Page:Discipline in school and cloister (1902).djvu/59

 it was dropped too soon. Surely it is as important and interesting a subject to Englishwomen as tight-lacing which has occupied more time and space than this thoroughly practical and domestic question.

Although I am only in early middle life, I am old-fashioned enough to regret the disuse of corporal punishment both at home and at school; and, with many others, I believe that the loss of parental authority and the precious independence and lawlessness of young persons, are due in no small degree to this fact. No longer ago than my own childhood it was otherwise. I and my brothers were whipped, and I believe we are all the better for it. At any rate, we never doubled then or since that our good mother was right; I have never loved or respected her the less for our well-deserved punishment. Nor was the use of the rod confined to boys. I remember we used to look with a sort of awe upon a lady who lived near us and attended the same church with a family of girls, because it was the current report that she was a very strict disciplinarian and used the birch unsparingly. Nor could I ever understand why girls should not be whipped just as much as boys, if they