his
high-chair throne right up beside the dinner table. The coffee-pot was
within grabbing distance.

I became enamored with that coffee-pot. I decided I needed that
coffee-pot in my business. I reached over to get the coffee-pot. Then I
discovered a woman beside me, my mother. She was the most meddlesome
woman I had ever known. I had not tried to do one thing in three years
that that woman had not meddled into.

And that day when I wanted the coffee-pot--I did want it. Nobody knows
how I desired that coffee-pot. "One thing thou lackest," a
coffee-pot--I was reaching over to get it, that woman said, "Don't
touch that!"

The longer I thought about it the more angry I became. What right has
that woman to meddle into my affairs all the time? I have stood this
petticoat tyranny three years, and it is time to stop it!

I stopped it. I got the coffee-pot. I know I got the coffee-pot. I got
it unanimously. I know when I got it and I also know where I got it. I
got about a gallon of the reddest, hottest coffee a bad boy ever
spilled over himself.

O-o-o-o-o-o! I can feel it yet!

There were weeks after that when I was upholstered. They put
applebutter on me--and coal oil and white-of-an-egg and starch and
anything else the neighbors could think of. They would bring it over
and rub it on the little joy and sunshine of the family, who had gotten
temporarily eclipsed.

Teaching a Wilful Child

You see, my mother's way was to tell me and then let me do as I
pleased. She told me not to get the coffee-pot and then let me get it,
knowing that it would burn me. She would say, "Don't." Then she would
go on with her knitting and let me do as I pleased.

Why don't mothers knit today?

Mother would say, "Don't fall in the well." I could go and jump in the
well after that and she would not look at me. I do not argue that this
is the way to raise children, but I insist that this was the most kind
and effective way to rear one stubborn boy I know of. The neighbors and
the ladies' aid society often said my mother was cruel with that angel
child. But the neighbors did not know what kind of an insect mother was
trying to raise. Mother did know. She knew how stubborn and self-willed
I was. It came from father's "side of the house."

Mother knew that to argue with me was to flatter me. Tell me, serve
notice upon me, and then let me go ahead and get my coffee-pot. That
was the quickest and kindest way to teach me.

I learne