Bits About Home Matters.

Contents.

• The Inhumanities of Parents--Corporal Punishment
• The Inhumanities of Parents--Needless Denials
• The Inhumanities of Parents--Rudeness
• Breaking the Will
• The Reign of Archelaus
• The Awkward Age
• A Day with a Courteous Mother
• Children in Nova Scotia
• The Republic of the Family
• The Ready-to-Halts
• The Descendants of Nabal
• "Boys not allowed"
• Half an Hour in a Railway Station
• A Genius for Affection
• Rainy Days
• Friends of the Prisoners
• A Companion for the Winter
• Choice of Colors
• The Apostle of Beauty
• English Lodging-Houses
• Wet the Clay
• The King's Friend
• Learning to speak
• Private Tyrants
• Margin
• The Fine Art of Smiling
• Death-bed Repentance
• The Correlation of Moral Forces
• A Simple Bill of Fare for a Christmas Dinner
• Children's Parties
• After-supper Talk
• Hysteria in Literature
• Jog Trot
• The Joyless American
• Spiritual Teething
• Glass Houses
• The Old-Clothes Monger in Journalism
• The Country Landlord's Side
• The Good Staff of Pleasure
• Wanted--a Home

The Inhumanities of Parents--Corporal Punishment.

Not long ago a Presbyterian minister in Western New York whipped histhree-year-old boy to death, for refusing to say his prayers. The littlefingers were broken; the tender flesh was bruised and actually mangled;strong men wept when they looked on the body; and the reverend murderer,after having been set free on bail, was glad to return and take refugewithin the walls of his prison, to escape summary punishment at the handsof an outraged community. At the bare mention of such cruelty, every heartgrew sick and faint; men and women were dumb with horror: only tears and ahot demand for instant retaliation availed.

The question whether, after all, that baby martyr were not fortunate amonghis fellows, would, no doubt, be met by resentful astonishment. But it isa question which may well be asked, may well be pondered. Heart-rending asit is to think for an instant of the agonies which the poor child musthave borne for some hours after his infant brain was too bewildered byterror and pain to understand what was required of him, it still cannotfail to occur to deeper reflection that the torture was short and small incomparison with what the next ten years might have held for him if he hadlived. To earn entrance on the spiritual life by the briefest possibleexperience of the physical, is always "greater gain;" but how emphaticallyis it so when the conditions of life upon earth are sure to beunfavorable!

If it were possible in any way to get a statistical summing-up and atangible presentation of the amount of physical pain inflicted by parentson children under twelve years of age, the most callous-hearted would be