But if the child is unhappy who has none of his rights respected, equally wretched is the little despot who has more than his own rights, who has never been taught to respect the rights of others, and whose only conception of the universe is that of an absolute monarchy in which he is sole ruler.

"Children rarely love those who spoil them, and never trust them. Their keen young sense detects the false note in the character and draws its own conclusions, which are generally very just."

The very best theoretical statement of a wise disciplinary method that I know is Herbert Spencer's. 'Let the history of your domestic rule typify, in little, the history of our political rule; at the outset, autocratic control, where control is really needful; by and by an incipient constitutionalism, in which the liberty of the subject gains some express recognition; successive extensions of this liberty of the subject; gradually ending in parental abdication."

We must not expect children to be too good; not any better than we ourselves, for example; no, nor even as good. Beware of hothouse virtue. "Already most people recognize the detrimental results of intellectual precocity; but there remains to be recognized the truth that there is a moral precocity which is also detrimental. Our higher moral faculties, like our higher intellectual ones, are comparatively complex. By consequence, they are both comparatively late in their evolution. And with the one as with the other, a very early activity produced by stimulation will be at the expense of the future character."

In these matters the child has a right to expect examples. He lives in the senses; he can only learn through object lessons, can only pass from the concrete example of goodness to a vision of abstract perfection.

"O'er wayward childhood wouldst thou hold firm rule.

And sun thee in the light of happy faces? Love. Hope, and Patience, these must be thy graces,

And in thine own heart let them first keep school." Yes, "in thine own heart let them first keep school!" I cannot see why Max O'Rell should have exclaimed with such unction that if he were to be born over again he would choose to be an American woman. He has never tried being one. He does not realize that she not only has in hand the emancipation of the American woman, but the reformation of the American man and the education of the American child. If that triangular mission in life does not keep her out of mischief and make

her the angel of the twentieth century, she is a hopeless case.

Spencer says, "It is a truth yet remaining to be recognized that the last stage in the mental development of each man and woman is to be reached only through the proper discharge of the parental duties. And when this truth is recognized, it will be seen how admirable is the ordination in virtue of which human beings are led by their strongest affections to subject themselves to a discipline which they would else elude."

Women have been fighting many battles for the higher education these last few years; and they, have nearly gained the day. When at last complete victory shall perch upon their banners, let them make one more struggle, and that for the highest education, which shall include a specific training for parenthood, a subject thus far quite omitted from the curriculum.

The mistaken idea that instinct is a sufficient guide in so delicate and sacred and vital a matter, the comfortable superstition that babies bring their own directions with them,these fictions have existed long enough. If a girl asks me why, since the function of parenthood is so uncertain, she should make the sacrifices necessary to such training, sacrifices, entailed by this highest educa ion of body mind, and spirit, I can only say that it is better to be ready, even if one is not called for, than to be called for and found wanting.

THE POSSIBILITIES OPEN TO THE CHILD AND THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE

PARENTS.

BY ANNA STEDMAN.

Read before a meeting of Daughters of Zion, Lamoni. Io. We shall not claim for this paper originality: we shall claim for it an appreciation of the truths uttered by others who have given to the subject under consideration more thought and extended investigation than we have as yet been able to give.

In the contemplation of the subject before us to-day, thought reverts first to the object of our being, to the reason for our being subjected to the experiences of the life we spend in the present state.

In the words of Mother Eve, "Men are that they might have joy." Man had joy in Eden until he became disobedient; since then the one grand lesson of life, repeated over and over, in all the varied experiences of the life of each individual is what some one has called "voluntary obedience, the last lesson in life,

the choral song which rises from all elements and all angels."

It is the first lesson and the last, obedience. Holy men of God have taught it and the Son himself came down and exemplified it when he "humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death on the cross." Through him was the gospel preached and from the first step, faith, upward through every ordinance and every principle that leads man, the erring child, back to the bliss of his Father's presence, the true finger of Jesus points the learner up to the will of the Father.

Now why is this lesson so repeatedly impressed, why is it sometimes forced upon us, through pain and distress of body and mind, to see that violated law, which is disobedience to law, brings us suffering, that in keeping the law there is great reward? "The object of true discipline is the formation of character, and it should produce a human being master of his impulses, his passions, and his will."

This is the bright possibility, open to the race, the one to which all the forces of good lend their aid, and this is the possibility, the highest our minds conceive, the perfect freedom of man from spot or stain of sin.

How long the patience of God must labor to this end we know not; what course his love and wisdom may plan to complete the work begun in this life we know not; but that this is the line along which we must advance we feel sure, that the lesson for us to learn and to teach is obedience to law we are certain.

We have taken a general and extended view of the possible upward course of a soul. It is possible instead of this to take the downward course from the innocence of childhood through a debased condition of manhood or womanhood to the reformatory discipline of the prison-house.

We are in God's hands; we are his refractory children; and though it take us all of life to learn it, we shall eventually learn one lesson, that with all his love, yes, because of his love, and with all his mercy and patience, he is firm and his laws are fixed, and "whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap."

In how many ways we are appealed to that we may be inclined to keep the commands of God Man's love of himself is here appealed to in the warning that if he sin he shall surely suffer and that if he do well he shall have joy, but as love is stronger than fear, as it is more beautiful than selfishness, as it is the love of God for the world of men, made manifest in the giving of his Son, that shall leaven all the lump, that shall transform and redeem the

race, so the wise Maker, who knows the heart of man better than man himself knows it, appeals to this higher quality of human nature and in that stern decree, "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children," we see a lever that shall be for the uplifting and elevation of the race.

