uble, inconvenience, or
privation, by disobeying or neglecting to obey his mother's command.
The important words in this statement of the principle are _never_ and
_always_. It is the absolute certainty that disobedience will hurt him, and
not help him, in which the whole efficacy of the rule consists.

It is very surprising how small a punishment will prove efficacious if it
is only _certain_ to follow the transgression. You may set apart a certain
place for a prison--a corner of the sofa, a certain ottoman, a chair, a
stool, any thing will answer; and the more entirely every thing like an
air of displeasure or severity is excluded, in the manner of making the
preliminary arrangements, the better. A mother without any tact, or any
proper understanding of the way in which the hearts and minds of young
children are influenced, will begin, very likely, with a scolding.

"Children, you are getting very disobedient. I have to speak three or four
times before you move to do what I say. Now, I am going to have a prison.
The prison is to be that dark closet, and I am going to shut you up in
it for half an hour every time you disobey. Now, remember! The very next
time!"

_Empty Threatening_.

Mothers who govern by threatening seldom do any thing but threaten.
Accordingly, the first time the children disobey her, after such an
announcement, she says nothing, if the case happens to be one in which the
disobedience occasions her no particular trouble. The next time, when the
transgression is a little more serious, she thinks, very rightly
perhaps, that to be shut up half an hour in a dark closet would be a
disproportionate punishment. Then, when at length some very willful and
grave act of insubordination occurs, she happens to be in particularly
good-humor, for some reason, and has not the heart to shut "the poor thing"
in the closet; or, perhaps, there is company present, and she does not wish
to make a scene. So the penalty announced with so much emphasis turns out
to be a dead letter, as the children knew it would from the beginning.

_How Discipline may be both Gentle and Efficient_.

With a little dexterity and tact on the mother's part, the case may be
managed very differently, and with a very different result. Let us suppose
that some day, while she is engaged with her sewing or her other household
duties, and her children are playing around her, she tells them that in
some great schools in Europe, when the boys are d