cension, "By Jove!
your name is Dennis; _you_ are not in it!" The old gentleman paused,
instinctively prepared to hear the usual "Why, daughter! papa is
_astonished_ to hear his little girl," etc, etc., after the fashion of
the parental hypocrite. But this candid young father met the dignified
eyes squarely, and said promptly, "I'm sorry, Doctor, but there's no
use denying it; she is just giving _me_ away." He had the sense to
recognize his own teaching, the honesty to admit it. Whether he has
the discretion to reform his methods remains to be seen.

For right here is another point: that people think it is "cute" for a
_little_ child to say and do things that in a child a few years older
would be most unattractively rude. But they must reflect that this
same cute little child will soon be a few years older, and will carry
into that riper age the fixed habits that are forming now; and it will
not be so easy a task to transform the child's manners as it is to
dress him in a larger suit of clothes.

A choice rose was grafted upon a wild, thorny stock, and planted beside
a veranda trellis. The owner watched it carefully for a year or so,
cutting down the rank shoots of the wild stock as they sprang
aggressively from the root, allowing the grafted branch to grow in full
luxuriance, bearing carmine clusters that filled the garden with spicy
odor. The next spring an ignorant gardener pruned away the branches,
cutting down the slenderest and leaving what to his unpracticed eye
were the most desirable, because the thriftiest, shoots; and when the
time of blossoms came, nothing appeared but the ragged petals of the
wild thorn.

So, in "the rosebud garden of girls"--or boys. If the choice graft of
cultured manners (for it _is_ a graft on the sturdy but wayward stock
of human nature) is left to be choked out by the rank, wild growth of
impulse, or if by some flagrant error in example and discipline it is
practically cut down at the main branch, what can the careless trainer
expect? He may weep to find no velvet-petaled rose when he comes to
look for it; but he has no right to blame the rose-bush, nor can he, at
this late day, hide the tact of his blundering pruning by righteously
affirming that he is "perfectly astonished." His neighbors, who have
quietly noted the methods pursued in his kindergarten, are not in the
least surprised.

Another resource for escaping blame is that of explaining that the
children "learn t