“Everywhere, everywhere, on each side, before us, under us, over us, the roads branch off, and we with our poor, weak eyesight can’t choose right time and agin, we can’t and don’t. Even with the experience of maturity, with all the wisdom gathered from the words of them who have gone the way before, with all the experience of the travelers through the past to guide us, with the lamp of Caution in our hand, the shoes of Watchfulness to creep along on, and the great book of God’s will open before us, His strength to lean on—if with all these helps we stumble and blunder, how can we condemn the children so harshly, with no guide but the waverin’ will, the undeveloped conscience and understandin’, if they make mistakes?
“And you whipped Jack,” sez I impressively, “for making just a little mistake; you whipped him till his poor back is black and blue, Tamer.”
“I didn’t mean to whip so hard, Cousin Samantha, but my temper got up so after I got to whippin’ him because he wouldn’t own that he had been wicked and say he wuz sorry for it, that I whipped him harder than I meant to.”
Sez I, “Then you wuz whippin’ him for not tellin’ a lie, and you made him tell one, for, at last, to stop the cruel sting of the blows on his poor little back, you did finally succeed in makin’ him say he had been wicked, when he hadn’t been, and sorry, when he wuzn’t sorry, poor little creeter!”
“You always take Jack’s part, Samantha.”
“Not before Jack, Tamer Smith.”
“No, you don’t say anything before him, but you kinder act in such a way that he knows you are on his side, that you are his friend.”
“Well, I should think he needed one, poor little creeter!”
“Don’t you spoze, Samantha Allen, a mother knows what is best and right for her children? Don’t you spoze she acts for his best good?”