In the letters from my students this fact, with which I was already
familiar in a general sort of way, has been brought more particularly
to my attention. In all cases, the situation has been responsible for
much confusion and difficulty. In a good many, it has led to
family tragedies, varying in magnitude from the unhappiness of the
misunderstood child to that of the lonely woman, suffering in adult
life from the faults of her upbringing, and the failure of the family
ties whose need she felt the more as the duties of motherhood pressed
upon her. If it were possible for me to violate the confidence of my
pupils I could prove very conclusively that the old-fashioned system
of bringing up children on the three R's and a spanking did not work
so well as some persons seem to think. I could prove that the problem
has grown past the point where instinct and tradition may be held
as sufficient to solve it. Everyone, seeing these letters, would be
obliged to confess, "Yes, indeed, here is plain need of training for
parents." Yet, at the same time, these same persons would be tempted
to inquire, "But can any training meet such a difficult situation?"

Here is despair; and some cause for it. When one's own mother has not
understood one; when one has lived lonely in the midst of brothers and
sisters who are more strange than strangers; when one's childhood is
full of the memory of obscure but intense sufferings, one flies for
relief, perhaps, to any one who offers it hopefully enough; but
one does not really expect to get it. _Can_ training, especially by
correspondence, meet the need?

Not wholly, of course, let us be frank to admit. No amount of theory,
however excellent, can take the place of the drill given only in the
hard school of experience. But when the theory is not merely theory,