This is true, that the best government is least seen. It is not noisy, mandatory, exacting. It is not always talking about itself and what it will do. It does not threaten, nor yet require all it wants to get. Its method are more indirect. It sets about giving employment and active, happy, useful life to every member of the household. It fills every idle hand with something it likes to do. It studies the differing dispositions and employs them in the most congenial ways. It does not scold. It rather plans and meets opposition in other and more sympathetic ways. It takes new tacts and turns unpleasant currents and keeps at bay unpleasant subjects. It absolutely prohibits those things God prohibits, and labors to instill Godly self-control and discernment in those who are governed. It finds as little fault as it can, having learned that faultfinding is not governing, but weakening government. It keeps down fretfulness, for that is an irritant even to good dispositions. If fret is inside, it tries to keep it there. If it comes to the tongue in sharp and disagreeable words, it swallows them down as much as possible. It remembers that he who would govern others must first govern himself. The self-poised, peaceful mind imparts this noble quality to those it would govern. Half the power of government is in what the governor imparts of self-control to the governed. All true government is self-government. The true teacher governs by quickening self-government in his scholars. The true parent governs in the same way. The home which is self-governed is a home indeed. When both parents are so self-governed as to keep levelheaded, cool-tongued, warmhearted, and the children so much under their influence as to be happily led by them without knowing they are led or thinking of it, the home is governed in the true way.