and disposition, we believe the statement axiomatic, that parents are strictly responsible, before God, for the confirmed vices of their children. The punishment meted out to young offenders for drunkenness, stealing, and the like, might too often be more advantageously inflicted upon the really guilty parties, the neglectful parents; and the secret of this truism is precisely the fact that the proclivities of the individual are developed very early. Thus a boy in whom lying seems a part of his very nature is morally certain, if every inch of ground be not vigorously contested, and the habit early eradicated, to become an adult knave. The writer knows of a case of two brothers in whom the opposite qualities of unimpeachable veracity and utter mendacity were fully apparent as early as the fourth and sixth years, yet, by indomitable care and patience, they are now, at the ages of ten and twelve, equally models of irreproachable honor. Innumerable remonstrances, whippings, and privations were vainly tried upon the little reprobate, until a plaster covering the mouth, and duly perforated to admit of respiration (but not of falsehoods), proved specific in a very few applications; so a habit which else had ruined the man was easily uprooted in the boy. A placard announcing "thief," not exhibited beyond the nursery, may do as much for one who manifests an early tendency to kleptomania. The vices of cupidity and extravagance may be early cured by opposite lessons, and great patience and ceaseless observation are required to accomplish a radical cure in either case, but, nevertheless, it can and should be done. Many an avaricious monster may thank his doting parents for the qualities which render him odious, and which were ineradicably fixed upon him in childhood by encouragement of his miscalled "cuteness," while the ruined spendthrift may live to curse the "fond parental
