on if the girl be sixteen; and Experience uses the rod only as a last resort. But the overwhelming number of mothers, we are glad to say, hurl contempt and anathemas at these cold-blooded Lovers of Obedience who thus hate their own flesh; and the preponderance of opinion is entirely with the moral system which the lady who beats her baby with a slipper so naturally detests.
But what a picture of domestic misery and stupid cruelty is unveiled by the other side of this extraordinary correspondence! No wonder that girls go wrong and throw their womanhood away in sin and anguish, when their youth is passed with fathers and mothers whose stupidity is such that they confound brutality with discipline, and are not ashamed to boast of the outrages they commit on their own flesh and blood. If we have appeared to cite the complacent suggestions of such people with patience, it is because no words of condemnation could be so severe as their own description of themselves and their ways. To those parents the great and sacred gift of children has come like pearls to swine. Perhaps in many cases it is their heads more than their
