him. You may deny the truth and go on some theory of your own in the
training of your boys, but the truth cannot deny itself. It is _there_,
whether you will have it or not, a root of the tree of life itself.

Now there is not a day that need pass without opportunities of training
your boys in this their true knightly attitude. You can see, as I have
already said, that they learn in relation to their own sisters what in
after years they have to practise towards all women alike. To give up
the comfortable easy-chair, the favorite book or toy, the warmest place
by the fire, to the little sister--this ought to become a second nature
to a well-trained boy. To carry a parcel for her, to jump up and fetch
anything she wants, to give in to her because he is a boy and the
stronger--all this ought to be a matter of course. As he grows older you
can place him in little positions of responsibility to his sisters,
sending them out on an expedition or to a party under his care. In a
thousand such ways you can see that your boy is not only born but grows
up a knight. I was once in a house where the master always brought up
the heavy evening water-cans and morning coal-scuttles for the maids.
And if these were placed at the foot of the stairs so as to involve no
running in and out of the kitchen, it might be no mean exercise for a
boy's muscles.

I was told only the other day of a little six-year-old boy whose mother
had brought him up from babyhood on these principles. He was playing
with his little sister on a bed, when suddenly he perceived that she
was getting perilously near the edge which was farthest from the wall.
Instantly he dismounted and went round to the other side, and, climbing
up, pushed her gently into the middle of the bed, remarking
sententiously to himself, "I think boys ought always to take the
dangerous side of their sisters." Ah me! if only you mothers would but
train your boys to "take the dangerous side of their sisters,"
especially of those poor little sisters who are thrust forth at so early
an age to earn their own living, alone and unprotected, on the perilous
highways of the world, skirted for them by so terrible a precipice, what
a different world would it be for us women, what a purer and better
world for your sons!

Surely the womanhood in our homes ought to enable us to bring up our
boys in such an habitual attitude of serving a woman, of caring for her,
of giving himself for her, that it would beco