“Why, in the first place,” said Wallace, “by a proper consideration of the case, so as to understand exactly how it is. Sometimes a boy situated as you are, without looking at all the facts in the case, thinks only of his being disabled and helpless, and so he expects every body to wait upon him, and try to amuse him, as if that were his right. He gives his mother a great deal of trouble, by first wanting this and then that, and by uttering a great many expressions of discontent, impatience and ill-humor. Thus his accident is not only the means of producing inconvenience to himself, but it makes the whole family uncomfortable. This is boyishness of a very bad kind.
“To avoid this, you must consider what the true state of the case is. Whose fault is it that you are laid up here in this way?”
“Why it is mine, I suppose,” said Phonny. “Though if Stuyvesant had not advised me to bring the hatchet in, I suppose that I should not have cut myself.”
“It was not by bringing the hatchet in, that you cut yourself,” said Wallace, “but by stopping to cut with it on the way, contrary to your mother’s wishes.”
“Yes,” said Phonny, “I suppose that was it.”
“So that it was your fault. Now when any person commits a fault,” continued Wallace, “he ought to confine the evil consequences of it to himself, as much as he can. Have the evil consequences of your fault, extended yet to any other people, do you think?”
“Why, yes,” said Phonny, “my mother has had some trouble.”
“Has she yet had any trouble that you might have spared her?” asked Wallace.
“Why—I don’t know,” said Phonny, “unless I could have bandaged my foot up myself.”