REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS.

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sparingly. By frequent punishment, especially if it be corporeal, the child loses its sense of shame and self-respect, and becomes really degraded in his own estimation, so that nothing remains to be dreaded but the pain, to which he soon becomes accustomed. But, to administer family government efficiently, without frequent resort to punishment, requires great skill and self-possession. The most important point, in effecting this, is, to preserve and cultivate the delicate sensibility to which I have alluded, and to make the most of the approbation and displeasure of the parent. By the child in whom this sensibility is acute, and to whom punishment and severe language have been dealt out with a sparing hand, a frown from the parent will be more deeply felt than a blow by one whose sensibilities have been blunted by scolding and flagellation. Another means of avoiding frequent punishment is, to forestall and prevent, as far as practicable, the offences for which punishment is usually inflicted. This may be done in a thousand instances, by the judicious parent, who maintains strict discipline and untiring vigilance; while the one who dwells in the midst of confusion and uproar, will never find time to attend to any delinquency till it has gone to such an extreme as to demand strong measures to correct it. A little leak in a vessel may be very easily stopped, if taken in time; but, if suffered to go on and increase its capacity, it will sink the ship.

The following remarks of Mr. Anderson, in his work on the "Genius and design of the Domestic Constitution," will more fully explain and illustrate the point which I have been endeavoring to establish :-" If I so manage, that the severest punishment which can be felt in my family is the loss of my favor, and the richest reward which can be felt is the enjoyment and expression of it, I shall not greatly err. There are two instruments to be employed, in all cases, for maintaining authority: the one of constant, the other only of occasional application; and the occasional use of the one depends materially on the constancy of the other. If the first is studied as it should be, and then applied with consistent constancy, a tenderness and dexterity in applying the second will be the consequence, which, without observing this order, no rules whatever can supply. The first instrument is the reins, the second is, the rod or reward. I recollect hearing of two coaches, which used to drive into Newmarket from London,

32

PARENTAL INFLUENCE- -HUSBANDS AND WIVES.

by a certain hour, at a time of strong competition. The coach which generally came in first had, I think, four greys, and upon their arrival, the people used to remark, that there was scarcely a wet hair on one of them. In the other, though last, the horses were jaded and even heated to excess, and had the appearance of having made great efforts. The first man did it all by the reins: the second, unsteady in himself, or unskilful in the reins, had induced bad habits, and then employed the whip, but he could never cope with the other. So it will hold in all guidance, in all government. If obedience to the reins is found to be most pleasant in itself, and even the road to enjoyment, then obedience will grow into a habit, and become in fact the choice of the party.

West Needham, Mass., Jan. 1843.

PARENTAL INFLUENCE.-Where parental influence does not convert, it at least hampers; it hangs on the wheels of evil. I had a pious mother who dropped things in my way. I could not rid myself of them; I was a professed infidel in company, rather than when alone; I was wretched when by myself. These principles, and maxims, and data, spoiled my jollity. I find in myself another evidence of the greatness of parental influence. I detect myself, to this day, in laying down maxims in my family, which I took up at three or four years of age, before I could possibly know the reason of them.

Parental influence must be great, because God has said it shall be so. The parent is not to stand, reasoning and calculating. God has said, that his character shall have influence; and so this appointment of Providence becomes often the punishment of a wicked man. Such a man is a complete selfist. I am weary of hearing such men talk about their "family"—and their “family”—they "must provide for their family." Their family has no place in their real regard; they push for themselves. But God says, "No! you think your children shall be so and so; but they shall be rods for your own backs. They shall be your curse. They shall rise up against you." The most common of all human complaints is-parents groaning under the vices of their children! This is all the effect of parental influence.-Cecil.

HUSBANDS AND WIVES, you have no right to expect perfection in each other. To err, is the lot of humanity. Illness will sometimes make you petulant, and disappointment ruffle the smoothest temper. Guard, I beseech you, with unremitting vigilance, your passions; controlled, they are the genial heat which warms us along the way of life; ungoverned, they are consuming fires. Let your strife be one of respectful attentions and conciliating conduct. Cultivate with care, the kind and gentle affections of the heart. Plant not, but eradicate the thorn which grows in your partner's path. Above all, let no feelings of revenge find harbor in your breast-let the sun never go down upon your anger. A kind word-an obliging action—if it be in a trifling concern, have a power superior to the harp of David, in calming the billows of the soul.

A HEART IN THE RIGHT PLACE.

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THOUGHTS OF A FATHER.

To the Editor of The Mother's Assistant and Young Lady's Friend:

DEAR SIR: Your work is, in my estimation, an invaluable publication, and is not only the Mother's assistant, but the Father's also. It has been so to me, and is highly prized by my wife.

The duty of training children is an important duty, and I meet with none more so. O, the importance of giving direction to an immortal mind! Who can comprehend it? It is a sublime work-a grand, a glorious, an awful work. I tremble as I write, when I think of my responsibility. Will my children, or any one of them, be lost through some fault, some mismanagement of mine, or some wrong impression made by me? I often feel, in the presence of my little family of four, as though I were in the presence of no less than little angels, watching my every step, and every movement, and whom I may, by some wrong bias, or fatal impression, throw from the track of virtue, safety, and religion, to become a total wreck. There is no duty for which I feel so inadequate.

