ll the distorted face of that
poor child, as, in her fearful passion, she told you she wished you were
dead, without also remembering that even the gentle Christ said of him who
should offend one of these little ones, "It were better for him that a
mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depths
of the sea!"

The Inhumanities of Parents--Rudeness.

/#
"_Inhumanity_--Cruelty. _Cruelty_--The disposition to give unnecessary
pain."--_Webster's Dict_.
#/

I had intended to put third on the list of inhumanities of parents
"needless requisitions;" but my last summer's observations changed my
estimate, and convinced me that children suffer more pain from the
rudeness with which they are treated than from being forced to do needless
things which they dislike. Indeed, a positively and graciously courteous
manner toward children is a thing so rarely seen in average daily life,
the rudenesses which they receive are so innumerable, that it is hard to
tell where to begin in setting forth the evil. Children themselves often
bring their sharp and unexpected logic to bear on some incident
illustrating the difference in this matter of behavior between what is
required from them and what is shown to them: as did a little boy I knew,
whose father said crossly to him one morning, as he came into the
breakfast-room, "Will you ever learn to shut that door after you?" and a
few seconds later, as the child was rather sulkily sitting down in his
chair, "And do you mean to bid anybody 'good-morning,' or not?" "I don't
think you gave _me_ a very nice 'good-morning,' anyhow," replied satirical
justice, aged seven. Then, of course, he was reproved for speaking
disrespectfully; and so in the space of three minutes the beautiful
opening of the new day, for both parents and children, was jarred and
robbed of its fresh harmony by the father's thoughtless rudeness.

Was the breakfast-room door much more likely to be shut the next morning?
No. The lesson was pushed aside by the pain, the motive to resolve was
dulled by the antagonism. If that father had called his son, and, putting
his arm round him, (oh! the blessed and magic virtue of putting your arm
round a child's neck!) had said, "Good-morning, my little man;" and then,
in a confidential whisper in his ear, "What shall we do to make this
forgetful little boy remember not to leave that door open, through which
the cold wind blows in on all of us?"--can any wo