ABSTRACT
To make children happy is not difficult. It requires only affection, common sense, and good spirits. But I am constantly told by my friends – and not only by the highbrows among them – that those who make children happy unfit them for later life. The highbrow tells me that the world is a horrible place which can only be endured by those who have never experienced happiness and therefore do not miss it. The ordinary citizen tells me that it was not by means of happiness in his early years that he was made into the man he is. No, sir, it was by stern discipline, by the austere experience of going without, by toil and hardship and severity.
