a jumble of hopeless confusion in his mind, and
the only result would be his muttering to himself, after a moment of
bewilderment and vexation, "I _would_ shoot him, anyhow." Such treatment
would not only fail to convince him that his idea was wrong, but would
effectually close his heart against any such conviction.

_The Gentle Mode of Treatment_.

But let the mother first see and recognize those bearings and relations of
the question which the boy sees--that is, those which are the most direct
and immediate--and allow them their full force, and she establishes a
sympathy between his mind and hers, and prepares the way for his being led
by her to taking into the account other considerations which, though of
greater importance, are not so obvious, and which it would be wholly
unreasonable to expect that the boy would see himself, since they do not
come within the range of observation that could be reached spontaneously by
the unaided faculties of such a child. Suppose the mother says, in reply to
her boy's boastful declaration that he would shoot the robber,

"There would be a certain degree of justice in that, no doubt."

"Yes," rejoins the boy, "it would be no more than he deserved."

"When a man engages in the commission of a crime," adds the mother, "he
runs the risk of all the perils that he exposes himself to, from the
efforts of people to defend their property, and perhaps their lives; so
that, perhaps, _he_ would have no right to complain if people did shoot at
him."

"Not a bit of right," says the boy.

"But then there are some other things to be considered," says the mother,
"which, though they do not show that it would be unjust towards him, might
make it bad for _us_ to shoot him."

"What things?" asks the boy.

The mother having candidly admitted whatever there was of truth in the
boy's view of the subject, and thus placed herself, as it were, side by
side with him, he is prepared to see and admit what she is going to point
out to his observation--not as something directly antagonistic to what he
has said, but as something additional, something which is _also_ to be
taken into the account.

"In the first place," continues the mother, "there would be the body to be
disposed of, if you were to shoot him. How should we manage about that?"

It would make a great difference in such a case in respect to the danger
of putting the boy's mind into a state of antagonism against his mother's
presentation