“I think we err in not enough holding up certain virtues for our children’s admiration. Put a premium of praise on every finished thing, if it is only a house of cards. Steadiness in work is a step on the way towards steadfastness in love. Here, too, the praise of constancy might very well go with good-humoured family ‘chaff,’ not about the new loves, which are lawful, whether of kitten or playmate, but about the discarded old loves. Let Kitty and all of them grow up to glory in their constancy to every friend.
“There, I am sending you a notable preachment instead of the few delicate hints I meant to offer; but never mount a woman on her hobby—who knows when she will get off again?”
CHAPTER III
AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT
You wish me to tell you the story of my little girl? Well, to begin at the beginning. In looking back through the pages of my journal I find many scattered notices of Agnes, and I always write of her, I find, as “poor Agnes.” Now, I wonder why? The child is certainly neither unhealthy nor unhappy—at least, not with any reason; but again and again I find this sort of entry:—
“Agnes displeased with her porridge; says nothing, but looks black all day.”
“Harry upset his sister’s work-basket, by accident, I truly believe, but she can’t get over it; speaks to no one, and looks as if under a cloud.”
I need not go on; the fact is, the child is sensible of many injuries heaped upon her; I think there is no ground for the feeling, for she is really very sweet when she has not, as the children say, the black dog on her back.
It is quite plain to me, and to others also, I think, that we have let this sort of thing go on too long without dealing with it. We must take the matter in hand.
Please God, our little Agnes must not grow up in this sullen habit, for all our sakes, but chiefly for her own, poor child; I felt that in this matter I might be of more use than Edward, who simply does not understand a temper less sunny and open than his own. I pondered and pondered, and, at last, some light broke in upon me. I thought I should get hold of one principle at a time, work that out thoroughly, and then take up the next, and so on, until all the springs of sullenness were exhausted, and all supplies from without stopped. I was beginning to suspect that the laws of habit worked here as elsewhere, and that, if I could get our dear child to pass, say, six weeks without a “fallen countenance,” she might lose this distressing failing for life.