years ago for one of the New
England States, regrets that, even then, home government had grown
lax. He wittily says that Young America is _rampant_, parental
influence _couchant_; and no reversal of these positions is as yet
visible in 1892.

To those who note the methods by which many children are managed, it
is a matter of wonderment that the results in character and conduct
are not very much worse than they are. Dr. Channing wisely says, "The
hope of the world lies in the fact that parents cannot make of
their children what they will." Happy accidents of association and
circumstance sometimes nullify the harm the parent has done, and the
tremendous momentum of the race-tendency carries the child over many
an obstacle which his training has set in his path.

It seems crystal-clear at the outset that you cannot govern a child if
you have never learned to govern yourself. Plato said, many centuries
ago: "The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the
same time; not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your
own principles in practice," and all the wisdom of the ancients is in
the thought. If, then, you are a fit person to be trusted with the
government of a child, what goal do you propose to reach in your
discipline; what is your aim, your ideal?

1. The discipline should be thoroughly in harmony with child-nature in
general, and suited to the age and development of the particular child
in question.

2. It should appeal to the higher motives, and to the higher motives
alone.

3. It should develop kindness, helpfulness, and sympathy.

4. It should never use weapons which would tend to lower the child's
self-respect.

5. It should be thoroughly just, and the punishment, or rather the
retribution, should be commensurate with the offense.

6. It should teach respect for law, and for the rights of others.

Finally, it should teach "voluntary obedience, the last lesson in
life, the choral song which rises from all elements and all angels,"
and, as the object of true discipline is the formation of character,
it should produce a human being master of his impulses, his passions,
and his will.

The journey's end being fixed, one must next decide what route will
reach it, and will be short, safe, economical, and desirable; and the
roads to the presumably ideal discipline are many and well-traveled.
Some of them, it is true, lead you into a swamp, some to the edge of
a precipice; some will h