Pawtucket Record

He never struck his Children.

"I never struck my children," said a young American father the other day, though I have often been tempted strongly to do it, and sometimes would not have blamed any parents for doing so. But I was thrashed so much by my own father, a good enough man too, that I always stood in fear of him, seldom told him the truth if I could help it, and never confided in him. Often I was whipped for errors I had committed with good intentions, and I remember the wild spirit of hatred that used to come over me at such times, when, smarting under the blows I felt I did not deserve, I would get away by myself and swear silent but bitter oaths that would have opened the old gentleman's eyes to his folly, perhaps, if he could have heard them from so young a child. So I made a vow that I would never beat my own children. And now I feel sure that they do not stand in physical fear of me, I am pretty certain they tell the truth, and I know they confide in me as a friend. And though they do not obey me nearly as implicitly as I did my father, and make themselves much more of a nuisance than I was to him, yet they don't regard me as a bully, and that is something."—New York Tribune.