Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. This
retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances.
If you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one of your more fortunate
little playmates has a costly China one, you should treat her with a show of kindness
nevertheless. And you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless your
conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able to do it.
You ought never to take your little brother's "chewing-gum" away from him by main
force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of the first two dollars and a half you
find floating down the river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to this time
of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. In all ages of the world this
eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster.
If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not correct him with mud--
never, on any account, throw mud at him, because it will spoil his clothes. It is better to
scald him a little, for then you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate
attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time your hot water will have
a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the skin, in spots.
If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won't. It is better and
more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act
quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment.
You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you are indebted for your
food, and for the privilege of staying home from school when you let on that you are sick.
Therefore you ought to respect their little prejudices, and humor their little whims, and
put up with their little foibles until they get to crowding you too much.
Good little girls always show marked deference for the aged. You ought never to "sass"
old people unless they "sass" you first.
