treating to the brook, should
you have thought that it would have been right?"

"Why, no, mother," said Dwight.

"You would have been shocked at such an idea. And now don't you see that
all your attempts to prove that he had done wrong, was only the effect
of the ill-will you felt towards him at the time. It was malice
triumphing over your judgment and your sense of right and wrong. I told
you, you know, that your resolutions would not reach the case."

"Well, mother, I am _determined_," said Dwight, very deliberatively and
positively, "that I _never_ will tease or trouble Caleb any more."

"The evil is not so much in teasing and troubling Caleb, as in having a
heart capable of taking any pleasure in it. That is the great
difficulty."

"Well, mother, I am determined I never will feel any pleasure in his
trouble again."

"I am afraid that won't depend altogether upon the determination you
make. For instance, when you went to Caleb to-day, and kindly tried to
persuade him to go down, and offered to carry his rocking-chair for him,
your heart was then in a state of love towards him. Do you think you
could then, by determination, have changed it from love to hate, and
begun to take pleasure in teasing him?"

Dwight remembered how kindly and pleasantly he had felt towards Caleb at
that time, and he thought that it would have been impossible for him
then to have found any pleasure in tormenting him; and so he said, "No,
mother, I could not."

"And so, when you are angry with a person, and your heart is in a state
of ill-will and malice towards him, does it seem to you that you can
merely by a determination change it all at once, and begin to be filled
with love, so as to feel pleasure in his happiness?"

Dwight was silent at first; he presently answered, faintly, that he
could not.

"And if you cannot change your heart by your mere determination at the
time, you certainly cannot by making one general determination, now
beforehand, for all time to come."

Dwight saw his helpless condition, and sighed. After a pause, he said,

"Mother, it seems to me you are discouraging me from trying to be a
better boy."

"No, Dwight; but I don't want you to depend on false hopes that must
only end in your disappointment. Your determination will help in not
indulging the bad feelings; but I want to have your heart changed so
that you could not possibly _have_ such feelings. I hope mine is. I
once shewed the same spirit that y