Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/67

62 love should seize the opportunity for bestowing a large amount of approbation upon the effort.

Much also may be done by a mother in the way of stimulating a laudable ambition in her children to accomplish certain ends; but she must be especially careful not to go too far, or to encourage their attempting what is impossible to them. It is unspeakably distressing to hear hasty and inconsiderate parents sometimes insisting upon what is impracticable, and going on to declare that their children must and shall do certain things; without taking the trouble to ascertain whether there may not be some insurmountable obstacle in the way. Indeed, notwithstanding all the boasted tenderness called into exercise on behalf of children, there is also a vast amount of cruelty practised upon them, purely from want of thought. And then the absurdities which are proposed to them as reasons for submission! I remember to have been told, night after night, that I must eat all my apple-pie, a thing to which I had a particular aversion, because there were so many poor children who would be glad to have it. Now, how these poor children should be benefited by my eating what they liked, and I did not, I never could make out; as little could I imagine how it should be a merit in me to eat up all, when they would have been so glad to have a part. She was a good kind nurse, however, who used to tell me this, and maintained the highest character as a servant. The question is not with such, but whether there may not be mothers who err almost as strangely in their moral training.

Dr. Johnson has told us that pity is not a natural feeling—that it must be taught to children before they can exercise its soothing power. And certainly it has often appeared to me one of the least attractive features of infancy, that children should evince a mischievous desire for getting one another into scrapes. Not that they delight in seeing the punishment they have brought upon their playmates actually inflicted; the spectacle of suffering appears to shock them, in its absolute reality. But still they run and tell, when there is no occasion to do so, that such a one—perhaps their favorite companion—has been committing, an act of delinquency, the disclosure of which they know will bring disgrace and suffering upon the offender.