. But they themselves have
been all the while doing those very things to him; and there is no proverb
which strikes a truer balance between two things than the old one which
weighs example over against precept.

However, that it is bad policy to be rude to children is the least of the
things to be said against it. Over this they will triumph, sooner or
later. The average healthy child has a native bias towards gracious good
behavior and kindly affections. He will win and be won in the long run,
and, the chances are, have better manners than his father. But the pain
that we give these blessed little ones when we wound their
tenderness,--for that there is no atoning. Over that they can never
triumph, either now or hereafter. Why do we dare to be so sure that they
are not grieved by ungracious words and tones? that they can get used to
being continually treated as if they were "in the way"? Who has not heard
this said? I have, until I have longed for an Elijah and for fire, that
the grown-up cumberers of the ground, who are the ones really in the way,
might be burned up, to make room for the children. I believe that, if it
were possible to count up in any one month, and show in the aggregate, all
of this class of miseries borne by children, the world would cry out
astonished. I know a little girl, ten years old, of nervous temperament,
whose whole physical condition is disordered, and seriously, by her
mother's habitual atmosphere of rude fault-finding. She is a sickly,
fretful, unhappy, almost unbearable child. If she lives to grow up, she
will be a sickly, fretful, unhappy, unlovely woman. But her mother is just
as much responsible for the whole as if she had deranged her system by
feeding her on poisonous drugs. Yet she is a most conscientious, devoted,
and anxious mother, and, in spite of this manner, a loving one. She does
not know that there is any better way than hers. She does not see that her
child is mortified and harmed when she says to her, in the presence of
strangers, "How do you suppose you _look_ with your mouth open like that?"
"Do you want me to show you how you are sitting?"--and then a grotesque
imitation of her stooping shoulders. "_Will_ you sit still for one
minute?" "_Do_ take your hands off my dress." "Was there ever such an
awkward child?" When the child replies fretfully and disagreeably, she
does not see that it is only an exact reflection of her own voice and
manners. She does not understand any