neighborhood, are obliged by the nature of things to contain nascent
individualities of almost every type. For no neighborhood, however
equal in wealth and fashion, ever produced children of an unvarying
quality. In any circle, no matter how exclusive, there are mischievous
children, children who use bad language, children who have sly, mean
tricks, children who do not speak the truth, and who are in other ways
quite as undesirable as the children of the poor and ignorant. It is
often asserted, indeed, that the children of exclusive neighborhoods
very often show more varieties of badness than the children of the
open street. The records of the private Kindergarten as compared with
the public Kindergarten amply prove this statement.

[Sidenote: Evil Example]

Since, then, whether you confine your child to the limits of your
own circle or not, you cannot successfully keep him from playing with
children who are more or less objectionable, what are you going to do
to keep him from the harm of such association? You have to make him
strong enough to withstand temptation and resist the force of evil
example. Of course, he must have as little of the wrong example,
especially in his younger and tenderer years, as can be managed
without too greatly checking his activity and curtailing his freedom.
Yet after all he is to be taught a positive and not a negative
righteousness, and if his home training is not sufficient to enable
him to stand against a certain downward pull from the outside, there
is something the matter with it.

While he must not be strained too hard, nor too constantly associate
with children whose manners put his manners to the test, still he
ought by degrees, almost imperceptibly, to be accustomed to holding