But while I earnestly inculcate gentleness in parental discipline, I would not confound it with weakness. I disapprove that familiarity between parents and children which is unfavorable to subordination. Fashion is likely to introduce an injurious equality into this relation. I see the progress of this dangerous effeminacy with regret. The dress and expenditures which would formerly have supplied ten children, scarcely satisfy at present the caprices of one. This foolish complaisance of parents prepares, for the future husbands and wives, a task most difficult to fulfil. Let us not, by anticipating and preventing the wishes of children, teach them to be indolent in searching for their own pleasures. Their age is fertile in this species of invention. That they may be successful in seizing enjoyment, little more is requisite to be performed on our part than to break their chains. There are two fruitful sources of torments for children. One is, what the present day denominates politeness. It is revolting to me to see children early trained to forego their delightful frankness and simplicity, and learning artificial manners. We wish them to become little personages; and we compel them to receive tiresome compliments, and to repeat insignificant formulas of common-place flattery. In this way, politeness, destined to impart amenity to life, becomes a source of vexation and restraint. It would seem as if we thought it so important a matter to teach the usages of society, that they could never be known unless the study were commenced in infancy. Besides, do we flatter ourselves, that we shall be able to teach children the modes and the vocabulary of politeness, without initiating them, at the same time, in the rudiments of falsehood? They are compelled to see that we consider it a trifle. If we wish them to become flatterers and dishonest, I ask what more efficient method we could take? Labor is the second source of their sufferings. I would by no means be understood to dissuade from the assiduous cultivation of habits of industry. You may enable children to remove mountains, if you will contrive to render their tasks a matter of amusement and interest. The extreme curiosity of children announces an instinctive desire for instruction. But instead of profiting by it, we adopt measures which tend to stifle it. We render their studies tiresome, and then say that the young naturally tire of study.