How important and responsible, also, the place and position of a Mother. How much in that name-"Mother." There is no word like it-none so full of music, none so dear to the heart of man. But the mother's responsibility I will not attempt to describe.

Keep on in your good work, and still send me your publication. Yours, truly,

Newport, R. I., Jan. 3. 1843.

J. KNIGHT.

A HEART IN THE RIGHT PLACE. I am wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of my sister and my poor old father. O! my friend, I think, sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? Not those "merrier days," not the "pleasant days of hope," not "those wanderings with a fair haired maid,” which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a mother's fondness for her school-boy. What would I give to call her back to earth for one day, that I might on my knees ask her pardon for all those little asperities of temper, which, from time to time, have given her gentle spirit pain; and the day, my friend, I trust will come, when there will be "time enough for kind offices of love," if "Heaven's eternal year" be ours. Hereafter her meek spirit shall not reproach me. O, my friend, cultivate the filial feelings! And let no man think himself released from the kind "charities" of relationship. These shall give him peace at the last. These are the best foundation for every species of benevolence.-Charles Lamb.

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A TOUCHING SKETCH OF PARENTAL SORrow.

A TOUCHING SKETCH OF PARENTAL SORROW.

A few months ago I buried my eldest son, a fine manly boy of eight years of age, who had never had a day's illness until that which took him hence to be here no more. His death occurred under circumstances peculiarly painful to me. A younger brother, the next in age to him, a delicate, sickly child from a baby, had been down for nearly a fortnight with an epidemic fever. In consequence of the nature of the disease, I used every precaution which prudence suggested to guard the other members of my family against it. But of this one, my eldest, I had but little fear; he was so rugged and so generally healthy. Still, however, I kept a vigilant eye upon him, and especially forbade his going into the pools. and docks near his school, which he was prone to visit.

One evening I came home wearied with a long day's hard labor, and vexed at some little disappointments, and found that he also had just come into the house, and that he was wet, and covered with dock mud. I taxed him with disobedience, and scolded him severely-more so than I had ever done before; and then harshly ordered him to his bed. He opened his lips, for an exculpatory reply as I supposed, but I sternly checked him; when with a mute, sorrowful countenance and a swelling breast, he turned away and went slowly to his chamber. My heart smote me even at the moment, though I felt conscious of doing but a father's duty. But how much keener I felt the pang when I was informed in the course of the evening by a neighbor, that my boy had gone to the dock at the earnest solicitation of a younger and favorite playmate, and by the special permission of his school master, in order to recover a cap belonging to the former, which had blown over the wharf. Thus I learned that what I had treated with unwonted severity as a fault, was but the impulse of a generous nature which, forgetful of self, had hazarded perhaps life for another. It was but the quick prompting of that manly spirit which I had always endeavored to engraft upon his susceptible mind, and which, young as it was, had already manifested itself on more than one occasion.

How bitterly now did I regret my harshness, and resolve to make amends to his grieved spirit in the morning! Alas! that morning never came to him in health. Before retiring for the night, however, I crept to his low cot, and bent over him. A tear had stolen down upon his cheek, and rested

there. I kissed it off; but he slept so sweetly and so calmly, that I did not venture to disturb him. The next day he awoke with a raging fever on his brain, and in forty-eight hours was no more! He did not know me when I was first called to his bed-side, nor at any moment afterward, though in silent agony I bent over him until death and darkness closed the scene. I would have given worlds to have whispered one kind word in his ear, and have been answered; but it was not permitted. Once, indeed, a smile, I thought of recognition, lighted up his eye, and I leaned eargely forward. But it passed quickly away, and was succeeded by the cold unmeaning glare, and the wild tossing of the fevered limbs, which lasted till death came to his relief.

Every thing I now see which belonged to him reminds me of the lost one. Yesterday I found some rude pencil sketches which it was his delight to make for the amusement of his younger brother; to-day in rummaging an old closet I came across his boots still covered with dock-mud as when he last wore them; and every morning and evening I pass the ground where his voice rang the merriest among his playmates. All these things speak to me vividly of his active life; but I cannot, though I often try, recall any other expression of his face. than that mute, mournful one with which he turned from me on the night I so harshly repulsed him. Then my heart bleeds afresh. O! how careful should we who are parents be, that in our daily conduct toward those little beings sent us by a kind Providence, we are not laying up for ourselves the sources of many a future bitter tear! How cautious, that neither by inconsiderate word or look, we unjustly grieve their generous feeling! And how guardedly ought we to weigh every action against its motive, lest in a moment of excitement we be led to meet out to the venial errors of the heart, the punishment due only to wilful crime! Alas! perhaps few parents suspect how often the sudden blow and the fierce rebuke are answered in their children by the tears, not of passion, not of physical or mental pain, but of a loving, but grieved or outraged nature.-Knickerbocker.

SUNDAY SCHOOLS.-It has been estimated that in this country, within the last fifteen years, no less than seventy-five thousand children from the Sunday School have united with the Church of Christ; and that nineteen-twentieths of the British missionaries in foreign lands have been the subjects of Sabbath School instruction.