ichly deserved punishment, if inflicted by a teacher's hand; they take
the part of their child against legal authority; but observe, this does
not prevent them from laying their own hands heavily on their children.
The same obstinate ignorance and narrowness that are exhibited without
exist within also. Folly is folly, abroad or at home. A man does not
play the fool outdoors and act the sage in the house. When the poor
child becomes obnoxious, the same unreasoning rage falls upon him. The
object of a ferocious love is the object of an equally ferocious anger.
It is only he who loves wisely that loves well.

The manner in which children's tastes are disregarded, their feelings
ignored, and their instincts violated, is enough to disaffect one with
childhood. They are expected to kiss all flesh that asks them to do
so. They are jerked up into the laps of people whom they abhor. They
say, "Yes, ma'am," under pain of bread and water for a week, when their
unerring nature prompts them to hurl out emphatically, "No." They are
sent out of the room whenever a fascinating bit of scandal is to be
rehearsed, packed off to bed just as everybody is settled down for a
charming evening, bothered about their lessons when their play is but
fairly under way, and hedged and hampered on every side. It is true,
that all this may be for their good, but what of that? So everything
is for the good of grown-up people; but does that make us contented?
It is doubtless for our good in the long run that we lose our
pocket-books, and break our arms, and catch a fever, and have our
brothers defraud a bank, and our houses burn down, and people steal our
umbrellas, and borrow our books and never return them. In fact, we
know that upon certain conditions all things work together for our
good, but, notwithstanding, we find some things very unpleasant; and we
may talk to our children of discipline and health by the hour together,
and it will never be anything but an intolerable nuisance to them to be
swooped off to bed by a dingy old nurse just as the people are
beginning to come, and shining silk, and floating lace, and odorous,
fragrant flowers are taking their ecstatic young souls back into the
golden days of the good Haroun al Raschid.

Even in this very point lies one of the miseries of childhood, that no
philosophy comes to temper their sorrow. We do not know why we are
troubled, but we know there is some good, grand reason for it. The