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In all matters of number, quantity, order, and punctuality, Harry must be humored. It is a harmless peculiarity, and there will be no peace if he is crossed. If he insists upon laying his little brother's tricks only in rows, or only in diamonds or squares, he must be coaxed into another room, unless the little brother be capable of the self-denial of giving up the point and taking to some other play. It is often a hard matter enough for the parents to do justice among the little ones: but we can testify, because we have seen, what wonders of magnanimity may be wrought among little children, servants, and every body, by fine sense, and sweet and cheerful patience on the part of the governing powers of the household. They may have sudden occasion for patience on their own account too. Perhaps the father comes home very tired, needing his coffee. His coffee is made and ready. So they think: but lo poor Harry, who has an irresistible propensity to pour into each other all things that can be poured, has turned the coffee into the brine that the hams have just come out of; and then the brine and the coffee and the cream all back again into the coffee-pot, and so on. Such things, happening every day, make a vast difference in the ease, cheerfulness and economy of a household. They are, in truth, a most serious and unintermitting trial. They make the discipline of the household: and they indicate what must be the blessing of such institutions for the care and training of idiots as were celebrated in the paper we have referred to.

As for the discipline of Harry himself, it must be discipline; for every consideration of humanity, and, of course, of parental affection, points out the sin of spoiling him. To humor, in the sense of spoiling, an idiot, is to level him with the brutes at once. One might as well do with him what used to be done with such beings -- consign him to the sty, to sleep with the pigs, or chain him up like the dog -- as indulge the animal part of a being who does not possess the faculties that counteract animality in other people. Most idiots have a remarkable tendency to imitation: and this is an admirable means of domestic training -- for both the defective child and the rest. The youngest will smother its sobs at the soap in its eye, if appealed to, to let poor Harry see how cheerfully every body ought to be washed every morning. The youngest will take the hint not to ask for more pudding, because Harry must take what is given him, and not see any body cry for more. Crying is conquered -- self-conquered -- throughout the house, because Harry imitates every thing; and it would be very sad if he got a habit of crying, because he could not be comforted like other people. As the other children learn self-conquest from motive, in this way Harry will be learning it from imitation. He will insist upon being properly washed and combed, and upon having no more than his plateful -- or his two platesful -- at dinner: and so on. The difficult thing to manage at home is the occupation: and this is where lies the great superiority of schools or asylums for his class. His father may perhaps get him taught basket-making, or spinning with a wheel, or cabinet-making, in a purely mechanical way; but this is less easily done at home than in a school. Done it must be, in the one place or the other, if the sufferer and his companions in life are to have any justice, and any domestic leisure and comfort. The strong faculty of imitation usually existing among the class, seems (as we said just now, in reference to the faculties of idiots in general) a sort of miracle before the nature of the brain-organization was truly conceived of. How many elderly people now remember how aghast they were, as children, at the story of the idiot youth, not being able to do without the mother, who had never left him while she lived: and how, when every body supposed him asleep, and the neighbors were themselves asleep, he went out and got the body, and set it up in the fireside chair, and made a roaring fire, and heated some broth, and was found, restlessly moaning with distress, while trying to feed the corpse. And that other story -- a counterpart to which we know of our own knowledge -- of the idiot boy who had lived close under a church steeple, and had always struck the hours with the clock; and who, when removed into the country, far away from church, clock, and watch, still went on striking the hours, and quite correctly, without any visible means of knowing the time. What could we, in childhood, and the rest of the world, in the ignorance of that day, make of such facts, but that they must be miraculous The most marvelous, to our mind, is a trait which, again, we know of our own knowledge. An idiot, who died many years ago at the age of thirty, lost his mother when he was under two years old. His idiocy had been obvious from the earliest time that it could be manifested; and when the eldest sister took the mother's place, the child appeared to find no difference. From the mode of feeling of the family, the mother was never spoken of; and if she had been, such mention would have been nothing to the idiot son, who comprehended no conversation. He spent his life in scribbling on the slate, and hopping round the play-ground of the school kept by his brother-in-law, singing after his own fashion. He had one special piece of business besides, and one prodigious pleasure. The business was going daily, after breakfast, to speak to the birds in the wood behind the house; and the supreme pleasure was turning the mangle. Most of us would have reversed the business and pleasure. When his last illness -- consumption -- came upon him at the age of thirty, the sister had been long dead; and there were none of his own family, we believe, living; certainly none had for many years had any intercourse with him. For some days before his death, when he ought to have been in bed, nothing but a too distressing force could keep him from going to the birds. On the last day, when his weakness was extreme, he tried to rise, managed to sit up in bed, and said he must go-the birds would wonder so! The brother-in-law offered to go and explain to the birds; and this must perforce do. The dying man lay, with his eyes closed, and breathing his life away in slower and slower gasps, when he suddenly turned his head, looked bright and sensible, and exclaimed in a tone never heard from him before, "Oh! my mother! how beautiful !" and sank round again -- dead.