n't bear to be crossed in anything."

When I stepped from the train at my destination the humiliation for
which her attendants longed was still a stranger to the willful child.

Trouble-fearing persons have a belief to the effect that it is, in the
long run, easier to let a child have his own sweet way until he has
attained the age of discretion,--say at fourteen or fifteen
years,--when his innate sense of propriety will convince him of the
error of his ways. Such a theorist was a dear old gentleman who, many
years ago, remonstrated with me upon the pains and time I spent in
training my first born. The children of this aged saint had been
reared according to the old-fashioned notion, but when they had babies
of their own they departed from it, and the rising generation had full
and free sway. Their grandparent, albeit frequently the victim of
their pranks, loved them dearly. He now assured me that--

"While they are regular little barbarians, my dear, still they have
all that freedom and wild liberty which should accompany childhood.
They eat when and what they please, go to bed when they feel like it,
rise early or late as the whim seizes them, and know no prescribed
rules for diet and deportment. But they come of good stock and will
turn out all right."

They did come of good, honest parents, and this may have been what saved
their moral, while their physical being has suffered from the course
pursued during their infancy and early youth. There were six children;
now there are four. One died when a mere baby from cold contracted from
running about the house in winter weather in her bare feet. She was so
fond of doing this that her mother could not bear to put shoes and
stockings on the dear little tot. The other, a sweet, affectionate boy,
suffered at regular intervals during the fifteen years of his life from
acute indigestion. Directly after one of these attacks, he, as was his
habit, followed the cravings of an undisciplined appetite, and attended,
late at night, a pea-nut-and-candy supper, almost immediately after
which he was taken violently ill and died in three days. The four
remaining children do not, all told, possess enough constitution to make
one strong man. They are all delicate and constant sufferers.

In this case judicious care might have averted the above-mentioned
evils. Would the game have been worth the candle?

This is a question which parents cannot afford to disregard. It is
expedient for