A Child’s Misunderstanding of Goodness
Mrs. Horace Mann tells of being in a mission infant class room once when the general question of "how many of you wish to be good" was put. Every hand except that of a new-comer, a boy of six, went up. The teacher put the question again, in hopes the boy—having, perhaps, misunderstood her—would also hold up his hand. But he refused. She was on the point of scolding him, when Mrs. Mann, begging leave to speak, quietly walked to the child, put her arm around his neck, and asked him if he knew what it was to be good. With a face full of unspeakable infantile woe, and his eyes and throat overrunning and choking, he cried out, "Ter to be whipped." He was the child of a mother who always brought goodness to her children by the rod, and hence the child’s misapprehension.