aboring
under a disadvantage in that the hyphenized "step" must precede your
name of mother. This being the case, you have need to add to your love
patience, and to that tact, and to that pity. If the children
exasperate you, do not let them guess it. Keep a rigid guard upon the
harsh tongue. If the demon of Impatience tempts you to utter the quick
"Stop that noise!" or "Do be quiet!"--seal your lips as surely as if
life and death depended upon your silence. Your most severe critics
will not be slow in discovering that you love them too much to "scold"
or be cross. You make tremendous strides towards their love when they
cannot point to a single unjust act that you commit against them.

It may be well in passing to remind you that boys and girls remember
an injustice for many years. They themselves are often fair enough to
acknowledge after the first flush of anger is over, that they merited
a punishment which they have received. As a rule, until they are old
men and women, they do not forget the undeserved blow, the unprovoked
sarcasm. We many times receive patiently, as grown men and women,
reminders that we are doing wrong, but we find it hard to pardon the
person who accuses us falsely.

The most powerful auxiliary love can have in accomplishing its end is
tact. Some people have more than others, but at all times it may be
cultivated. Perhaps the best rule by which to learn it is the old one
of "Put yourself in his place." Reverse the positions as in Anstey's
"Vice Versa," and imagine yourself a hot-headed, sore-hearted,
prejudiced child, with a step-mother against whom your mind has been
poisoned by those older and presumably wiser than yourself. How would
you receive this or that correction? Acquire the habit of thus putting
the matter before your mind's eye, and you will soon find that tactful
patience becomes second nature.

If you can possibly avoid it, do not correct the children in the
presence of other people, or complain to their father of them. If he
once reproves them with the prefix, "Your mother tells me that you
have done so-and-so," he has laid the foundations of a distrust
difficult to remove. Rather let them domineer over you than try to
manage them by appealing to their father, and, thus making them feel
sure that you are attempting to prejudice him against them. They are
naturally suspicious, and it will take very little to make them
positively certain that you are their natural enemy.

Never