his the rewarding mother
may reply that it is not reasonable to take "goodness" in a little child
of strong passions as the normal condition. The natural thing for him is
to give full sway to impulses that are so violent as to overbear his
powers.

But, after all, the controversy returns to the point of practice. What
is the thought, or threat, or promise that will stimulate the weak will
of the child, in the moment of rage and anger, to make a sufficient
resistance? If the will were naturally as well developed as the
passions, the stand would be soon made and soon successful; but as it is
there must needs be a bracing by the suggestion of joy or fear. Let,
then, the stimulus be of a mild and strong kind at once, and mingled with
the thought of distant pleasure. To meet the suffering of rage and
frenzy by the suffering of fear is assuredly to make of the little
unquiet mind a battle-place of feelings too hurtfully tragic. The penny
is mild and strong at once, with its still distant but certain joys of
purchase; the promise and hope break the mood of misery, and the will
takes heart to resist and conquer.

It is only in the lesser naughtiness that he is master of himself. The
lesser the evil fit the more deliberate. So that his mother, knowing
herself to be not greatly feared, once tried to mimic the father's voice
with a menacing, "What's that noise?" The child was persistently crying
and roaring on an upper floor, in contumacy against his French nurse,
when the baritone and threatening question was sent pealing up the
stairs. The child was heard to pause and listen and then to say to his
nurse, "Ce n'est pas Monsieur; c'est Madame," and then, without further
loss of time, to resume the interrupted clamours.

Obviously, with a little creature of six years, there are two things
mainly to be done--to keep the delicate brain from the evil of the
present excitement, especially the excitement of painful feeling, and to
break the habit of passion. Now that we know how certainly the special
cells of the brain which are locally affected by pain and anger become
hypertrophied by so much use, and all too ready for use in the future at
the slightest stimulus, we can no longer slight the importance of habit.
Any means, then, that can succeed in separating a little child from the
habit of anger does fruitful work for him in the helpless time of his
childhood. The work is not easy, but a little thought should make it
e