them to consider seriously whether or not the stock on
both sides of the family, of which their children come, is so good as
to warrant neglect or to justify over-indulgence.

Our mother-tongue does not offer us a phrase by which we may express
what we mean by _l'enfant terrible_. But our father-land produces many
living examples which may serve as translations of the French words.
Such an one was the small boy who, while eagerly devouring grapes,
threw the skins, one after another, into the lap of my new light silk
gown. His mother entered a smilingly gentle protest in the form of--

"Oh, Frankie dear! do you think it is pretty to do that?" to which he
paid as much attention as to my look of distress. The reader who
believes in "lending a hand" in righting the minor evils of society
must have more temerity and a larger share of what the boy of the
period denominates "nerve" than I possess, if she interferes with a
child while in the presence of the mother. It is as unsafe as the
proverbial act of inserting the digits between the bark and the tree.
It is, moreover, a liberty which I should never permit the dearest
friend to take. In fact, so strong is my feeling on this subject, that
I should have allowed "Frankie dear" to make a fruit-plate and
finger-bowl of the shimmering folds of my gown rather than utter a
feeble objection before his doting mamma.

The practice of spoiling a child is unjust to the little one and to
the parent. The latter suffers tenfold more than if she, day by day,
inculcated the line-upon-line, protest-upon-protest system. That she
does not do this is sometimes due to mistaken kindness, but oftener to
self-indulgence or dread of disagreeable scenes, that brings a harvest
of misery as surely as he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind.

A spoiled child is an undutiful child. This must be true. The constant
humoring and considering of one's whims will, in course of time,
produce a stunted, warped and essentially selfish character, that
considers the claims of gratitude and affection as _nil_ compared with
the furtherance of personal aims and desires. Never having learned
self-control or obedience, parents and their timid remonstrances must
go to the wall before the passions or longings which these same
parents in days gone by have fostered. "Only mother" or "nobody but
father" are phrases that are so frequent as to become habitual, while
the "you yourself used to let me do this or that" is t