"admirably"--so much so, she said, that she thought the punishment of
taking off his jacket and turning it inside out would be for the future
unnecessarily severe, and she proposed to substitute for it taking off his
cap, and putting it on wrong side before.

The reader will, of course, understand that the object of such an
illustration as this is not to recommend the particular measure here
described for adoption in other cases, but to illustrate the spirit and
temper of mind in which all measures adopted by the mother in the training
of her children should be carried into effect. Measures that involve no
threats, no scolding, no angry manifestations of displeasure, but are even
playful in their character, may be very efficient in action if they are
firmly and perseveringly maintained.

_Punishments that are the Natural Consequence of the Offense_.

There is great advantage in adapting the character of the punishment to
that of the fault--making it, as far as possible, the natural and proper
consequence of it. For instance, if the boys of a school do not come in
promptly at the close of the twenty minutes' recess, but waste five minutes
by their dilatoriness in obeying the summons of the bell, and the teacher
keeps them for _five minutes beyond the usual hour of dismissal_, to make
up for the lost time, the punishment may be felt by them to be deserved,
and it may have a good effect in diminishing the evil it is intended
to remedy; but it will probably excite a considerable degree of mental
irritation, if not of resentment, on the part of the children, which will
diminish the good effect, or is, at any rate, an evil which is to be
avoided if possible.

If now, on the other hand, he assigns precisely the same penalty in another