She can't bear to be crossed in anything." When I stepped from the train at my destination the humiliation for which her attendants longed was still a stranger to the willful child.
Trouble-fearing persons have a belief to the effect that it is, in the long run, easier to let a child have his own sweet way until he has attained the age of discretion,--say at fourteen or fifteen years,--when his innate sense of propriety will convince him of the error of his ways.

Such a theorist was a dear old gentleman who, many years ago, remonstrated with me upon the pains and time I spent in training my first born.

The children of this aged saint had been reared according to the old-fashioned notion, but when they had babies of their own they departed from it, and the rising generation had full and free sway.

Their grandparent, albeit frequently the victim of their pranks, loved them dearly.

He now assured me that-- "While they are regular little barbarians, my dear, still they have all that freedom and wild liberty which should accompany childhood.
They eat when and what they please, go to bed when they feel like it, rise early or late as the whim seizes them, and know no prescribed rules for diet and deportment.