ften parental asperity, on the
part of nice, soft, respectable kinsmen and kinswomen, who regard a
child under twenty years or even under twenty-five in some cases as a
little lap-dog to be caressed and fondled, but in no wise to be dealt
with as a human to whom much may be given and from whom more must be
asked. Parents' standards may seem, and even be, exigent, but the
attempt to modify their rigor may not be made by those lacking in
fundamental reverence for a child, and in conscious hope for its wise,
noble, self-reliant maturity.

The kind uncle and the indulgent aunt have no right under heaven to
wreak their unreasoning tenderness upon niece or nephew in such
fashion as to make any and every standard seem cruelly exigent to
the child. Parents are not uniformly, though oft approximately,
infallible, and family members have the right and duty to take counsel
with, which always means to give counsel, to parents but not in the
presence of children. I have seen children moved to distrust of
parental mandate and judgment even when these were wise and just by
reason of the malsuggestion oozing forth from relatives, the zeal of
whose intervention is normally in inverse proportion to the measure of
their wisdom. Childish rebellion against parental guidance, however
enlightened, oft dates from the time of some avuncular remonstrance
against or antique impatience with parents "who do not understand the
dear child." But there is another and a better way, and kinsfolk can
frequently find it within the range of their power to supplement
parental teaching in ways that shall be profitable alike to child and
parent.

The nearest, the most constant impact upon the child is that of the
mother, and less often of the father. The mountain summit to which
greatness ascends in the sight of multitudes is often nothing more
than some height, reached in loneliness and out of the sight of the
world by a brave, mother-soul, wrestling through unseen and unaided
struggle for that, which shall later be disclosed to the world as the
immortal achievement of a child and so acclaimed by the plaudits of
the world. One remembers, for example, that the mother of William
Lloyd Garrison wrote of her colored nurse during her illness: "A slave
in the sight of man, but a freeborn soul in the sight of God." Thus is
she revealed as the mother of the Abolition struggle.

Professor Brumbaugh,[L] who ceased for a time to be a good teacher in
order to be an i