dead, without also remembering that even the gentle Christ said of him who
should offend one of these little ones, "It were better for him that a
mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depths
of the sea!"




The Inhumanities of Parents--Rudeness.


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"_Inhumanity_--Cruelty. _Cruelty_--The disposition to give unnecessary
pain."--_Webster's Dict_.
#/

I had intended to put third on the list of inhumanities of parents
"needless requisitions;" but my last summer's observations changed my
estimate, and convinced me that children suffer more pain from the
rudeness with which they are treated than from being forced to do needless
things which they dislike. Indeed, a positively and graciously courteous
manner toward children is a thing so rarely seen in average daily life,
the rudenesses which they receive are so innumerable, that it is hard to
tell where to begin in setting forth the evil. Children themselves often
bring their sharp and unexpected logic to bear on some incident
illustrating the difference in this matter of behavior between what is
required from them and what is shown to them: as did a little boy I knew,
whose father said crossly to him one morning, as he came into the
breakfast-room, "Will you ever learn to shut that door after you?" and a
few seconds later, as the child was rather sulkily sitting down in his