If your boy is mischievous, can you not make a merchant or a farmer or a
gardener out of him? It need not be his vocation. Let it be his
avocation, his hobby. Don’t shut him in, don’t keep him down; encourage
him to come out along life’s highway and show the world the sort of
stuff he’s made of.
A very noble-minded woman of my acquaintance is suffering from the
effects of having been constantly restrained when she was a child. She
is in consequence, diffident, lacking in self-confidence, liable to
become the victim of a strong-willed person’s whim. She says that, as a
girl, all her natural instincts were put to scorn. Full of abounding
life, she loved to leap down the stairs, throw herself into her mother’s
arms, shout with laughter, sing at the top of her voice as she went
about her tasks. This was looked upon with horror by her sedate and
cautious parent. “Don’t run down the stairs,” her mother would say.
“Don’t laugh so loud!” “Don’t shout like that!” Don’t, don’t, don’t,
until the poor girl did not really know what she might do with impunity.
She was constantly being humiliated before visitors, and the joy in life
that might have been cultivated and utilized, nay, even glorified, was
driven quite out of her soul. Yet her mother was an excellent woman, who
meant to do just the right thing by that little girl of hers. She had
her own idea of what a young girl should be. This gay, hilarious
creature was not just what the mother desired. She had hopes of bringing
up a dignified, gentle, lady-like, delicate, feminine daughter rather
than a hoyden. What might not that mother have done had she but
understood the glorious material God had lent her to work with a little
while!
If she had only realized that the quality she was stamping out was a
radiant, winged, rare, inspired and inspiring touch of nature springing
out of a fullness of life, a superabundance of health, she might have
made her child a queen among women, a leader, a creature admired and
adored.