in thinking that the appetite for luxurious food may be sometimes driven out by the appetite for play. But medical advice ought to be taken before parents compel a child to eat whatever they may put on his plate. Even where a child is exempted from the necessity of eating certain kinds of food, the habit can often be broken by insisting that a very small portion shall be eaten, and gradually increasing the amount. The parents, having once determined what the child can, and what he cannot, be expected to eat, must carefully avoid giving him anything that he cannot eat, and must rigidly insist that nothing shall be "left."

The disgust manifested by parents at any symptoms of greediness, and their displeasure at fastidiousness, will go some way to cure these faults; and wherever dining is enlivened by cheerful conversation, intelligible to children, there is an additional preservative. But by far the greatest safeguard is abundance of exercise, and such an arrangement of meals that the child shall not be called to eat till he is hungry.

Under the head of "appetites" there come other desires, natural and harmless when not carried to excess, such as love of sport, love of bed (in the morning), love of the fireside, as to which only one general rule can be laid down, viz., that a child should be very speedily imbued with the notion that the law and order of the household are superior to his own desires, and that he must be prepared continually to conform himself to regulations. Occasionally, as children grow older and more capable of appreciating reasons, it may be well to point out to them how the full indulgence of this or that desire may interfere with the comfort of others; but it is best at first to dispense with arguments of this or any sort, and to take one's stand on Law, assuming and inculcating that Law is to be obeyed, and that "no child must expect to do what he likes."

12. THE WILL.

The same training that breeds the habit of attention tends to strengthen the will; and those distractions which were said above (4) to be unfavorable to the former are no less unfavorable to the latter.

For the development of the will two opposite kinds of exercises are

useful.

1. Sometimes we must set easy tasks, so as to generate a habit of reasonable self-reliance, and prevent the pupil from becoming dispirited by continuous failures.

2. Sometimes we must set more difficult tasks, such as involve some wholesome strain of the powers, so as to lead the child up to a higher standard of exertion, and to prevent him from becoming too easily contented with himself.

The judicious interchange of hard and easy exercises is a part of

moral as well as of intellectual training; and the parental instinct or intuition is never better employed than in discerning between those temptations which the childish will may reasonably resist, and be the stronger for resisting, and those, on the other hand, which are likely to prove too strong for resistance, and to which, consequently, a child ought not to be exposed.

Never make it your aim to break a child's will.

Of course, where a child is stubbornly disobedient, disobedience must be punished and obedience enforced; but you must all the while remember that you do not want to destroy the child's will, but to turn it in the right direction. There is more than a mere difference of words in this distinction. There are many punishments of a humiliating and degrading nature which will be adopted by those who desire to "break the will," and which are very efficacious for that purpose; but by those who do not want to "break," but to "bend," such punishments will be suspected, as destroying the very thing we desire to preserve and improve.

13, OBEDIENCE.

Children would be generally obedient if they were ruled unselfishly, uncapriciously, and intelligently.

If a child is engaged in some interesting and harmless occupation, and the nurse abruptly calls him away to show him something pretty which he does not care for, he will go back to his amusement with a feeling of resentment, less disposed to trust the wisdom of commands, and less willing to obey next time. Again, if children are sent suddenly off to bed, in the midst of some absorbing play, without a word of warning or a little tact in sobering down the excitement of the game, so as to prepare for the end, there is very likely to be a tendency

to murmur.

By "warning" and "tact" it is not meant that the hour of bedtime should be delayed. On the contrary, it should be adhered to unalterably; or, if it is ever deferred on very rare and special occasions, this should be done from the parents' own will, and never on account of the child's request. But it is very easy for a sensible nurse or mother (provided she has leisure to supervise the children) so to arrange matters that a story or game may just come to an end at the right time.

Requests to "stop up a little longer" should be not only never granted, but even prohibited. But, on their side, the parents would do well to consider, when they find children habitually lying awake, and habitually unwilling to go to bed, whether they may not have fixed the hour of bedtime unreasonably early. In such cases it would be well to make it later. If the mother-for whom in this matter no nurse can possibly be an adequate substitute-is in the habit of "hearing prayers" before the little one retires for the night, she will find that the sobering influence of this preparation is one of the best anti

dotes against bad temper and childish rebellion.

But then the prayers

must not be a mere form, not hurried through, and not entirely above the child's comprehension. A brief petition for father and mother, sisters and brothers, and that the little one may be "made a good boy," together with the familiar verse addressed to "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” make up the best possible prayer for a little child. More than this is likely to be less intelligible, and possibly tedious. But much will depend on the circumstances of the prayer. "I was present once," writes Preceptor, "in a Yorkshire cottage-inn, while the mother was hearing a little child say its prayers for the night; and I remember that the performance included not only the repetition of the Apostles' Creed, but also answers to two or three Biblical questions, such as, How many Persons are there in the Trinity?' 'Who was the first man?' 'Who was the first woman?' Yet I felt that the little infant service, if I may so call it, was of the sort that goes upward. And why? Because the mother's questions were imbued with so deep a reverence, and because the family and guests preserved such a reverent silence, that the little one itself seemed to feel that there was reverence in the air. I don't believe the child understood anything, but he seemed to me to feel much."

There appears to be in these remarks a force which applies to every household prayer. The mother must be a kind of help to her child to enter a higher atmosphere. The little one must not only learn from her lips, but catch something from her spirit. If this be borne in mind, it will be unnecessary to dwell on such details as that the child must not begin to speak directly he is on his knees, must not gabb e, must not get up directly he has finished, and so on. Minute regulations of this kind are only of importance in so far as they are signs of a mother's reverence, which may almost be said to form the most important part of a child's prayer.

