feeling well, and helping you with some of your tasks, she had gone
to visit a friend just that afternoon.

But reasoning with a child often fails to accomplish its purpose,
because the child's reasoning is so different from that of an adult.
Unless there is a nearly perfect understanding of the workings of
the child's mind, reasoning is frequently futile. A seven-year-old
boy who had received a long lecture on the impropriety of keeping
dead crabs in his pockets said, after it was all over: "Well, they
were alive when I put them in. You are wasting a lot of my precious
time." These little brains have a way of working out combinations
that seem weird to us grown-ups.

Only with a child of a certain type and a parent able to understand
the workings of his mind may the method of reasoning work
satisfactorily in correcting faults and establishing good habits and
ideals.

No discussion of this subject would be complete without a word on
corporal punishment. It is impossible here to present all the
arguments for or against it. I am sure, however, that the most
enthusiastic advocates of it will admit that it is not always
practised with discretion and that it is in most cases not only
unnecessary but positively harmful. Children that are treated like
animals will behave like animals; violence and brutality do not
bring out the best in a child's nature. It would seem that
intelligent parents do not need to resort to such methods in the
training of normal children.

As suggested by our veteran novelist, William Dean Howells, we have