Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/185

Rh When it becomes necessary to punish a parent, no child should forget the importance of tempering severity with mercy. The methods in use in the by-gone times when the present condition of things was reversed, were generally of a physical nature, such as castigation, partial starvation, and restrictions in the pursuit of happiness, but those now inflicted by the children, acting upon the mental nature of the parents, are so severe and hard to bear that they should be used but sparingly. Not only is there danger that by undue severity an immediate progenitor may be permanently injured, and rendered of little value to himself and others, but there is sometimes a re-action, violent and sudden, and a family is forced to gaze upon the fearful spectacle of a parent at bay!

The tendency of a great portion of the youth, who have taken the governing power into their own hands, is to make but little use of it, and to allow their parents to go their own way, while they go upon theirs. Such neglect, however, cannot but be prejudicial to the permanency and force of the child-power. While the young person is pursuing a course entirely satisfactory to himself, doing what he likes, and leaving undone what he does not like, the unnoticed parent may be concocting schemes of domestic management entirely incompatible with the desires and plans of his offspring, and quietly building up obstacles which will be very difficult to overthrow when the latter shall have observed their existence. Eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty, but it is also the price of supremacy. To keep one's self above another it is necessary