the
most subtle and penetrating influence in education is precisely
that education for which no rules can be laid down. It is the silent
influence of the motives which impel the persons who constantly
surround us. If we examine for a little our own childhood we see at
once that this is so. What are those canons of conduct by which we
judge others and even occasionally ourselves? Whence came that list
of _impossible_ things, those things that are so closed to us that we
cannot, even under great stress, of temptation, conceive ourselves as
yielding to them?

There is an enlightening story of a young man, born and bred a
gentleman, who, by the way of fast living falls upon poverty. In the
hard pressure of his financial affairs he is about to commit suicide,
when suddenly he finds, in an empty cab, a roll of bills amounting to
some thousands of dollars. The circumstances are such that he knows
that he can, if he will, discover the owner; or, he can, without
fear of detection, keep the money himself. He makes up his mind,
deliberately, to keep it, and then, almost against his will,
subconsciously as it were, walks to the office of the man who lost the
money and restores it to him.

Now, doubtless, in his downward career he had done many things which
judged by any absolute standard of morality were quite as wrong as the
keeping of that money would have been, but the fact remained that he
could not do that deed. Others, yes, but not that. He was a gentleman,
and gentlemen do not steal private property, whatever they may do
about public property. Yet probably, in all his life he had not once
been told not to steal--not one word had he been taught, openly,
on the subject. No one whom he knew stole. He was never expected
to steal. Stealing was a sin beyond the pale. So strong was this
unconscious, _but unvarying_ influence, that by it he was saved, in
the hour of extreme need, from even feeling the force of a temptation
that to a boy born and reared, say, in the slums, would have been
overwhelming.

Now, considering such things, I take it that it behooves us, as
parents, to look closely at the sort of persons that we are, clear
inside of us. To examine, as if with the clear eyes of our own
children, waiting to be clouded by our sophistries, the motives from
which we habitually act in the small affairs of everyday life. Are
we influenced by fear of what the neighbors will say? Have we one
standard of courtesy for company tim