y. No young
child, on the contrary, objects to being interrupted in his speech,
though he may object to being interrupted in his play; and he
cannot understand why an adult should set so much store on the quiet
listening which is so infrequent in his own experience. Grown persons
object to noise; children delight in it. Grown persons like to have
things kept in their places; to a child, one place as good as another.
Grown persons have a prejudice in favor of cleanliness; children like
to swim, but hate to wash, and have no objections whatever to grimy
hands and faces. None of these things imply the least degree of
obliquity on the child's part; and yet it is safe to say that
nine-tenths of the children who are punished are punished for some
of these things. The remedy for these inconveniences is time
and patience. The child, if left to himself, without a word of
admonishment, would probably change his conduct in these respects,
merely by the force of imitation, provided that the adults around
him set him, a persistent example of courtesy, gentleness, and
cleanliness.

[Sidenote: Real Faults]

The faults that are real faults, as Richter[A] says, are those faults
which increase with age. These it is that need attention rather than
those that disappear of themselves as the child grows older. This
rule ought to be put in large letters, that every one who has to train
children may be daily reminded by it; and not exercise his soul and
spend his force in trying to overcome little things which may perhaps
be objectionable, but which will vanish to-morrow. Concentrate your
energies on the overcoming of such tendencies as may in time develop
into permanent evils.

[Sidenote: Training the Will]

To accomplish this, you most, of course, train the child's own will,
because no one can force another person into virtue against his will.
The chief object of all training is, as we shall see in the next
section, to lead the child to love righteousness, to prefer right
doing to wrong doing; to make right doing a permanent desire.
Therefore, in all the procedures about to be suggested, an effort is
made to convince the child of the ugliness and painfulness of wrong
doing.

[Sidenote: Natural Punishment]

Punishment, as Herbert Spencer[B] agrees with Froebel[C] in pointing
out, should be as nearly as possible a representation of the natural
result of the child's action; that is, the fault should be made to
punish itself as much as