broken" by this episode, yet review the facts in
their entirety, and see if there is not a good in them that you are
wont to overlook.

The punishment was harsh, but it was just such as "Dodd" Weaver had
been needing for a long time, and the only thing that could reach him
just then. It would have been a crime to treat in like manner a gentle
little girl with a sweet disposition, but was it a crime in the case of
"Dodd?"

And if not a crime in "Dodd's" case, why in other cases like his? And
if the punishment was right, inflicted by the hand of the grandfather,
why not by the hand of the teacher who shall have occasion to resort,
even to this, to put a boy into the right way? I do not mean a
cold-blooded whipping, inflicted by a Principal for a trifling
transgression of a rule in some department of school, under one of the
assistant teachers, but a retribution, swift, sure, and terrible, that
is inflicted by the person against whom the wrong is done, and which
falls upon the willful transgressor to keep him from doing so again.

For this is the mission of penalty, to keep the wrong-doer from a
repetition of his wrong doing.

"Dodd" Weaver was a wrong-doer, and under the treatment he was
receiving from his parents, and had received from Miss Stone, he was
waxing worse and worse with each recurring day. This was really more
unfortunate for him than for the people whom he annoyed by his
lawlessness. There was no likelihood of his correcting the fault by
his own will, nor could persuasion lead him to reform, this having been
worn to rags by Miss Stone, till the boy laughed to scorn so gentle an
opposition to his bad actions.

But over all these misfortunes and follies alike came the lively
thrashing of grandpa Stebbins, and brought the boy to a realizing sense
of the situation. The young sinner found himself suddenly confronted
with the penalty of his sin, and when he found that this penalty was
really extreme suffering, he made up his mind that it was something
worth looking out for.

To be sure, it was not a high motive to right action, but it was a
motive that led to better deeds on the part of "Dodd" Weaver, and as
such is worthy a place in this record. There was one man and one thing
in the world that be had learned to have a decent respect for, and that
was a new acquisition at this period of his life. So long as grandpa
Stebbins lived, he and "Dodd" were fast friends, and when, years after,
the old man