Then she set them both at work to make bouquets for themselves, giving them minute and special directions in regard to every step.

If her object had been to cultivate their taste and judgment, then it would have been better to allow them to choose the flowers and determine the arrangement for themselves; but she was teaching them _obedience_, or, rather, beginning to form in them the _habit_ of obedience; and so, the more numerous and minute the commands the better, provided that they were not in them selves unreasonable, nor so numerous and minute as to be vexatious, so as to incur any serious danger of their not being readily and good-humoredly obeyed.
[Illustration: THE LESSON IN OBEDIENCE.] _THE ART OF TRAINING_.

101 When the bouquets were finished Mary gave the children, severally, the two which had been made for them; and the two which they had made for themselves she took into the house and placed them in glasses upon the parlor mantel-piece, and then stood back with the children in the middle of the room to admire them.
"See how pretty they look! And how nicely the work went on while we were making them! That was because you obeyed me so well while we were doing it.
You did exactly as I said in every thing." _A Beginning only_.
Now this was an excellent _first lesson_ in training the children to the habit of obedience.

It is true that it was _only_ a first lesson.

It was a beginning, but it was a very good beginning.