SYMPATHY. 37 



Shall we, in addition to all the sorrows which must come to them 1; ; 

 afflict them in their sensitive childhood with our scorn, our ridicule, or our 

 lack of comprehension ? 



A child will not, for some inscrutable reason, tell the secrets of its soul. 

 It will not let us know when we hurt it, and how. We must be careful, 

 through sympathy and through memory, to find that art. 



One of the most powerful sketches of 1 child's sufl'tM-ings is to be found 

 in George Eliot's Maggie Tulliver, in the "Mill on the Floss." Manv a 

 grown man or woman, on reading that, has said, "It is a picture of my early 

 MI fieri ngs. Poor Maggie ? " 



A sullen temper gives to a mother an almost incurable obstacle in the 

 way of good manners, and yet a sullen temper is very often an affectionate 

 temper soured. 



It pains a mother often after her children have grown up to hear them 

 say that their childhood was an unhappy one ; that they wen- never un- 

 derstood ; that she laughed when she should have been serious, and was 

 serious when she should have laughed; that they had terrors h\- niirht 

 which she never drove away; and that their mortifications by day were 

 increased by her determination that they should wear broad collars instr.-id 

 of narrow ones, such as the other boys wore, and so on. She can only say, 

 1 did my best, 1 did my best for you," and regret that she had not 1 

 inspired 



But while the children are young, as indeed after they are grown, a 

 paivnt should try to sympathize with the various irregular growths , 

 child's nature. Sensitiveness afl to peculiarities of dress is a rong 



i'-nt, and it can not be laughed down. The late Lydia Maria Child 

 said, that she believed her character had hern permanently injured b\ 

 laughter of her schoolmates at a peculiar short-waited -own which her 

 mother made her wear to school. And a very sensible mother, who would 

 allow her little daughter to wear a hoop to a dancing-school, when 

 hoops wen.- the fashion, said that she was certain that, by the inrt ilic.it ion 



had cau-ed her. and the undue attention which h 

 subject, she had made love nf dress a passion with the child. On all these 



<iu- rtain wholesome inattention fa perhaps the best treatn 



to allow your child to he as much like his fell, -\. and. 



not make him /.- -r that hurts hi> feelings 



more than anything, and make> tl ther hoys laiiidi at him. 



The the poor shoes, the fi l-i n cap, the d cidii"Us panta- 



loon which d the i, hness these are not i^t; 



they do not move the youthful soul to ridicule. T trait in the 



