“In order to form the minds of children, the first thing to be done is to conquer the will.  To inform the understanding is a work of time, and must, with children, proceed by slow degrees as they are able to bear it.  But the subjecting the will is a thing which must be done at once, and the sooner the better.”  “Then a child is capable of being governed by the reason and piety of its parents, till its own understanding comes to maturity.”

Again she writes:  “Cowardice and fear of punishment often lead children into lying,” and accordingly, to save her own from temptation, the rule was—­“whoever was charged with a fault of which they were guilty, if they would ingenuously confess it and promise to amend should not be beaten.”  The most careful discrimination was made between inadvertent and deliberate falsehood.

“If they amended, they were never upbraided afterward.”  Kindly commendation was regularly awarded to obedience evidently done at a sacrifice.  “When the thing crossed the child’s own inclinations, and when any of them performed an act of obedience, or did any thing with an intention to please, though the performance was not well, yet the obedience and intention were kindly accepted, and the child with sweetness directed how to do better for the future.”

Recreation was liberally allowed, and outdoor physical amusements encouraged.  “High glee and frolic,” so notably appearing in the narrative that, in after days, some writers thought to turn this matter against John Wesley, remarking that he had himself been indulged by his mother at home in amusements which he was now prohibiting to the students under him at college.  He made the difference of age and the demands of duty his defence, rather than any difference of principle.

Here, surely, the motherly instinct of this remarkable woman may be of use to-day, in clearing the line of duty in the question of amusements.

“Your arguments against horse-races do certainly conclude against masquerades, balls, plays, operas, and all such light and vain diversions.  I will not say it is impossible for a person to have any sense of religion who frequents these; but I never, throughout the course of my long life, knew as much as one serious Christian that did; nor can I see how a lover of God can have any relish for them.”

“Take this rule—­whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things—­in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind—­that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself.”

She fixed the age of five for the teaching to a child the letters of the alphabet; and tells us that in all cases except two, the first day saw the conquest of the alphabet.  The birthday festivities over, next morning the child went to the schoolroom of the house, where no one must come into the room from “nine till twelve or from two till five,” while the teacher devoted herself entirely to that one pupil.  Another feature of the method was the abolition of the study of syllables, and the immediate and usually successful advance into words and sentences, such as the opening verses of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”