FAULTS AND THEIR REMEDIES.


The child born of perfect parents, brought up perfectly, in a perfect
environment, would probably have no faults. Even such a child,
however, would be at times inconvenient, and would do and say things
at variance with the order of the adult world. Therefore he might
seem to a hasty, prejudiced observer to be naughty. And, indeed,
imperfectly born, imperfectly trained as children now are, many of
their so-called faults are no more than such inconvenient crossings of
an immature will with an adult will.

[Illustration: JEAN PAUL RICHTER]

[Sidenote: The Child's World and the Adult's World]

No grown person, for instance, likes to be interrupted, and is likely
to regard the child who interrupts him wilfully naughty. No young
child, on the contrary, objects to being interrupted in his speech,
though he may object to being interrupted in his play; and he
cannot understand why an adult should set so much store on the quiet
listening which is so infrequent in his own experience. Grown persons
object to noise; children delight in it. Grown persons like to have
things kept in their places; to a child, one place as good as another.
Grown persons have a prejudice in favor of cleanliness; children like
to swim, but hate to wash, and have no objections whatever to grimy
hands and faces. None of these things imply the least degree of
obliquity on the child's part; and yet it is safe to say that