duced children of an unvarying
quality. In any circle, no matter how exclusive, there are mischievous
children, children who use bad language, children who have sly, mean
tricks, children who do not speak the truth, and who are in other ways
quite as undesirable as the children of the poor and ignorant. It is
often asserted, indeed, that the children of exclusive neighborhoods
very often show more varieties of badness than the children of the
open street. The records of the private Kindergarten as compared with
the public Kindergarten amply prove this statement.

[Sidenote: Evil Example]

Since, then, whether you confine your child to the limits of your
own circle or not, you cannot successfully keep him from playing with
children who are more or less objectionable, what are you going to do
to keep him from the harm of such association? You have to make him
strong enough to withstand temptation and resist the force of evil
example. Of course, he must have as little of the wrong example,
especially in his younger and tenderer years, as can be managed
without too greatly checking his activity and curtailing his freedom.
Yet after all he is to be taught a positive and not a negative
righteousness, and if his home training is not sufficient to enable
him to stand against a certain downward pull from the outside, there
is something the matter with it.

While he must not be strained too hard, nor too constantly associate
with children whose manners put his manners to the test, still he
ought by degrees, almost imperceptibly, to be accustomed to holding
to the truth, to that which is found good, no matter whether his
associates find it desirable or not.

[Sidenote: Social Training]

A good Kindergarten is a mother's best help in this endeavor, for
there her child meets with all sorts of other children. The very
influence of the place, and the ever-ready help of the teacher are on
his side. Every effort he makes to do right is met and welcomed. In
every stand that he takes against temptation, he is unobtrusively
reinforced. Moreover, the wrong-doing of his comrades is never allowed
to retain the attractive glitter that it sometimes acquires on the
play-ground. It is promptly held up to general obloquy, and the good
child finds to his surprise that he is not the only one who thinks
that teasing, for example, is mean and selfish and that a violent
temper is ugly.

[Sidenote: Responsibility to Society]

Moreover, in the