"I know. There is nothing easier. And yet my sister will say,
sometimes, that she is perfectly at a loss what to do. But no
wonder. Like hundreds of others, she has let her children get
completely ahead of her. If they don't break her heart in the end, I
shall be glad."

The immediate cause of this conversation between Miss Martha Spencer
and a maiden lady who had been twenty-five for some ten or fifteen
years--Miss Spencer could not be accused of extensive
juvenility--was the refractory conduct of Mrs. Fleetwood's oldest
child, a boy between six and seven years of age, by which a pleasant
conversation had been interrupted, and the mother obliged to leave
the room for a short period.

"I think, with you," said Miss Jones, the visitor, "that Mrs.
Fleetwood errs very greatly in the management of her children."

"Management! She has no management at all," interrupted Miss
Spencer.

"In not managing her children, then, if you will."

"So I have told her, over and over again, but to no good purpose.
She never receives it kindly. Why, if I had a child, I would never
suffer it to cry after it was six months old. It is the easiest
thing in the world to prevent it. And yet, one of Sarah's children
does little else but fret and cry all the time. She insists upon it
that it can't feel well. And suppose this to be the case?--crying
does it no good, but, in reality, a great deal of harm. If it is
sick, it has made itself so by crying."