or, I will add, any punishment too severe, when the object in view is to
overcome this infamous vice in a child. Once I remember having been led
into a lie at the instigation, and through the contrivance of a servant-
girl, for whose benefit it was told. Suspicion instantly arose, from my
dreadful embarrassment of manner; a strict investigation commenced; the
girl told me to face it out, for that nobody else knew of it, and she
would not flinch. But my terrors of conscience were insupportable; I
could ill bear my father's steady eye fixed on mine, still less the
anxious, wondering, incredulous expression of my brother's innocent
face, who could not for a moment fancy me guilty. I confessed at once;
and with a heavy sigh my father sent to borrow from a neighbor an
instrument of chastisement never before needed in his own house. He took
me to another room, and said, "Child, it will pain me more to punish you
thus, than any blows I can inflict will pain you; but I must do it; you
have told a lie--a dreadful sin, and a base, mean, cowardly action. If I
let you grow up a liar, you will reproach me for it one day; if I now
spared the rod, I should hate the child." I took the punishment in a
most extraordinary spirit: I wished every stroke had been a stab; I wept
because the pain was not great enough; and I loved my father at that
moment better than even I, who almost idolized him, had ever loved him
before. I thanked him, and I thank him still; for I never transgressed
in that way again. The servant was called, received her wages and a most
awful lecture, and was discharged the same hour. Yet, of all these
things what sunk deepest into my very soul were the sobs and cries of my
fond little brother, and the lamentable tones of his soft voice,
pleading through the closed door, "O, papa, don't whip Charlotte. O
forgive poor Charlotte."

It is sweet to know we have a Brother indeed who always pleads, and
never pleads in vain for the offending child; a Father whose