Mrs. — then, as I lay, spoke to me for a few minutes with great kindness and earnestness. She then rose, took the birch in her right hand, and stooping over me, pressed her left hand tightly on my shoulder so as to hold me as if I were in a vice; then raising the birch, I could hear it whizz in the air, and oh, how terrible it felt as it came down, and as its repeated strokes came swish, swish, swish, on me! yet I felt, spite of the terrible stinging pain, that I deserved it all—and it _was_ painful! I was a stout fair girl, and very sensitive to pain. I screamed, I protested, I implored, but it was of no avail; Mrs. — heeded not my cries, but held me down and birched on till she had finished a whipping which seemed to have lasted an age, but which quite changed my character. At last it _was_ over. I was permitted to rise, my hands were unbound, and, burning and smarting, I raised my tear-stained face to my true friend’s, on whose face no sign was visible of the slightest anger or passion. Calm and serene, she wished me good-night and left me conquered. Henceforward I was a different girl; and though a few weeks afterwards I relapsed, yet another night spent in Mrs. —’s dressing-room and another similar application by her of that wonder-working birch—I did exactly as she told me this time—sufficed finally to cure me. I became cheerful, obedient, unselfish. My parents and friends the next holidays could hardly believe that I was the same girl. I stayed three years at Brighton, leaving when I was nineteen with much regret. I am now twenty-four, and hope to be married at Easter to _the best man in the world_ who never _could_ have loved me had not sensible wholesome discipline changed my evil nature, as _the_ means under God of doing so. I am thankful to publish my experience, and so to express not only my gratitude, but confirm what others have so well said and told on this subject.’ _Emma_ writes: ‘A while ago I undertook to bring up two nieces of the ages of twelve and fourteen. I soon found them to be most stubborn tempers and impudent. Thus they have often caused me much trouble and annoyance. Though not an advocate of corporal punishment, I was much struck with the description by _A Schoolmistress_ of a most ceremonious method of inflicting punishment that I determined to follow exactly the same method and try it the same morning.