'Most carefully should we avoid the error which some parents, not (otherwise) deficient in good sense commit, of imposing gratuitous restrictions and privations, and purposely inflicting needless disappointments, for the purpose of inuring children to the pains and troubles they will meet with in after life. Yes; be assured they _will_ meet with quite _enough_ in every portion of life, including childhood, without your strewing their paths with thorns of your own providing. And often enough you will have to limit their amusements for the sake of needful study, to restrain their appetites for the sake of health, to chastise them for faults, and in various ways to inflict pain or privations for the sake of avoiding some greater evils. Let this always be explained to them whenever it is possible to do so; and endeavor in all cases to make them look on the parent as never the _voluntary_ giver of anything but good. To any hardships which they are convinced you inflict reluctantly, and to those which occur through the dispensation of the All-wise, they will more easily be trained to submit with a good grace, than to any gratuitous sufferings devised for them by fallible man. To raise hopes on purpose to produce disappointment, to give provocation merely to exercise the temper, and, in short, to inflict pain of any kind, merely as a training for patience and fortitude--this is a kind of discipline which man should not presume to attempt. If such trials prove a discipline not so much of cheerful fortitude as of resentful aversion and suspicious distrust of the parent as a capricious tyrant, you will have only yourself to thank for the result.' It is a matter of common observation that those who complain of their fortune and lot in life have often to complain only of their own conduct. The same is true of those who complain of their children. They have themselves only to blame in each case. Parents who do not appreciate the responsibilities of their position usually err on the side of over-indulgence to their children; on the contrary, those fully alive to the importance of home discipline often err on the side of over-regulation. To the latter, we commend the reply of an old lady to the anxious inquiry made by the mother of a too rigorously disciplined child as to what course should be pursued, 'I recommend, my dear, a little wholesome neglect.'