My friend had spoken an impatient word to his little son, and I saw the child's face stained by the hot blood of anger. My friend saw the stain also. What did he do? repent of his impatience and heal the hurt in his child by a gentler word? No; but he grew more impatient, and calling sharply to the boy, said, in a warning tone:
"Take care, sir!"
Take care of what? Why, lest punishment follow.
You ask as to the child's fault that punishment should be threatened. There was no fault. He had, in passing near a table in the room where I sat, talking with his father, accidentally touched a book, lying on the edge, causing it to fall. The noise jarred on the father's sensitive nerves. Naturally irritable he smote the child, as I have said, with an impatient word; and the child's spirit answered to the harsh rebuke in a hot face and flashing eyes.
"Take care, sir!" repeated my friend, seeing that his warning admonition had produced no effect on the boy's roused spirit, smarting under an undeserved blow. The stain grew redder on the cheeks and brow; the eyes more intense; the lips more firmly shut. I saw defiance in the child's face.
"Why don't you pick up that book, sir?" There was no sign of obedience.
"Did you hear me?" almost fiercely demanded the father. I shuddered inwardly, but dared not interfere between my hot-tempered friend, and his equally hot-tempered child. He might as well have spoken to deaf ears.
"Pick up that book, I say!"
The child did not stir.
"I shall not speak again," said my friend, in a suppressed voice. One minute passed in dumb silence; then rising with deliberation he approached the boy, whose face had become pale, but weak or fearful, and grasped one of his arms tightly. Time was still given for him to lift the book; but he was too angry to yield. I held my breath painfully, taking a long inspiration as my friend swept from the room, dragging the boy after him. He was gone for nearly five minutes and then came back flushed, nervous, and excited, saying, as he sat down opposite me,
"I'm out of all heart with that boy."
He looked sadly discouraged. I did not answer. After sitting for a few moments he added.
"Such a temper—such a will! I never saw anything like it!"
But I answered nothing. What could I say in approval of my friend's conduct? My silence was on the side of his own uneasy convictions, and he felt it to be so.
"What am I to do with the child?" he asked, interrogating my unspoken thought. "To give up to him—to let will and passion have their sway—can only end in moral ruin. He must come under the yoke. Is it not so?"
"Obedience is essential," I answered.
"So I think, obedience at all hazards."
I did not assent to this extreme proposition.
"At all hazards," he repeated, with increasing force.
"It may be well," said I, "to look at the conditions of obedience, before exacting the full measure of obligation."
"I am not sure that I understood you," answered my friend, with a slightly puzzled air.
"Obedience may be impossible."
"Was it impossible for John to lift that book from the floor?"
"Perhaps," I said.
"Perhaps!" My friend looked astonished. "Morally impossible, I mean."
He shook his head doubtfully.
"A condition may render the easiest act so difficult of performance that a man will look death in the face and yet not lift a hand in attempted execution. The act, in this case, becomes morally impossible."
"I do not see how you will apply that to my boy's case."
"Suppose," said I, "you were riding in one of our street cars, and a passenger, on entering, and before you had time to make room for him, were to order you in a rough, imperative manner, to move; what would be the result?"
"I would sit still in my place," answered my friend.
"And yet it would be the wiser course to give way, and not be disturbed by ungentlemanly rudeness."
"Perhaps it would; but I have that in me which will not submit to unjust encroachment. And I am quick in my resentment, as you know. To a gentlemanly demeanor I yield everything that is right; to rude exaction, nothing."
"Therefore it is that the condition of a demand may render obedience a moral impossibility."
"It is so," answered my friend.
"Has it not often happened," I continued, "that under a momentary, blind excitement, you have said or done things for which you were sorry, and yet, having done or said them, would not recede—growing more persistent, in the degree that you were assailed by angry efforts to drive you from the position taken, although, in your heart, you knew that you were wrong?"
I understood my friend's character, and knew its weak side.
"It is as you say," was his answer. "I can be led easily; but all the world cannot drive me—no, not even to do what is right."
"Has it never occurred to you," I asked, after a pause, "that your son is like you, in this respect?"
I saw a quick change in my friend's countenance. The question had taken him unawares. A sudden light had streamed into an obscure corner of his mind.
"Like me?" His tone was that of a man just awaking, and in surprise at some unexpected sight.
"Is it strange that he should be like you?" I queried.
"Perhaps not. I am his father." The surprise had already gone out of his voice, which had in it a shade of depression.
"'Like father, like son.' The adage is as much founded on immutable law as upon observation. In homelier phrase, you have 'chip of the old block.' John's disposition is very much like your own, my friend. He is quick-tempered, strong-willed, independent, and instinctively opposed to coercion—easily led, hard to be driven. Have you never thought of this? never looked down into the clear mirror of his unsullied character, and seen a perfect image of yourself?"
My friend dropped his head upon his bosom, and sat a long time silent.