This mention of reverence as an agent in making children obey leads us to lay down a general rule that the love, trust, and reverence felt by children for their parents are the most powerful and legitimate causes of obedience; and for the very young, before they have yet learned to understand the full force of words, the mere countenance of the father or the mother often sufficiently warns them whether they are doing well or ill.

In the next place, among the means for securing obedience comes the judicious utilization of the natural desire of most children to be "useful." It is usual to say that children delight in destroying; but they delight more in doing what their elders do, and especially something that is "of use." In a multitude of little ways a nurse or mother can give a child this most pleasurable of childish pleasures, and at the same time instil the obedient habit: "Do you think you are strong enough to hold this for me?" "Can you manage to do that?" "Are you clever enough to find this?" "Are you old enough to do that!"

Thus, by a very legitimate guile, the young may be taught to put on the yoke in their earliest days.

Reward, direct reward, for obedience, must never be given. Indirectly, children will, of course, feel the pleasure of obedience in the sense of helpfulness, and in the approbation of their elders; and sometimes they may be allowed to see distinctly that, by obeying, they have gained some pleasure which disobedience would have forfeited. But under no circumstances must obedience be bought.

"I have heard," says

Nor must obedience be courted or besought. Preceptor, "some parents petition for obedience in tones or words which constituted a sensible provocation to a refractory child, stimulating rebellion: 'Now, I know, you will be a good child, and do this'; 'Really, my darling, I must have you do that'; 'Wont you be a good boy, and come here?' All this is as bad as it can be. The parents must be careful before committing themselves to a command; but, once committed, they must issue it as a command, in perfect faith that it will be obeyed, and there must be no retraction, hesitation, coaxing, or even arguing."

Of course, sooner or later, occasions must arise when the child's will comes into conflict with the will of his rulers, and has to give way. And it is to prepare for this crisis that the habit of unquestioning obedience must be early formed. It ought never to be necessary (unless the child has some unusually strong and mischievous propensities) to resort to force in order to secure obedience; yet force must be used rather than failure endured.

For minor faults, minor punishments may sometimes be needed. As far as possible, they should be made to spring naturally out of the fault, unpunctuality being punished by the loss of some pleasure for which the offender arrives too late, and so on. But this cannot always be managed. In most cases the child must take for granted (from his general trust in his parents) that rules are made for his good, and that it is just that the breaking of rules should be punished. For further details on this point, see below (§ 18).

In conclusion, parents and tutors must bear in mind that, if they cannot secure obedience without constantly punishing, either the circumstances in which they have to rule must be very unfavorable, or (much more probably) they themselves are on a wrong track, and some blame rests with them. Too often, inexperienced trainers of children wish to govern them by suppressing nature, instead of directing nature. The former task is as impossible as to suppress a stream; the latter is (comparatively speaking) as easy as to direct a stream. "How often," writes Preceptor, "do I hear of teachers giving boys impositions for 'talking in class'! That always seems to me extremely young. During my twenty years of experience in teaching, I don't think I ever gave a boy any kind of punishment for 'talking in class.' 'How on earth do you manage,' young teachers sometimes say to me.

By teaching in such a way that the boys don't want to 'talk in class,' and by letting them talk when not 'in class.'""

These words of Preceptor appear to me to apply to training of all kinds, as well as to class-teaching. A tutor who is always punishing should ask himself from time to time, "Is not the fault partly with me? Do I understand my pupil? Am I trying to dam up, instead of directing and utilizing his natural energies? One of us certainly is wrong, but am I certain that it is the taught, and not the teacher?"

It is natural for children to infer from their early habits of dependence and helplessness, that it is their part not to help but to be helped; and unless the natural corrective of younger brothers and sisters is introduced, a child may grow up obedient, orderly, and truthful, but without the kindly instinct of helping others. "I remember," writes Preceptor, "an amusing instance of the natural selfishness of children, when a boy of some three years old for the first time found his customary romp with his father interfered with by the claims of a little sister, aged one. In answer to the boy's expostulations when the father replied that he must play with baby sometimes,' there was a touch of pathos in the boy's very natural reply, 'You didn't use to, once.' It is to be feared that too often children without brothers and sisters grow up undisturbed in this natural selfishness till a period long after childhood."

All the more needful is it to find for solitary children such substitutes as can be procured for the salutary influences of companionship. Kindness to animals, besides being a habit to be taught for its own sake, is no small help towards teaching kindness to human beings. The habit of helping parents, touched on above (§ 13), is also of use. If the parents are in the habit of themselves being helpful to others— not always an easy habit to acquire in our unneighborly metropolisthe children will perhaps be more influenced by their example than by their precepts. It is also well for children to associate with worship the regular custom of making some small contribution for "the poor people" out of their pocket-money.

Books and lectures on the duty of kindness may be of some use if they are joined with practice of some kind; otherwise, they are worse than nothing.

15. TRUTHFULNESS.

An imaginative child, while very young, will sometimes invent fictions where he ought to state facts; and this, not through fear of punishment or hope of reward, but from the delight of indulging the imagination. But this habit, which ought to be carefully distinguished from self-interested falsehood, is soon checked by pointing out the mischief of it, and by showing how good and useful is such a custom of exact truthfulness in a child as will enable his parents and friends