e it
directly. And by this time the crisis of the first hour which they lost
has become complicated with that of the second hour, for which they are in
no wise ready; and so the hours stumble on, one after another, and the day
is only a tangle of ineffective cross purposes. Hundreds of such days
drift on, with their sad burden of wasted time. Year after year their
lives fail of growth, of delight, of blessing to others. Opportunity's
great golden doors, which never stay long open for any man, have always
just closed when they reach the threshold of a deed; and it is hard, very
hard, to see why it would not have been better for them if they had never
been born.

After all, it is not right to be impatient with them; for, in nine cases
out of ten, they are no more responsible for their mental limp than the
poor Chinese woman is for her feeble feet. From their infancy up to what
in our comic caricature of words we call "maturity," they have been
bandaged. How should their muscles be good for any thing? From the day
when we give, and take, and arrange the baby's playthings for him, hour by
hour, without ever setting before him to choose one of two and give up the
other, to the day when we take it upon ourselves to decide whether he
shall be an engineer or a lawyer, we persist in doing for him the work
which he should do for himself. This is because we love him more than we
love our own lives. Oh! if love could but have its eyes opened and see!
If we were not blind, we should know that whenever a child decides for
himself deliberately, and without bias from others, any question, however
small, he has had just so many minutes of mental gymnastics,--just so much
strengthening of the one faculty on whose health and firmness his success
in life will depend more than upon any other thing.

So many people do not know the difference between obstinacy and
clear-headed firmness of will, that it is hardly safe to say much in
praise or blame of either without expressly stating that you do not mean
the other. They are as unlike as digestion and indigestion, and one would
suppose could not be much more easily confounded; but it is constantly
done. It has not yet ceased to be said among fathers and mothers that it
is necessary to "break the will" of children; and it has not yet ceased to
be seen in the land that men by virtue of simple obstinacy are called men
of strong character. The truth is that the stronger, better-trained will a
man