nts. I mean that you can now treat your own
body and mind and nerves as you wish they had treated them. Pretend
that you are your own little child, and deal with yourself tenderly
and gently, making allowances for the early strain to which you were
subjected. So few of us American women, with our alert minds, and our
Puritanic consciences, have the good sense and self-control to refrain
from driving ourselves; and if, as often happens, we have formed
the bad habit early in life, reform is truly difficult, but not
impossible. We can get the good of our disability by conscientiously
driving home the principle that in order to 'love others as ourselves'
we must learn to _love ourselves as we love others_. We have literally
no right to be unreasonably exacting toward ourselves,--but perhaps I
am taking too much upon myself by preaching outside the realm of child
study."

THE MOTHER AND THE TEACHER

"Your paper has been intensely interesting to me. I have always held
that a true teacher was really a mother, though of a very large flock,
just as a true mother is really a teacher, though of a very small
school. The two points of view complete each other and I doubt if
either mother or teacher can see truly without the other. They tell
us, you know, that our two eyes, with their slight divergence of
position, are necessary to make us, see things as having more than one
side; and the mother and the teacher, one seeing the individual child,
the other the child as the member of the race, need each other to see
the child as the complex, many-sided individual he really is.

"In your school, do you manage to get the mothers to co-operate? Here,
I am trying to get near my children's teachers. They try, too; but
it is not altogether easy for any of us. We need some common meeting
ground--some neutral activity which we could share. If you have any
suggestions, I shall be glad to have them. Of course, I visit school
and the teachers visit me, and we are friendly in an arm's length
sort of fashion. That is largely because they believe in corporal
punishment and practice it freely and it is hard for us to look
straight at each other over this disagreement."

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.

To the Matron of a Girls' Orphan Asylum

"Now to the specific questions you ask. My answers must, of course, be
based upon general principles--the special application, often so
very difficult a matter, must be left to you. To begin with corp