ible way to lead up to their taking life in
terms of a good fight, a grand game, a real chance to call out the
heroic qualities. Turn every fighting instinct into the good fight that
will clarify and elevate them all.

I. References for Study

W.L. Sheldon, _Ethics in the Home_, chaps. xi, xii, xiii. Welch &
Co., $1.25.

E.A. Abbott, _Training of Parents_, chap. v. Houghton Mifflin Co.,
$1.00.

II. Further Reading

Ella Lyman Cabot, _Every Day Ethics_. Holt, $1.25.

M. Wood-Allen, _Making the Best of Our Children_. 2 vols. McClurg,
$1.00 each.

III. Topics for Discussion

1. Do all children quarrel? Should one punish for small quarrels?

2. What are the facts which ought to be ascertained regarding any
quarrel?

3. What special opportunities do children's differences offer?

4. What are the causes of habitual petulance? What are the dangers
of this habit of mind?

5. Is fighting necessarily wrong? What part does it play in the
lives of men?

6. What are the dangerous elements in boys' fights?

7. What special quality of character needs development in this
connection?

8. What are the valuable possibilities in the fighting tendency?

CHAPTER XXI

DEALING WITH MORAL CRISES (_Continued_)

Sec. 1. LYING

Parents are likely to be wilfully blind to the faults of their children.
But some faults cannot be ignored; they must surely quicken the most
indifferent parent to thought. We suffer a shock when our own child
appears as a wilful liar.

"What shall I do when I catch the child in an outright lie? Surely he
knows that is wrong and that he is wilfully doing the wrong!"

First, be sure whether he is "lying." Lying means a purposeful intent to
deceive by word of mouth or written word. When Charles Dickens wrote
_Oliver Twist_ he described a burglary that never happened, so far as he
knew. He intended the reader to feel that it was true. Was he lying? No;
because he simply used his imagination to paint a scene which was part
of a great lesson he desired to teach the English public. Even had he
had no great moral purpose, it would still not have been a lie, just as
we do not accuse the writer of even the most frivolous novel of lying.
He is simply creating, or imitating, in the field of imagination.

Imagination is the child's native world. When the little girl says, "My
dolly is