h verse.

The next practical difficulty was, that she attempted to carry out a
theory which, whatever might be its success in other cases, did not work
kindly in the case of Myrtle Hazard, but, on the contrary, developed a
mighty spirit of antagonism in her nature, which threatened to end in
utter lawlessness. Miss Silence started from the approved doctrine, that
all children are radically and utterly wrong in all their motives,
feelings, thoughts, and deeds, so long as they remain subject to their
natural instincts. It was by the eradication, and not the education, of
these instincts, that the character of the human being she was moulding
was to be determined. The first great preliminary process, so soon as the
child manifested any evidence of intelligent and persistent
self-determination, was to break her will.

There is no doubt that this was a legitimate conclusion from the teaching
of Priest Pemberton, but it required a colder and harder nature than his
own to carry out many of his dogmas to their practical application. He
wrought in the pure mathematics, so to speak, of theology, and left the
working rules to the good sense and good feeling of his people.

Miss Silence had been waiting for her opportunity to apply the great
doctrine, and it came at last in a very trivial way.

"Myrtle does n't want brown bread. Myrtle won't have brown bread. Myrtle
will have white bread."

"Myrtle is a wicked child. She will have what Aunt Silence says she
shall have. She won't have anything but brown bread."

Thereupon the bright red lip protruded, the hot blood mounted to her
face, the child untied her little "tire," got down from the table, took
up her one forlorn, featureless doll, and went to bed without her supper.
The next morning the worthy woman thought that hunger and reflection
would have subdued the rebellious spirit. So there stood yesterday's
untouched supper waiting for her breakfast. She would not taste it, and
it became necessary to enforce that extreme penalty of the law which had
been threatened, but never yet put in execution. Miss Silence, in
obedience to what she felt to be a painful duty, without any passion, but
filled with high, inexorable purpose, carried the child up to the garret,
and, fastening her so that she could not wander about and hurt herself,
left her to her repentant thoughts, awaiting the moment when a plaintive
entreaty for liberty and food should announce that the evil nature