The way to spoil a child is to give it all it wants and require nothing in return. The way to make a child grow up sensible and unselfish is to give it little, and require of it much. For it is not what others do for us that benefits us, but what we do for ourselves and others.
259
Some one truly said, the best way for a man to train up a child in the way it should go, is to travel that way sometimes himself.
260
I Kings, i, 6—"His father had not displeased him at any time in saying, 'Why hast thou done so?'"
A young man, as he was going to the place of execution, desired to whisper something into his mother's ear; but when she came, instead of whispering, he bit off her ear, telling her, that it was because she did not chastise him for his faults when a boy, he was brought to such an unhappy end.
261
Could it be believed that a child should be forced to learn the rudiments of a language which he is never to use, and neglect the writing a good hand, and casting accounts?
—Locke.