"The father," I said, as he sat musing, "reproduces himself in his children with such modifications as the mother's life may give. I need not offer arguments to prove the fact, every man of rational perception sees that it must be so under the unvarying law of like producing like."
"I have no doubt of its being so," he replied.
"Does not the fact instruct us?" I went on. "Does it not throw light upon that most difficult, yet most important of all our duties, the government of our children? First, we must know the quality, condition, and capability of any material upon which we are to work. The plumber would fail in his effort to produce a useful result if he wrought with wood in place of lead; and so of the gold-beater, if, instead of the most ductile of all metals he subjected iron to his hammer-strokes. As in the lower world of nature, different forms require different modes of treatment, in order to eliminate their proper use, so in the higher world of mind, all objective differences are but images of mental differences. Mind is the true world, nature the representative and effect, and, as such, our instructor, if we will open our hearts to her teachings.
"I do not gainsay this," returned my friend. "I believe it is so. I comprehend the important truth you have stated, that my child bears a likeness to his father. But what I do not see clearly is, the way in which I am to deal with him. How am I to correct, in my boy, the perversities which he has, by inheritance, from his father?"
"The first thing," I answered, "is for you to pity him—to think compassionately of him, burdened as he is, for life, with a hasty temper and a stubborn will."
I saw moisture come into my friend's eyes; the firm mouth gave way a little.
"May I refer to the scene that passed here a little while ago?" I asked.
"Speak freely," returned my friend.
"John committed no fault."
There was a slight motion of surprise in my friend's face.
"Accidentally he touched a book, and it fell upon the floor—this, and only this."
"He was careless," said my friend, with a slight effort at self-justification.
"You, or I, or any one, might have done the same thing. Nay, every day of our lives, we do just as careless things. When the mind is absorbed, we cannot always guard our movements. Now put yourself in John's place. Imagine the book touched without intention, and it falls upon the floor, and imagine as sharp a word spoken to you as you spoke to him—what state of mind would have resulted?"
I paused for his answer, but he did not reply.
"Could you have helped the rush of angry waves? Hurt pride—a sense of wrong—blind impulse—would have made you as stubborn as you saw him."
"Perhaps it would." My friend's eyes were on the floor. He spoke in a subdued voice.
"You cannot overcome the mind's defects by external force," I added. "There must be a wise appliance of moral means. Deal by him as you would yourself be dealt by in like circumstances. Cure his disease by the remedies that reason tells you would heal your own. Weaken his angry willfulness by removing excitement. Control yourself in his presence—hold back your quick springing impulses—never let him see you angry, nor find you unjust or unreasonable. Always speak mildly and kindly, except when in grave rebuke or remonstrance for unmistakable faults, self-acknowledged. Help him, with his load of hereditary evil tendencies, instead of adding a part of your own burden to the weak shoulders of a child. If you cannot control yourself, with reason, judgment, years, and experience, on your side, what can you expect from him?"
I stopped, lest I were pressing home upon him too closely.
Just at this moment the door opened, and the child came in. The book still lay where it had fallen from the table. I turned and saw the little fellow's questioning eyes upon his father's face. There was a look of grief about his lips. Nothing was said to him; in fact, no notice, apparently, taken of him. My friend changed the conversation to a new theme. John stole softly across the room, and sat down noiselessly, taking, as he did so, a long, sighing breath. Presently he slipped from his chair, and moving quietly to where the book lay on the floor, lifted and placed it on the table, pushing it to some distance from the edge; in this very act, showing his recognition of the fault for which he had been harshly blamed as only an accident, against the recurrence of which he would guard by placing the book where it would be in no danger of falling. I noticed another deep breath as the child's burdened heart sought to relieve the pressure that still lay heavily upon it. Then he began, by slow approaches, to draw near his father, and at last stood by his knee. My friend placed his arm around him, as he still talked with me, and tightened it with a loving pressure, made stronger by pity and repentance. John looked up into his face; and then his father bent down and kissed him. Reconciled: yet, as there had been wrong and suffering, and the graver of memory cuts deepest when feeling is most intense, was not something lost in that brief struggle between father and child which could never be restored? something hurt, the pain of which would endure through natural life?
These are questions for sober thought.
My friend, with all his infirmities of temper, had a strong love for his children, a quick moral sense, a love of right and justice. These were all on the side of a truer self-discipline as affecting the little ones given to him of God, that they might be trained for Heaven. I saw him afterward, under stronger provocation; and he did not forget himself. My presence may have revived in his memory the scene just described, and so put him on his guard. Even if that were so, much was gained; for all right efforts give a measure of strength, and erect barriers against evil. We overcome what is wrong in our natural tempers by resisting the impulse to act in the moment of provocation; not by repenting and resolving only. The repentance and the resolution are all well enough, and give strength for resistance against the hour of temptation; but only in the degree that we resist and refrain in the hour of trial, do we overcome and rise superior to our enemies.—T. S. Arthur.