enters into no controversy with him, but shuts the book and
puts it away. He, knowing his mother's usual mode of management in such
cases, and being sure that some penalty, privation, or punishment will
sooner or later follow, relents, and tells his mother that he will say the
words if she will try him again.

"No, my son," she should reply, "the opportunity is past. You should have
done your duty at the right time. You have disobeyed me, and I must take
time to consider what to do."

If, at the proper time, in such a case, when all the excitement of the
affair is over, a penalty or punishment apportioned to the fault, or some
other appropriate measures in relation to it, are _certain to come_, and
if this method is always pursued in a calm and quiet manner but with
inflexible firmness in act, the spirit of rebellion will be much more
effectually subdued than by any protracted struggles at the time, though
ending in victory however complete.

But all this is a digression, though it seemed proper to allude to the
subject of these contests here, since it is on these occasions, perhaps,
that pare