"I rejoice in the decline of the old brutal and tyrannical system of teaching, which, however, did succeed in enforcing habits of application, but the new system, as it seems to me, is training up a race of men who will be incapable of doing anything which is disagreeable to them."--JOHN STUART MILL IN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY. THE OTHER SIDE. "This is a hard world," said a morbid girl of fourteen some forty years ago. "Yes," answered cheerfully the well-known apostle to whom she spoke, "and God meant it should be a hard world." When later he himself was caught up into heaven in a chariot of fire, the serene face showed how gladly he had accepted this "meaning" as his Father's will. It is not so with the greater number of the world's workers to-day. James Mill, to whom we are indebted for some of the very best intellectual work, thought life was not worth having, and was so devoid of spiritual perception that he could get no glimpse of a God in a "world full of sin and misery." This proves nothing as to the universe. It only shows how unhappily one great man has missed the music of the spheres, and failed to catch the "meaning" of God's work. For mother and child, for teacher and pupil, the first essential point is to accept this fact. Only so, can the sweet order of a divine life be brought out of the chaotic elements stirring in every soul. The mother, who holds the month-old infant at her breast, and gently imprisons the tiny fingers that would tear her laces, or disorder her hair, takes the first step towards the development of moral consciousness. Let her repeat again and again that gentle restraint, and by-and-by wide open eyes will ask her why, and when it is once understood that food can be had only while the little fingers are quiet, the first foundations of obedience are laid. So far most mothers go, for their own comfort's sake. If they had but the resolution to go still farther, for the sake of the child's life-long content! No child respects the teacher who does not _control_. All the modern methods--including lavish gifts and the gilding of all bitter pills--fail absolutely before the clearsightedness of youth. If we older people know how to rise to the occasion and thank those who demand the best of us, still more certainly is this to be expected of the young and the fresh-hearted; but if it were not, our duty remains the same. So much discipline as shall preserve order, develop respect, and make possible such opportunities as the young soul needs, is the first point. It is idle to ask how this is to be secured. No two children can be managed alike, and it is the variety of her tasks which consoles the mother for her daily fatigue, and inspires her for the encounter.