ages; tender intimacy between persons of varying ages is
one of these blessings.

A German woman on her first visit to America said to me, as we talked
about children, that, with our National habit of treating them as what
we Americans call "chums," she wondered how parents kept any authority
over them, and especially maintained any government _of_ them, and _for_
them, without letting it lapse into a government _by_ them.

"I should think that the commandment 'Children, obey your parents' might
be in danger of being overlooked or thrust aside," she said, "in a
country in which children and parents are 'chums,' as Americans say."

That ancient commandment would seem to be too toweringly large to be
overlooked, too firmly embedded in the world to be thrust aside. It is a
very Rock of Gibraltar of a commandment.

American parents do not relinquish their authority over their children.
As for government--like other wise parents, they aim to help it to
develop, as soon as it properly can, from a government of and for their
children into a government by them. Self-government is the lesson of
lessons they most earnestly desire to teach their children.

Methods of teaching it differ. Indeed, as to methods of teaching their
children anything, American fathers and mothers have no fixed standard,
no homogeneous ideal. More likely than not they follow in this important
matter their custom in matters of lesser import--of employing a method
directly opposed to the method of their own parents, and employing it
simply because it is directly opposed. This is but too apt to be their
interpretation of the phrase "modernity in child nurture." But the
children learn the lesson. They learn the other great and fundamental
lessons of life, too, and learn them well, from these American fathers
and mothers who are so friendly and companionable and sympathetic with
them.

Why should they not? There is no antagonism between love and law.
Parents are in a position of authority over their children; no risk of
the strength of that position is involved in a friendship between
parents and children anywhere. It is not remarkable that American
parents should retain their authority over their children. What is
noteworthy is that their children, less than any other children of the
civilized world, rebel against it or chafe under it: they perceive so
soon that their parents are governing them only because they are not
wise enough to govern themselves;