Page:Discipline in school and cloister (1902).djvu/75

 many of your readers seem anxious to know how to punish girls of fifteen years old and upwards, I take the liberty of informing you that about three years ago my eldest girl gave me a good deal of trouble by disregarding my directions and orders. She was then turned sixteen, was home from school for her holidays, and evidently thought that under those circumstances she was entitled to do just what she pleased.

I spoke to her two or three times very seriously, and at last threatened that if she continued to disregard what I said to her I should be compelled to enforce my orders with the birch. When my children were little I had been used, if they were naughty, to lay them across my knee and whip them with my slipper or a small birchrod, but now this mode of procedure was not available, as my daughter was too big for that treatment, and would only laugh at the slight pat she would receive. It being a real struggle for the mastery, it was important that my authority should be supported, and if it were not for this I do not think that I should have whipped her at all. What I did was this: I bought a birch broom and took from it twenty long, stiff, and bushy