If children have to obey their parents or guardians, those
parents and guardians are over them in the name of God, and they
must look to it: if in the name of God they act the devil, that
will not prove a light thing for their answer. The causing of the
little ones to offend hangs a fearful woe about the neck of the
causer. It were a hard, as well as a needless task, seeing there
is One who judges, to set forth how far the child is to blame as
toward the parent, where the parent first of all is utterly
wrong, yea out of true relation, toward the child. Not,
therefore, is the child free; obligation remains--modified, it
may be, but how difficult, alas, to fulfill! And, whether Letty
and such as act like her are _excusable_ or not in keeping
attentions paid them a secret, this sorrow for the good ones of
them certainly remains, that, next to a crime, a secret is the
heaviest as well as the most awkward of burdens to carry. It has
to be carried always, and all about. From morning to night it
hurts in tenderest parts, and from night to morning hurts
everywhere. At any expense, let there be openness. Take courage,
my child, and speak out. Dare to speak, I say, and that will give
you strength to resist, should disobedience become a duty.
Letty's first false step was here: she said to herself _I can
not_, and did not. She lacked courage--a want in her case not
much to be wondered at, but much to be deplored, for courage of
the true sort is just as needful to the character of a woman as
of a man.
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