I believe that all boys of good breeding and average physical stamina, are conscious at times that paternal punishment is frequently dictated by love and sincere interest in the welfare of the victim. It is this sort of punishment that is followed by a healthy moral and physical reaction. But with punishment undeserved, and out of all proportion to the offense which it is intended to reprove, it is quite different. Once let a boy experience such punishment, and there arises in him a sense of rebellion against parental authority, and his respect and affection for the parent becomes tinctured with bitterness that even Time cannot efface. Once let the iron of vindictive resentment against oppression and injustice enter his soul, and your loving and lovable boy becomes transformed--he ages perceptibly, and his fair young life, his innocent childhood is gone--to return no more. “When I am a man!” he cries, and that part of the river of life which flows between childhood and manhood,--his youth,--is spanned by a bridge of sighs over which he who crosses can not return. “WHEN I AM A MAN!” Alas! the bitter words are hardly spoken ere the boy is a man--and such a man! A man without memory of happy and tranquil youth--is he not a flower that has bloomed to a semblance of maturity, yet has never been pervaded by that subtle fragrance which only the warm, tender affection of budding youth imparts? In my case the effect was very peculiar; I was made to feel not only the injustice of my punishment, but a profound sense of humiliation. My pride was wounded more than my physical body--and, God knows, that was wounded severely enough. Ah, thou hadst a heavy hand, oh father mine! Would that I had experienced more of resentment and less of mortification. The former would have been bad enough, but the latter made life a hell on earth for me. I was fragile, nervous, sensitive, and of a physique that ill bore abuse. Sensitive though my physical body was, I had a mental make-up that was even more so. How I brooded over that terrible whipping--the last my father ever gave me, for he died soon after. The world seemed so dark and gloomy to me. There was no rift in those sombre clouds that gave forth the bitter rain which tinctured my young life with gall and wormwood. There was no happiness anywhere.