One very common cause of discomfort and pain caused by young people to
their parents and teachers is want of thoughtfulness and consideration.
For one-half the faults for which young people need to be reproved the
reply is, "I didn't think." Now, while we cannot expect young folks to
exercise the thoughtfulness and judgment of maturer people, we certainly
have a right to expect that they will endeavor to acquire a habit of
thoughtfulness in regard to the convenience and interests of others. It
is this want of thoughtfulness that often betrays young people into
doing very improper and injurious things. Parents and teachers are
constantly troubled by finding that their children and pupils do things
which they never thought of forbidding them to do. That which all good
and faithful teachers strive to do is to develop in their pupils such a
sense of propriety and thoughtfulness and such a high moral sense as
will make them _a law for right unto themselves_. They want to cultivate
and to see them cultivating in themselves a strong practical
common-sense and a wise sense of propriety. Without such common-sense
and innate sense of propriety, the longest set of rules would be
useless. For instance, if your teachers were to set about making a set
of rules do you suppose any one of them would have thought of making
such rules as: "Young ladies are not permitted to go to the roof of the
house and sit with their feet dangling over the railings of the
balcony;" or "Young ladies must not go into people's pastures and catch
their ponies to go riding;" or "When young ladies are out riding in a
buggy it is not allowable for one of the young ladies to ride on the
horse which the others are driving."

A hundred rules might be gotten up forbidding the doing of a hundred
things, the only evil of which is that they are outlandish and
unbecoming; not modest, or ill-mannered, and behind which there is no
evil intent--only thoughtlessness. The same endowment of common sense