er eyes, keep for three
days an exact record of the little requests which she refuses, from the
baby of five, who begged to stand on a chair and look out of the window,
and was hastily told, "No, it would, hurt the chair," when one minute
would have been enough time to lay a folded newspaper over the
upholstery, and another minute enough to explain to him, with a kiss and
a hug, "that that was to save his spoiling mamma's nice chair with his
boots;" and the two minutes together would probably have made sure that
another time the dear little fellow would look out for a paper himself,
when he wished to climb up to the window,--from this baby up to the pretty
girl of twelve, who, with as distinct a perception of the becoming as her
mother had before her, went to school unhappy because she was compelled to
wear the blue necktie instead of the scarlet one, and surely for no
especial reason! At the end of the three days, an honest examination of
the record would show that full half of these small denials, all of which
had involved pain, and some of which had brought contest and punishment,
had been needless, had been hastily made, and made usually on account of
the slight interruption or inconvenience which would result from yielding
to the request. I am very much mistaken if the honest keeping and honest
study of such a three days' record would not wholly change the atmosphere
in many a house to what it ought to be, and bring almost constant sunshine
and bliss where now, too often, are storm and misery.

With some parents, although they are neither harsh nor hard in manner, nor
yet unloving in nature, the habitual first impulse seems to be to refuse:
they appear to have a singular obtuseness to the fact that it is, or can
be, of any consequence to a child whether it does or does not do the thing
it desires. Often the refusal is withdrawn on the first symptom of grief
or disappointment on the child's part; a thing which is fatal to all real
control of a child, and almost as unkind as the first unnecessary
denial,--perhaps even more so, as it involves double and treble pains, in
future instances, where there cannot and must not be any giving way to
entreaties. It is doubtless this lack of perception,--akin, one would
think, to color-blindness,--which is at the bottom of this great and
common inhumanity among kind and intelligent fathers and mothers: an
inhumanity so common that it may almost be said to be universal; so common
t