t ought to be the nature of a reproof from a
parent to a child, and what is its end, the answer is simple enough. It
should be nothing but the superior wisdom and strength, explaining to
inexperience and feebleness wherein they have made a mistake, to the end
that they may avoid such mistakes in future. If personal annoyance,
impatience, antagonism enter in, the relation is marred and the end
endangered. Most sacred and inalienable of all rights is the right of
helplessness to protection from the strong, of ignorance to counsel from
the wise. If we give our protection and counsel grudgingly, or in a
churlish, unkind manner, even to the stranger that is in our gates, we are
no Christians, and deserve to be stripped of what little wisdom and
strength we have hoarded. But there are no words to say what we are or
what we deserve if we do thus to the little children whom we have dared,
for our own pleasure, to bring into the perils of this life, and whose
whole future may be blighted by the mistakes of our careless hands.

Breaking the Will.

This phrase is going out of use. It is high time it did. If the thing it
represents would also cease, there would be stronger and freer men and
women. But the phrase is still sometimes heard; and there are still
conscientious fathers and mothers who believe they do God service in
setting about the thing.

I have more than once said to a parent who used these words, "Will you
tell me just what you mean by that? Of course you do not mean exactly what
you say."

"Yes, I do. I mean that the child's will is to be once for all
broken!--that he is to learn that my will is to be his law. The sooner he
learns this the better."

"But is it to your will simply _as_ will that he is to yield? Simply as
the weaker yields to the stronger,--almost as matter yields to force? For
what reason is he to do this?"

"Why, because I know what is best for him, and what is right; and he does
not."

"Ah! that is a very different thing. He is, then, to do the thing that you
tell him to do, because that thing is right and is needful for him; you
are his guide on a road over which you have gone, and he has not; you are
an interpreter, a helper; you know better than he does about all things,
and your knowledge is to teach his ignorance."

"Certainly, that is what I mean. A pretty state of things it would be if
children were to be allowed to think they know as much as their parents.
There is no way