cally, though it is not always easy for parents
to remember that economic dependence in no wise involves intellectual,
moral, spiritual dependence. The difficulty, as has already been
pointed out, is greatly enhanced by reason of the fact that parents
and children are too apt to label and classify and pigeon-hole one
another, parents assumed to be visionless maintainers and conservators
of the status quo and children regarded as vandal disturbers of the
best possible of worlds.

To confound voluntary reverence with the obligations of gratitude is
indeed the woefullest of blunders. I have sometimes thought that the
parental-filial relationship is not infrequently strained because it
rests upon bounty or indebtedness, acknowledged or unacknowledged.
There is a strain which ofttimes proves too hard to be borne between
benefactor and beneficiary. This strain may be eased if parents will
but avoid thinking of themselves as benefactors and children will but
remember that the fact of adolescence or post-adolescence does not
cancel all the relationships and conditions of earlier life. I cannot
conceive of deeper unwisdom than to rest one's case with children in
the matter of unyielded obedience or ungranted reverence or aught else
upon the basis of gratitude. It is as futile as it is vicious to dream
of exacting gratitude, seeing that gratitude is not a debt to be paid,
least of all a toll to be levied. Is there really much to choose
between the parent plaintively appealing for filial gratitude and the
termagant wife insistently clamoring for love.

If parents bent upon having gratitude and appreciation would but
remember that during the years in which parents do most for their
children the latter are blissfully unconscious, it would help them
over the rough places of seeming inappreciation and ingratitude. The
first ten years of a child's life are those of most constant and
tender service on the part of parents, the period of deepest anxieties
and uttermost sacrifices. And yet the fact of infancy and early
childhood precludes the possibility of remembrance, understanding,
appreciation. The conscious relation of parent and child does not
really begin much before the tenth year.

A wise teacher of the Northwest once said: "Children are either too
young or too old to be physically punished." Something of the same
kind might be said with respect to appeals for gratitude. Either these
are unnecessary or else they are unavailing.