When her father came home, you said that she must not have the
red balloon, because she had been such a naughty girl. I have wondered
many times since why she did not cry again, or look grieved when you said
that, and laid the balloon away. After eleven o'clock at night, I went to
look at her, and found her sobbing in her sleep, and tossing about. I
groaned as I thought, "This is only one day, and there are three hundred
and sixty-five in a year!" But I never recall the distorted face of that
poor child, as, in her fearful passion, she told you she wished you were
dead, without also remembering that even the gentle Christ said of him who
should offend one of these little ones, "It were better for him that a
mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depths
of the sea!"
The Inhumanities of Parents--Rudeness.
/#
"_Inhumanity_--Cruelty. _Cruelty_--The disposition to give unnecessary
pain."--_Webster's Dict_.
#/
I had intended to put third on the list of inhumanities of parents
"needless requisitions;" but my last summer's observations changed my
estimate, and convinced me that children suffer more pain from the
rudeness with which they are treated than from being forced to do needless
things which they dislike.
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