I say, trained to such habits, for the practice of allowing children to gain their ends by any particular means is really training them to the use of those means.

Thus multitudes of children are taught to disobey, and trained to habits of insubmission and insubordination, by the means most effectually adapted to that end.
_Difficulties_.
When under these circumstances the children come under a new charge, whether permanently or temporarily, the task of re-form in or their characters is more delicate and difficult than where one can begin at the beginning; but the principles are the same, and the success is equally certain.

The difficulty is somewhat increased by the fact that the person thus provisionally in charge has often no natural authority over the child, and the circumstances may moreover be such as to make it necessary to abstain carefully from any measures that would lead to difficulty or collision, to cries, complaints to the mother, or any of those other forms of commotion or annoyance, which ungoverned children know so well how to employ in gaining their ends.

The mother may be one of those weak-minded women who can never see any thing unreasonable in the crying complaints made by their children against other people.

Or she may be sick, and it may be very important to avoid every thing that could agitate or disturb her.
_George and Egbert_.
This last was the case of George, a young man of seventeen, who came to spend some time at home after an absence of two years in the city.