becomes a person who does not trust people's feeling toward him, whether that feeling be love or respect or esteem or anything else, but lives in an atmosphere of emotional turmoil which soon breeds in him a feeling of inferi-ority, since he supposes there is no one who cares about him; so he withdraws from the world and wraps himself up within himself.

One day, while I was visiting a friend, I noticed that her son—a boy of four—was absorbed in cracking walnuts, and I noticed too that he would strike the walnut and hurt his fingers over and over so that it might crack. Only a moment later the boy came up to his mother, the mark of self-satisfaction drawn on his smiling face, opened his dusty hand, and showed us a fistful of walnut meats, saying: "Here, eat this, Mother; I cracked all the walnuts by myself. I ate the little crushed pieces and kept the big pieces for you." As for

the mother—who had been busy telling me how impossible it was for her to keep her boy clean—she looked at him with disgust and said: "Aren't you ashamed to appear in such filth before our guests? Go back outside and keep this dirty walnut to yourself." No sooner did the boy hear his mother's words than the flush of shame rose in his face; then he looked about him in bewilderment and fear and ran quickly outside.

As soon as he was gone the mother looked at me and said mockingly: "Did you see how small children's minds are? He believed with his whole mind that I would accept his gift." As for me, having been much pained by this incident, I answered: "I wish he had offered me that gift. I would have accepted it from his hand with pleasure. What is a little dust on walnut meats beside wounding the feelings of a child as precious as yours?" The mother fell silent a little; then I heard

her finish, the tears choking her voice: "God keep his heart! There is nothing in the world dearer than he! This is a lesson I shall not forget as long as I live." Then she turned toward me and asked: "Do you think he will ever do it again?"

We mothers have a great duty in life. Our first duty is to develop and preserve the hearts of our children just as we concern ourselves with preserving and developing their minds and bodies. By the parents' patience, their affection, and their full understanding of their children's inner nature, those hearts are delivered from bitterness and rebellion; and by their overflowing love they preserve them from the disease of social paralysis. And let us always remember that whoever possesses a damaged heart cannot love easily; and whoever cannot love others, it is hard for others to love him.