Page:Books and men.djvu/14

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BOOKS AND MEN.

child, and unflinchingly drove the letters into its bewildered brain. On two occasions only was she unsuccessful. "Molly and Nancy," we are told, failed to learn in the given time, and their mother comforts herself for their tardiness by reflecting on the still greater incapacity of other people's bairns.

"When the will of a child is totally subdued, and it is brought to revere and stand in awe of its parents," then, and then only, their rigid judge considers that some little inadvertences and follies may be safely passed over. Nor would she permit one of them to "be chid or beaten twice for the same fault,"—a stately assumption of justice that speaks volumes for the iron-bound code by which they were brought into subjection. Most children nowadays are sufficiently amazed if a tardy vengeance overtake them once, and a second penalty for the same offense is something we should hardly deem it necessary to proscribe. Yet nothing is more evident than that Mrs. Wesley was neither a cruel nor an unloving mother. It is plain that she labored hard for her little flock, and had their welfare and happiness greatly at heart. In after years they