CHAP. XXXII.] SPOILT CHILDREN. 221 



so riotous and undisciplined, as to be the torment 

 of all who approached them. &quot; How fortunate you 

 are,&quot; said one of the mothers to my wife, &quot; to be 

 without children ; they are so ungovernable, and, if 

 you switch them, they sulk, or go into hysterics.&quot; 

 The threat of &quot; I ll switch you,&quot; is for ever vocifer 

 ated in an angry tone, but never carried into execu 

 tion. One genteel and pleasing young lady sat down 

 by my wife, and began conversation by saying, &quot; You 

 hate children, don t you ? &quot; intimating that such were 

 her own feelings. A medical man, in large practice, in 

 one of the Southern States, told us he often lost 

 young patients in fevers, and other cases where ex 

 citement of the nerves was dangerous, by the habitual 

 inability of the parents to exert the least command 

 over their children. We saw an instance where a 

 young girl, in considerable danger, threw the medi 

 cine into the physician s face, and heaped most 

 abusive epithets upon him. 



The Director of the State Penitentiary, in Georgia, 

 told me, that he had been at some pains to trace out 

 the history of the most desperate characters under his 

 charge, and found that they had been invariably 

 spoilt children ; and, he added, if young Americans 

 were not called upon to act for themselves at so 

 early an age, and undergo the rubs and discipline of 

 the world, they would be more vicious and immoral 

 than the people of any other nation. Yet there 

 is no country where children ought to be so great 

 a blessing, or where they can be so easily pro 

 vided for. Parents have not the excuse of Mrs. 

 Mac Clarty, in the &quot; Cottagers of Grlenburnie,&quot; when 



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