CHAPTER XIII.
FAULTS OF IMMATURITY.
A great portion of the errors and mistakes, and of what we call the follies, of children arise from simple ignorance.

Principles of philosophy, whether pertaining to external nature or to mental action, are involved which have never come home to their minds.

They may have been presented, but they have not been understood and appreciated.

It requires some tact, and sometimes delicate observation, on the part of the mother to determine whether a mode of action which she sees ought to be corrected results from childish ignorance and inexperience, or from willful wrong-doing.

Whatever may be the proper treatment in the latter case, it is evident that in the former what is required is not censure, but instruction.
_Boasting_.
A mother came into the room one day and found Johnny disputing earnestly with his Cousin Jane on the question which was the tallest--Johnny very strenuously maintaining that he was the tallest, _because he was a boy_.
His older brother, James, who was present at the time, measured them, and found that Johnny in reality was the tallest.
Now there was nothing wrong in his feeling a pride and pleasure in the thought that he was physically superior to his cousin, and though it was foolish for him to insist himself on this superiority in a boasting way, it was the foolishness of ignorance only.