Evening bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1895-1912, 1903-10-17

break in families than any other trait
II is not force of character that makes
& man ready to punish, to whip boy.
stern, rigid, exacting parents may DO
very weak indeed, and they generally
are. II is the strong, forceful char
acter that is kind, consderute, char
table: who takes into consideration
the period of youth, who sees both
sides of an Ofr-hand matter, who re-
badness is not so much that as i'm
pulse and thOughtfessness; the disin-
tCgration of temperament the pro-
cess of getting character.
We have Cutgrown our idea that men
should be whipped for their offenses.
because we found that such treatment
did not mend matters, and yet these Of
lenses are done wilfully in adult life
when the nature of right and wrong
is known. The child in nearly every
Instance. does not do wrong wilfully or
even knowingly; his motive is good
though mistaken; his mischief, naught-
mess, lying, disobedience, are based
upon a childish conviction which needs
to be dislodged in n reasonable way.
Most intelligent men have learned that
beating balky horse is worse than
useless, yet they will beat child who
refuses to do thing because he holds
lin his mind a good reason for not
doing it, so all children of any force
whatever are at times hard to bring
up" Or. Bridge says: "One cardinal
truth we usually forget, namely. that
n human being from infancy to full
adult age often passes through several
phases Of character and conduct that
are as diverse as saints and sinners
that are directly and always heredi-
tary. and yet that are to most minds
utterly ineXplicable on such grounds
The confusion comes of suppoSng
that every individual is either good 81
bad. or once bad Is always so, and once
good must 50 rCmain-instead of the
truth that all good people have some
faults, and every very bad people have
some good in them; or of suppOsinp
that every individual through life lives
N
boy may be Il proper subject for the
penitcntiary If not for the asylum
and the rounded manhood OF the same
individual be fit to canOniZe: or the
reverse may be the case For example
take the Outlandish conduct of some
children Of good people The boys are
rowdics. bandits and thieves; they are
abusive to everybody at times. and
wholly unmanageable; into all manner
of mischief, and always aping the boys
that are most worthless and reckless.
They are barbarians, and show how
most of us have not advanced much
Girls sometimes In their sphere and
circle. exhibit traits that prove they are
OF the same race as boys. One peculiar
trait Is that of palming off their fiction
as truth, and a trait of many of both
sexes is marked cruelty to the lower
animals, and often to other children
Let any children happen to carry these
traits into adult life. and they are SOC
tally ruined. That they do not usually
carry them through life is because It is
part Of the evolution of their natures
their hereditary tendency to change
with each half decade up to full adult
responsibility, and they mostly arrive
at their period with those motives and
impulses in control Of them that make
decent members of the community
People often wonder how certain
incorrlgible boy could be born to such
superbly balanced parents as he has;
and declare that there must be soma
hitch in the heredity, or that this is a
case where heredity failed to work.
Neither Is the case There is seventy
five per cent Of certainty that his par
ents, one or both of them, passed
through the identical moral phase at
the same time of life, and some day