I like to know that somebody else besides me
has a hard time with their children. I declare the only way I can get
baby to mind already is to jab him with a hat-pin!"
I waited to hear no more. With sad precipitation I gathered up my
check and fled. Had I waited another minute I should have said to that
mother: "Madam, I will give you a problem to solve. If, at the age of
three, a child needs the impetus of one hat-pin to make him obey, how
many meat-axes will it require to keep him in order at the age of ten?
And if you are such a poor miserable failure as a mother and a woman
now, just at the commencement of an immortal destiny, what have the
eternities in store for you?"
Why, oh, why are children sent to people who have no more idea about
bringing them up than a trout has about training hop-vines? It is a
question that has given and does give me much uneasiness.
XXV.
POLITENESS VS. SINCERITY.
You imagine it is not polite to be plain spoken! My dear, there are
times when to be merely "polite" is to be a toady! There are times
when politeness is a pillow of hen feathers, wherewith to smother honor
and strangle truth. If all you care for is to be popular, to go
through life like a molasses-drop in a child's mouth, why, then, choose
your way and live up to it, but don't expect to rank higher than
molasses, and cheap molasses at that.
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