Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/121

Rh flaw in the indictment. Any exaggeration into which, a feeling of indignation happens to betray the accuser is instantly pounced upon. If, for example, a child is scolded for pulling kitty's ears and making her cry, it is enough for the little stickler for accuracy to be able to say: "I wasn't pulling kitty's ears, I was only pulling one of her ears." This ability to deny the charge in its initial form gives the child a great advantage, and robs the accusation in its amended form of much of its sting. Whence, by the way, one may infer that wisdom in managing children shows itself in nothing more than in a scrupulous exactness in the use of words.

While there are these isolated attacks on various points of the daily discipline, we see now and again a bolder line of action in the shape of a general protest against its severity. Children have been known to urge that the punishments inflicted on them are ineffectual; and although their opinion on such a matter is hardly disinterested, it is sometimes pertinent enough. An American boy, aged five years and ten months, began to cry because he was forbidden to go into the yard to play, and was threatened by his mother with a whipping. Whereupon he observed, "Well now, mamma, that will only make me cry more."

These childish protests are, as we know, wont to be met by the commonplaces about the affection which prompts the correction. But the child finds it hard to swallow these subtleties. For him love is caressing him and doing everything for his present enjoyment; and here is the mother who says she loves him, and often acts as if she did, transforming herself into an ogre to torment him and make him miserable. He may accept her assurance that she scolds and chastises him because she is a good mother; only he is apt to wish that she were a shade less good. A boy of four had one morning to remain in bed till ten o'clock as a punishment for misbehavior. He proceeded to address his mother on this wise: "If I had any little children I'd be a worse mother than you—I'd be quite a bad mother. I'd let my children get up directly I had done my breakfast, at any rate."

If, on the other hand, the mother puts forward her own comfort as the ground of the restraint, she may be met by this kind of thing: "I wish you'd be a little more self-sacrificing and let me make a noise."

Enough has been said to illustrate the ways in which the natural child kicks against the imposition of restraints on his free activity. He begins by showing himself an open foe to authority. For a long time after, while making a certain show of submission, he harbors in his breast something of the rebel's spirit. He does his best to avoid the most galling parts of the daily discipline, and displays an admirable ingenuity in devising excuses for apparent