LAXITY OF PARENTAL AUTHORITY. 83 
felt offended with his parents, he left them without 
ceremony, attached himself to another family in 
an adjacent or remote district, and remained for 
months without visiting his father’s house. To 
restrain these fugitive habits, and train their chil¬ 
dren to regular industry, was one of the duties 
inculcated on Christian parents; yet the children 
could but ill brook any restraint. I have seen a 
child, not more than six years old, strike or throw 
stones at his mother, and the father would often¬ 
times be scarcely more regarded. And notwith¬ 
standing all the instructions they have received, 
that important duty, the proper management of 
children, is still very imperfectly understood and 
practised. 
The mothers appeared anxious to influence the 
minds of their children, and gain their respect by 
kindness. The fathers sometimes had recourse to 
harsher measures. Hoibu had two sons, that were 
a source of great trouble to him. One of our 
number went one day into his house, which was a 
native dwelling, with no other ceiling than the 
inside of the roof, the ridge-pole extending along 
the centre, about twenty feet from the floor. After 
talking some time with the man, the visitor heard 
something rustling in a long basket of cocoa-nut 
leaves at the top of the house, and, looking up, 
saw the legs and arms of a boy protruding from 
the basket. On inquiring the cause of this, Hoibu 
said, the boy had been disobedient, and, in order 
to convince him of his error, he had first talked to 
him, and then put him into the basket, and, pass¬ 
ing a rope over the ridge-pole, had fastened one 
end of it to the basket, and, pulling the other, had 
drawn him up there, that he might think on his 
disobedience, and not be guilty of the same again, 
a 2 
