“Not unless you desire, madam, that I should resign at once, and forever, the charge of your son,” said Mr. Malcolm, laying his hand upon the lock to prevent her carrying her purpose into execution. “I have spent this whole morning,” he continued, “in expostulation and persuasion, and in endeavoring, as I always do, to make the lessons plain and interesting to my pupil; but Lewie is in one of his perverse humors, and nothing but decision as unyielding as his own obstinacy, will conquer him. If you will return to your own room and allow me the sole management of him, I will remain here to-day till I have subdued him, if the thing is possible.” “You will not use _severity_, Mr. Malcolm,” said the weeping mother. “Never in the way of corporeal punishment, madam. When I cannot govern a pupil without having recourse to such means, I will abandon him. But I must stipulate that untill Lewie submits, and learns that lesson, which he could easily learn in a few minutes, if he chose, he goes without food, and remains in the library with me. I am deeply interested in your son, Mrs. Elwyn; he is a boy of fine talents, and of too many good qualities of heart, to be allowed to go to destruction. I would save him if I can, but he must be left to me. I have the hope of yet seeing him a noble and useful character, but I must do it in my own way.” Mrs. Elwyn silently acquiesced, and withdrew to her own room very wretched. If she had been willing to inflict upon herself one tithe of the pain she suffered now, in controlling her son in his infancy, how different he might have been, as he grew up towards manhood. Mr. Malcolm returned to the library, and told Lewie that his mother had decided to leave them settle this matter between themselves. He should remain there, he said; he could employ himself very agreeably with the books. Lewie might lie on the floor and scream, or get up and study; but until that lesson was learned, he would not leave the library, or taste a morsel of food. The shrieks were now renewed in a louder and more agonized tone than ever, and were plainly heard in Mrs. Elwyn’s sitting-room, where, in a state bordering on distraction, she was hurriedly pacing the floor, at times almost determined to insist upon being admitted to the library, that she might take her unhappy son to her arms, and dismiss his inexorable tutor; and then deterred from this course by the promise she had made, and the deep respect which she could not but feel for the young minister. She could not but confess, too, in her inmost heart, that this discipline was really for the good of her passionate boy, though the means resorted to seemed to her severe. Of the two, she was more wretched than Lewie, who really had no small sense of enjoyment, in the consciousness of the pain and annoyance he was causing to others.