right in my light? Move along." "I want you to leave off playing, and go
right down to the store for me." "Don't crowd so. Can't you see that there
is not room enough for two people here?" and so on. As I write, I feel an
instinctive consciousness that these sentences will come like home-thrusts
to some surprised people. I hope so. That is what I want. I am sure that
in more than half the cases where family life is marred in peace, and
almost stripped of beauty, by just these little rudenesses, the parents
are utterly unconscious of them. The truth is, it has become like an
established custom, this different and less courteous way of speaking to
children on small occasions and minor matters. People who are generally
civil and of fair kindliness do it habitually, not only to their own
children, but to all children. We see it in the cars, in the stages, in
stores, in Sunday schools, everywhere.

On the other hand, let a child ask for any thing without saying "please,"
receive any thing without saying "thank you," sit still in the most
comfortable seat without offering to give it up, or press its own
preference for a particular book, chair, or apple, to the inconveniencing
of an elder, and what an outcry we have: "Such rudeness!" "Such an
ill-mannered child!" "His parents must have neglected him strangely." Not
at all: they have been steadily telling him a great many times every day
not to do these precise things which you dislike. But they themselves have
been all the while doing those very things to him; and there is no proverb
which strikes a truer balance between two things than the old one which
weighs example over against precept.

However, that it is bad policy to be rude to children is the least of the
things to be said against it. Over this they will triumph, sooner or
later. The average healthy child has a native bias towards gracious good
behavior and kindly affections. He will win and be won in the long run,