Man, though fallen, bears yet his Maker's image, and few are they whose hearts cannot be reached by the things that are tender and helpless and weak. Our subject to-day takes up the responsibility of parents, but ah! we feel the word is but a cold, dead one that poorly represents the living fountain of pure waters that springs up in the hearts of those to whom God gives little children, whose delicate little bodies they are to nourish and clothe, whose minds they are to educate, and to whom they are to teach the fear of the Lord, the beginning of wisdom.

Mere responsibility would make this but a heavy burden, but that spark of divine love makes the nature buoyant, and where duty would drag her lagging steps, love runs with eagerness, where duty with the sigh of weary relief would bring in her handful of leaves, love comes rejoicing bearing her harvest sheaves, where cold duty would force herself to do and to bear, love's own warm heart seeks out her tasks and makes the labor light.

In speaking of the development that comes to man and woman in the discharge of parental duties, Spencer says, "How admirable is the ordination in virtue of which human beings are led by their strongest affections to subject themselves to a discipline which they would else elude."

This is the thought we have endeavored to make plain, that where man's love of himself might fail to lift him up, his love for the little creatures dependent in many ways upon him causes him to subject himself tot voluntary discipline, and we may say of this parental love as Shakespeare of the quality of mercy, "It is twice blessed; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes." No man or woman can seek, in the generosity of love, to do good to the little ones, to minister to their needs, to guide them in their years of inexperience, and not involuntarily keep closer guard over himself, and thereby gain in self-control, in becoming that strong, free, upright creature, his own master.

For this reason we have said that in the decree, "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children," we see a lever that shall elevate the race. Men and women seek to do Plato said, many centuries ago: "The best way of training the young is to train yourself at the same time; not to admonish them, but to be always carrying out your own principles in practice," and a later writer says, "It seems crystal-clear at the outset that you cannot govern a child if you have never learned to govern yourself."

Dr. Harris says, "The lowest classes of society are the lowest, not because there is any organized conspiracy to keep them down, but because they are lacking in directive power," and Mrs. Kate Wiggin says, "The jails, the prisons, the reformatories, are filled with men who are there because they were weak, more than because they were evil. If the right discipline in home and school had been given them, they would never have become the charge of the nation." Here is suggested the responsibility that rests upon parents and teachers, but in view of the fact that there are many who essay to teach and train children who are themselves untaught and untrained, Dr. Channing wisely says, "The hope of the world lies in the fact that parents cannot make of their children what they will."

We do not understand from this that he underestimated the opportunities, power, or duties that peculiarly belong to parents, but we believe that he detected an obstacle to the perfect development of many children in the fact that they suffer from neglect or unwise methods of training, and he deemed it well that those unwise methods sometimes failed. There is a sad truth in the words of one of the characters of Charles Dickens, who, looking back over the wreck of a life and tracing her misfortunes unerringly to their source, a wretched home-life, said to her mother, "Your childhood was much like mine, I suppose; so much worse for both of us."

There is a limit to the responsibility of parents. They are not responsible for the loss that comes to them and through them to their children because they failed to receive

they are not entirely responsible for all that their children become, for those children have their agency, their will, which rightfully asserts its prerogatives and which God recognizes and teaches us to recognize. Parents are responsible for the manner in which they dispose of opportunities to remedy the defects in themselves; they are responsible for the manner in which they make use of opportunities to acquaint themselves with the needs of childhood; they are responsible for the use they make of the knowledge they have, for the efforts they may make or fail to make to bring their children under proper influences.

Pestalozzi says that he considers attention to early physical and intellectual education as "merely leading to a higher aim, to qualify the human being for the free and full use of all the faculties implanted by the Creator, and to direct all these faculties toward the perfection of the whole being of man, that he may be enabled to act in his peculiar station as an instrument of that All-wise and Almighty power that has called him into life."

"Every human being," said he, "has a claim to a judicious development of his faculties by those to whom the care of his infancy is confided," and he adds that what is demanded of mothers, whom he regards as the principal agents in the work of development, is a thinking love.

"It is recorded," said he again, "that God opened the heavens to the patriarch of old, and showed him a ladder leading thither. This ladder is let down to every descendant of Adam; it is offered to thy child. But he must be taught to climb it. And let him not attempt it by the cold calculations of the head, or the mere impulse of the heart; but let all these powers combine, and the noble enterprise will be crowned with success. These powers are already bestowed on him, but to thee it is given to assist in calling them forth." Parents, then, are responsible for the effort made to supply this demand not only upon their love but upon their intelligence.

THE STORM.

A saffron cloud scuds swift a-down the west.

From distant meads where drowsy mists hang low

A dewy breeze springs up whose faint breaths blow

As fitful prophecies of strange unrest:
High through the purple gloom, with flaming crest,
A heron wings his sky ward flight. and slow,

From out the stilly wood long shadows go Like armed warriors plumed and dapple dressed. In huddling groups the bleating sheep race by To gain the welcome refuge of their pen; Wind-ripples o'er a golden sea of grain Sport with the dusky spirits of the sky: A hush, the purr of falling leaves, and then We hear the rushing tumult of the rain. -JEAN LA RUE BURNETT,