A PARENT WHO TRIED BOB INGERSOLL'S METHOD.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), 10 March 1881, Page 4

A PARENT WHO TRIED 808 INGERSOLL'S METHOD.

(Prom the Springfield, Mass,, Republican.)

Col. Bob Ingersoll says he keeps a pocketbook in an open drawer, and his children go and help themselves to money whenever they want it.

" They eat ~svhen they -want to ; they may sleep all day if they choose, and sit up all night if they desire. I don't try to coerce them. I never punish, never scold, They buy their own clothes, and are masters of themselves.',

A gentleman living on Marshall street, who has a boy who is full as kitteny as his father, read the article and pondered deeply. He knew that Col. Ingersoll was a success at raising children in the way they should go, and he thought he would try it. The boy had caused him considerable annoyance, and he made up his mind that he had not treated the boy right, so he called the boy up from the street, where he was putting soft-soap on a lamp-post in order to see the lamp-lighter climb it, and said to him :

" My son, I have decided to adopt a different course with you. Heretofore I have been careful about giving you money, and have wanted to know where every cent went to, and my supervision has, nc. doubt, been annoying to you. Now I'm going to leave my pocket-book in the bureau drawer, with plenty of fhoney in it, and you are at liberty to use all you want without asking me. I want you to buy anything you desire to j buy your own clothes, and feel as though the money was yours, and that you had not to account for it. Just make yourself at home now, and try and have a good time."

The boy looked at the old gentleman, put his hand on his head, as though he had "got 'em sure," and went out to see the lamplighter climb that soft-soap. The next day the stern parent went out into the country shooting, and returned on the midnight train three days later. He opened the door with a latch key, and a strange yellow dog grabbed him by the elbow of his pants and Bhook him, he said "like the aguv."

The dog barked and chewed until the son came down in liis night shirt and called him off. He told his father he had bought that dog of a fireman for eleven dollars, and it was the best dog bargain that had been made this season. He said the fireman told him he could find a man that wanted that kind of dog.

The parent took off his pants, what the dog had not removed, and in the hall he stumbled over a birch bark canoe the boy bought of an Indian for nine dollars, and an army musket with an iron ramrod fell down from the corner. The boy had paid six dollars for that. He had also bought himself an overcoat with a sealskin collar and cuffs, and a complete outfit of calico shirts and silk stockings.

In his room the parent found tho rnable top of a soda fountain, a wheelbarrow and shelf filled with all kinds of canned meat, preserves, and crackers, and a barrel of apples. A wall tent and six pairs of blankets were rolled up ready for camping out, and a buckskin shirt and a pair of corduroy pants lay on the bed ready for pulling on. Six fish poles and a basketful of fish iines were ready for business, and an oyster can full of grub-worms for bait were squirming on tho washstand. The old gentleman looked the lay-out over, looked at his pocket-book in tho bureau drawer, as empty as a contribution box, and said, —

" Young man, the times have been too flush. We will now return to a specie basis. When you want money come to me, and I will give you a nickel, and you will tell me what you intend to buy with it or I'll warm you. You hear me !"