Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/98

 "But you could make a man of him," I pleaded as he left me.

A friend of mine, a wise woman with one son, had more courage. The boy, who was in the high school, got it into his head that he would like to earn a little money, and having a job offered him accepted it. This work necessitated his getting up at five in the morning and working until time to start to school.

"It must be rather hard on you," a sympathetic neighbor said to his mother one day, "getting up so early in the morning to get William's breakfast and to get him off."

"But I don't get up," was the mother's reply. "When William took the job I explained to him that he must manage himself; if he lost the place through failure to get there on time, it was his own fault. So he bought a 'Big Ben' to awaken him at the proper time; he gets his own breakfast, and he has never been late one morning. It took a lot of courage and self-control for me to hear him coming down stairs before daylight these cold winter mornings and not to get up and help him off, but William's character is worth more to me than my own selfish comfort in looking after him." She has been a thousand times rewarded in the years that have followed in the strong, sturdy, self-reliant son to whom she now looks up. Her way is the only way I know to make men of character and self-reliance and independence.

No one gains strength except through struggle; self-reliance comes through meeting hardships. There is no strength of character without sacrifice, and as we make it easy for our children, as we save them from the hard, unpleasant things of life unduly