The Green Forest tribune., 1901-07-27
Children and Their Pets.

The most sage and conscien- tious parent may have a child which upsets all known nursery conventions, and the person who is careless in every daily habit may find himself, some day, po- sessed of small Puritan descend ant whose every look and act is a reproach. Nobody can tell. On general principles, children are benefited by having animals to play with and take care of, but 1t is not one of those benefits which descend like the sun and rain, without trouble to anyone. It has to be worked for.
 There is certain amount of the savage in most children, and the savage is a natural Ishmaeh- lite. His instinct is to fight and be suspicious, and to tyranize on the theory that if he does not prove his strength he will be abused. Those so-called savage tribes in which different prin- ciples prevail will usually be found to have some sort of civil zation to their credit.
 The child is necessarily sub ject, obliged to conform to the will of his superiors, and to do thousand things which he does not particularly like, and the ne- cessity for which he cannot in the nature of things see. There fore his impulse is to take it out' on somebody. The only somebody at hand, when he is in bad humor, may be the cat, and he consequently takes it out on the cats s tail. If she be a patient animal she will submit, without resistance; otherwise she will give the youngster lesson which he will not soon forget. If she submits he is likely to be carried away by the love of experiment and keep on teasing her until she resents it or until his natural guardians intervene and stop the investigation.
 A great deal of the cruelty and destructiveness of children is simply experiment.. The infant has all the laws of the universe to discover, and among them are the laws of animal and human psychology. He goes about in vestigating these i'll much the same ways as his elders do, Few of us have come by our know ledge of human nature without somebody's suffering for it di- rectly or indirectly. How do we know that men or women suffer in any given situation unless we ourselves have experienced or caused, or seen in one near'to us, such unhappiness?
 The question is, then how dol we teach the child what he needs with as little cost to himself and others as possible. Some parents are injudicious in fostering the child's natural notion that every thing is against him. When he bumps his head on the back they symphetically say naughty, chair to hit the baby!" When the kitten scratches him they slap the kitten and condole with the sufferer. But even when this is not done, the child's natural bar barous instincts will crop out sometimes.
 One way to teach the child the value of animal life is to give the property interest as an influ- ence. If he is given one ont of 8 flock of chickens, or pair of pig cons or canary-preferably something that cannot be mauled and abused-and will usually de- veIop a sort of interest in the ani- mal which will prevent his knock ing it in the head. Ii there Is more than one child in the family and each has his share in the live- stock of the place the case is all the better. Each will then have the instinct of protecting it's pet from possible encroachments by the others, and the public sen- timent in the little community will condemn teasing and worry ing. If the child really does de- velop love of animals he will