Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/164

 time and time agin. Patience and long sufferin' and reason is what we should need, and not punishment, and that is what children need.

Many a child is skairt and whipped into bein' a hippocrite and liar, when, if they had been encouraged to tell the truth—own up their little faults and meanderin's—and treated justly, patiently, and kindly, they would have been as truthful and transparent as rain water. Children have sharp eyes and are quick to see injustice, and things sink deep into their little souls. They are whipped if they don't tell the truth, skaired dark nights with the lurid passage—"Liars shall have their portion in the lake of fire and brimstone."

And then they see their mother smile into some disagreeable visitor's face and groan at her back. How can the baby wisdom part the smile from the groan, and find truth under 'em? How can we? They are taught under fear of severest punishment to be honest—"Thou shalt not steal." And then, with their earliest knowledge, they hear their mother boast of some advantage she has gained over the shopkeeper, and their father congratulating himself on how he got the better of his neighbor in a horse trade. And if she be the child of a business man, happy for her if she does not wonder at that sight strange to men and gods, to see her father lose all his wealth one day, to rise up rich the next, rise up from a crowd of poor men and wimmen he has cheated and ruined.

She is taught that deceit is an abomination to the Lord. And then she stands with her little eyes on a level with the washstand, and sees her big sister paint and powder her face, darken her eyebrows, and pad her lean form into roundness. She is taught the exceeding sinfulness