Page:Discipline in school and cloister (1902).djvu/53

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commit an offence, I do not punish them at the time, but order them to my bedroom some few hours after. The effect of my discipline is such that they never fail to do so. When there they are laid across the bed, their clothes removed, and from fifteen to fifty smart strokes administered, the amount varying with the offence. After this I can assure you they are perfectly docile for some time to come. I have tried many systems, but find this to be the best. I should advise all to follow this same plan; they will find it answer remarkably well. Even at the age of eighteen, should my children require it, I will administer corporal punishment.' After such an inventive enthusiast for obedience, who dexterously combines suspense with agony, we must hold most reasonable the plea of another fond parent, who thinks that there is nothing wrong in slapping baby 'with a satin slipper, to let it know there is a will superior to its own.' This would seem to be the elegantiæ of the Art, the very esthetics of corporal punishment—were it not for the same mamma's declaration that she 'detests the moral system.' Should the baby grow up unimproved by slipper, a resource