We have seen the most generous, the most warm-hearted and obliging of mortals, under this sort of training, made the most morose and disobliging of husbands. Sure to be found fault with, whatever they do, they have at last ceased doing. The disappointment of not pleasing they have abated by not trying to please.
We once knew a man who married a spoiled beauty, whose murmurs, exactions, and caprices were infinite. He had at last, as a refuge to his wearied nerves, settled down into a habit of utter disregard and neglect; he treated her wishes and her complaints with equal indifference, and went on with his life as nearly as possible as if she did not exist. He silently provided for her what he thought proper, without troubling himself to notice her requests or listen to her grievances. Sickness came, but the heart of her husband was cold and gone; there was no sympathy left to warm her. Death came, and he breathed freely as a man released. He married again,—a woman with no beauty, but much love and goodness,—a woman who asked little, blamed seldom, and then with all the tact and address which the utmost thoughtfulness could devise; and the passive, negligent husband became the attentive, devoted slave of her will. He was in her hands as clay in the hands of the potter; the least breath or suggestion of criticism from her lips, who criticised so little and so thoughtfully, weighed more with him than many out-spoken words. So different is the same human being, according to the touch of the hand which plays upon him!
I have spoken hitherto of fault-finding as between husband and wife: its consequences are even worse as respects children. The habit once suffered to grow up between the two that constitute the head of the family descends and runs through all the branches. Children are more hurt by indiscriminate, thoughtless fault-finding than by any other one thing. Often a child has all the sensitiveness and all the susceptibility of a grown person, added to the faults of childhood. Nothing about him is right as yet; he is immature and faulty at all points, and everybody feels at perfect liberty to criticise him to right and left, above, below, and around, till he takes refuge either in callous hardness or irritable moroseness.
A bright, noisy boy rushes in from school, eager to tell his mother something he has on his heart, and Number One cries out,—“O, you’ve left the door open! I do wish you wouldn’t always leave the door open! And do look at the mud on your shoes! How many times must I tell you to wipe your feet?”
“Now there you’ve thrown your cap on the sofa again. When will you learn to hang it up?”
“Don’t put your slate there; that isn’t the place for it.”
“How dirty your hands are! what have you been doing?”
“Don’t sit in that chair; you break the springs, jouncing.”
“Child, how your hair looks! Do go up stairs and comb it.”
“There, if you haven’t torn the braid all off your coat! Dear me, what a boy!”