ON OBEDIENCE.

Obedience has been often called the virtue of childhood. How far it is
entitled to the name of virtue, we need not at present stop to
examine. Obedience is expected from children long before they can
reason upon the justice of our commands; consequently it must be
taught as a habit. By associating pleasure with those things which we
first desire children to do, we should make them necessarily like to
obey; on the contrary, if we begin by ordering them to do what is
difficult and disagreeable to them, they must dislike obedience. The
poet seems to understand this subject when he says,

"Or bid her wear your necklace rowed with pearl,
You'll find your Fanny an obedient girl."[45]

The taste for a necklace rowed with pearl, is not the _first_ taste,
even in girls, that we should wish to cultivate; but the poet's
_principle_ is good, notwithstanding. Bid your child do things that
are agreeable to him, and you may be sure of his obedience. Bid a
hungry boy eat apple pye; order a shivering urchin to warm himself at
a good fire; desire him to go to bed when you see him yawn with
fatigue, and by such seasonable commands you will soon form
associations of pleasure in his mind, with the voice and tone of
authority. This tone should never be threatening, or alarming; it
should be gentle, but decided. Whenever it becomes necessary that a
child should do what he feels disagreeable, it is better to make him
submit at once to necessity, than to create any doubt and struggle in
his mind, by leaving him a possibility of resistance. Suppose a
little boy wishes to sit up later than the hour at which you think
proper that he should go to bed; it is most prudent to take him to bed
at the appointed time, without saying one word to him, either in the
way of entreaty or command. If you entreat, you give the child an idea
that he has it in his power to refuse you: if you command, and he does
not instantly obey, you hazard your authority, and you teach him that
he can successfully set his will in opposition to yours. The boy
wishes to sit up; he sees no reason, in the moral fitness of things,
why he should go to bed at one hour more than at another; all he
perceives is, that such is your will. What does he gain by obeying
you? Nothing: he loses the pleasure of sitting up half an hour longer.
How can you then expect that he should, in consequence of these
reasonings, give up his obvious immediate interest, and march