"Mr. Reynolds," replied Mr. Stanley, "a friend of mine in this neighborhood, is in this very predicament. To the mother's weakness the father's temperate discipline seems cruelty. She is perpetually blaming him before the children for setting them to their books. Her attentions are divided between their health, which is perfect, and their pleasure, which is obstructed by her foolish zeal to promote it, far more than by his prudent restrictions. Whatever the father helps them to at table, the mother takes from them, lest it should make them sick. What he forbids is always the very thing which is good for them. She is much more afraid, however, of overloading their memories than their stomachs. Reading, she says, will spoil the girls' eyes, stooping to write will ruin their chests, and working will make them round-shouldered. If the boys run, they will have fevers; if they jump, they will sprain their ankles; if they play at cricket, a blow may kill them; if they swim, they may be drowned; the shallowness of the stream is no argument of safety. "Poor Reynolds' life is one continued struggle between his sense of duty to his children, and his complaisance to his wife. If he carries his point, it is at the expense of his peace; if he relaxes, as he commonly does, his children are the victims. He is at length brought to submit his excellent judgment to her feeble mind, lest his opposition should hurt her health; and he has the mortification of seeing his children trained as if they had nothing but bodies. "To the wretched education of Mrs. Reynolds herself, all this mischief may be attributed; for she is not a bad, though an ignorant woman; and having been harshly treated by her own parents, she fell into the vulgar error of vulgar minds, that of supposing the opposite of wrong must necessarily be right. As she found that being perpetually contradicted had made herself miserable, she concluded that never being contradicted at all would make her children happy. The event has answered as might have been foreseen. Never was a more discontented, disagreeing, troublesome family. The gratification of one want instantly creates a new one. And it is only when they are quite worn out with having done nothing, that they take refuge in their books, as less wearisome than idleness." Sir John, turning to Lady Belfield, said in a very tender tone, "My dear Caroline, this story, in its principal feature, does not apply to us. We concur completely, it is true, but I fear we concur by being both wrong: we both err by excessive indulgence. As to the case in point, while children are young, they may perhaps lean to the parent that spoils them, but I have never yet seen an instance of young persons, where the parents differed, who did not afterward discover a much stronger affection for the one who had reasonably restrained them, than for the other, whose blind indulgence had at once diminished her importance and their own reverence."