The race of grumblers would soon die out if all children were so trained that never, between the ages of five and twelve, did they utter a needless complaint without being gently reminded that it was foolish and disagreeable.  How easy for a good-natured and watchful mother to do this!  It takes but a word.

“Oh, dear!  I wish it had not rained to-day.  It is too bad!”

“You do not really mean what you say, my darling.  It is of much more consequence that the grass should grow than that you should go out to play.  And it is so silly to complain, when we cannot stop its raining.”

“Mamma, I hate this pie.”

“Oh! hush, dear!  Don’t say so, if you do.  You can leave it.  You need not eat it.  But think how disagreeable it sounds to hear you say such a thing.”

“Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!  I am too cold.”

“Yes, dear, I know you are.  So is mamma.  But we shall not feel any warmer for saying so.  We must wait till the fire burns better; and the time will seem twice as long if we grumble.”

“Oh, mamma! mamma!  My steam-engine is all spoiled.  It won’t run.  I hate things that wind up!”

“But, my dear little boy, don’t grumble so!  What would you think if mamma were to say, ’Oh, dear! oh, dear!  My little boy’s stockings are full of holes.  How I hate to mend stockings!’ and, ’Oh, dear! oh, dear!  My little boy has upset my work-box!  I hate little boys’?”

How they look steadily into your eyes for a minute,—­the honest, reasonable little souls!—­when you say such things to them; and then run off with a laugh, lifted up, for that time, by your fitly spoken words of help.

Oh! if the world could only stop long enough for one generation of mothers to be made all right, what a millennium could be begun in thirty years!

“But, mamma, you are grumbling yourself at me because I grumbled!” says a quick-witted darling not ten years old.  Ah! never shall any weak spot in our armor escape the keen eyes of these little ones.

“Yes, dear!  And I shall grumble at you till I cure you of grumbling.  Grumblers are the only thing in this world that it is right to grumble at.”

“Boys Not Allowed.”

It was a conspicuous signboard, at least four feet long, with large black letters on a white ground:  “Boys not allowed.”  I looked at it for some moments in a sort of bewildered surprise:  I did not quite comprehend the meaning of the words.  At last I understood it.  I was waiting in a large railway station, where many trains connect; and most of the passengers from the train in which I was were eating dinner in a hotel near by.  I was entirely alone in the car, with the exception of one boy, who was perhaps eleven years old.  I made an involuntary ejaculation as I read the words on the sign, and the boy looked around at me.

“Little boy,” said I, solemnly, “do you see that sign?”

He turned his head, and, reading the ominous warning, nodded sullenly, but said nothing.