“Why, when the teacher came there again,” said Mary Jay, “she found him disobeying her. She said, ‘Why, Thomas, I told you not to hold the pencil so.’
“‘Yes,’ said Thomas, ‘I tried the other way, but I found that I couldn’t make my figures so well.’”
Here Mary Jay paused a moment; but Lucy did not say any thing, and so she proceeded.
“Thomas thought,” said she, “that he was not bound to obey his teacher, unless he thought that her directions were right. But the truth is, that children ought to obey their parents and teachers always; no matter whether they think the commands are right and reasonable, or not. It is very easy to obey, when you see that the command is right and reasonable; but when you do not understand why the command is given, or when it seems unreasonable or wrong, then comes the trial.”
“I shouldn’t think,” said Lucy, “that the teacher would want him to make the figures the hardest way.”
“Mary Jay said that she had seen boys climb up nearly to the top.”—Page 101.
“No,” said Mary Jay; “the truth was this: Thomas’s way was the hardest, and the teacher’s the easiest; only Thomas had become so accustomed to his method, that he couldn’t at once do quite so well in the other. There are a great many things, which children have to do, that can be done most easily in one particular way, when they are once accustomed to that way. But before they are accustomed to it, it may perhaps be harder than some other way, which they are familiar with. Children are often told to hold their pens, or their knife and fork, or spoon, at table, in a way which seems to them inconvenient and troublesome; and so they think the command is unreasonable and wrong. They think their parent or teacher is mistaken, and so they don’t obey. But if they would obey, they would soon become accustomed to the proper way, and then they would find it altogether better than their old habit. That’s the philosophy of it, Lucy; that’s the philosophy of it.”
At this time, they had reached the rocky precipice, and the path passed around near the foot of it. Lucy looked up at the rocks, and was a little afraid that they would fall down upon her head. Mary Jay said, that she had seen boys climb up nearly to the top. From this place, the path passed along among some trees, and Lucy and Mary Jay went on; and, as they walked, Mary Jay resumed the conversation.