The man with a headache does not pretend to be a different person from the man who got drunk, and claim that it is his self of the preceding night and not his self of this morning who should be punished; no more should offspring

complain of the headache which it has earned when in the person of its parents, for the continuation of identity, though not so immediately apparent, is just as real in one case as in the other. What is real y hard is when the parents have the fun after the children have been born, and the children are punished for this.On these, his black days, he would take very gloomy views of things and say to himself that in spite of al his goodness to them his children did not love him. But who can love any man whose liver is out of order? How base, he would exclaim to himself, was such ingratitude! How especial y hard upon himself, who had been such a model son, and always honoured and obeyed his parents though they had not spent one hundredth part of the

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money upon him which he had lavished upon his own children. "It is always the same story," he would say to himself, "the more young people have the more they want, and the less thanks one gets; I have made a

great mistake; I have been far too lenient with my children; never mind, I have done my duty by them, and more; if they fail in theirs to me it is a matter between God and them. I, at any rate, am guiltless. Why, I

might have married again and become the father of a second and perhaps more affectionate family, etc., etc." He pitied himself for the expensive education which he was giving his children; he did not see that the education cost the children far more than it cost him, inasmuch as it cost them the power of earning their living easily rather than helped

them towards it, and ensured their being at the mercy of their father for years after they had come to an age when they should be independent. A

public school education cuts off a boy's retreat; he can no longer become a labourer or a mechanic, and these are the only people whose tenure of independence is not precarious--with the exception of course of those who are born inheritors of money or who are placed young in some safe and

deep groove. Mr Pontifex saw nothing of this; al he saw was that he was spending much more money upon his children than the law would have

compel ed him to do, and what more could you have? Might he not have apprenticed both his sons to greengrocers? Might he not even yet do so to-morrow morning if he were so minded? The possibility of this course being adopted was a favourite topic with him when he was out of temper; true, he never did apprentice either of his sons to greengrocers, but his boys comparing notes together had sometimes come to the conclusion that they wished he would.At other times when not quite wel he would have them in for the fun of shaking his wil at them. He would in his imagination cut them al out

one after another and leave his money to found almshouses, til at last he was obliged to put them back, so that he might have the pleasure of

cutting them out again the next time he was in a passion.Of course if young people al ow their conduct to be in any way influenced

by regard to the wil s of living persons they are doing very wrong and must expect to be sufferers in the end, nevertheless the powers of wil dangling and wil shaking are so liable to abuse and are continual y made so great an engine of torture that I would pass a law, if I could, to

incapacitate any man from making a wil for three months from the date of each offence in either of the above respects and let the bench of

magistrates or judge, before whom he has been convicted, dispose of his property as they shal think right and reasonable if he dies during the time that his wil -making power is suspended.Mr Pontifex would have the boys into the dining-room. "My dear John, my dear Theobald," he would say, "look at me. I began life with nothing but the clothes with which my father and mother sent me up to London. My

father gave me ten shil ings and my mother five for pocket money and I thought them munificent. I never asked my father for a shil ing in the whole course of my life, nor took aught from him beyond the smal sum he used to al ow me monthly til I was in receipt of a salary. I made my

own way and I shal expect my sons to do the same. Pray don't take it into your heads that I am going to wear my life out making money that my sons may spend it for me. If you want money you must make it for

yourselves as I did, for I give you my word I wil not leave a penny to Page 15

Butler, Samuel: The Way of All Flesh

either of you unless you show that you deserve it. Young people seem nowadays to expect al kinds of luxuries and indulgences which were never heard of when I was a boy. Why, my father was a common carpenter, and

here you are both of you at public schools, costing me ever so many hundreds a year, while I at your age was plodding away behind a desk in my Uncle Fairlie's counting house. What should I not have done if I had had one half of your advantages? You should become dukes or found new

empires in undiscovered countries, and even then I doubt whether you would have done proportionately so much as I have done. No, no, I shal see you through school and col ege and then, if you please, you wil make your own way in the world."In this manner he would work himself up into such a state of virtuous indignation that he would sometimes thrash the boys then and there upon some pretext invented at the moment.And yet, as children went, the young Pontifexes were fortunate; there would be ten families of young people worse off for one better; they ate and drank good wholesome food, slept in comfortable beds, had the best

doctors to attend them when they were il and the best education that could be had for money. The want of fresh air does not seem much to affect the happiness of children in a London al ey: the greater part of them sing and play as though they were on a moor in Scotland. So the

absence of a genial mental atmosphere is not commonly recognised by children who have never known it. Young people have a marvel ous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they

are unhappy--very unhappy--it is astonishing how easily they can be prevented from finding it out, or at any rate from attributing it to any other cause than their own sinfulness.To parents who wish to lead a quiet life I would say: Tel your children that they are very naughty--much naughtier than most children. Point to the young people of some acquaintances as models of perfection and

impress your own children with a deep sense of their own inferiority. You carry so many more guns than they do that they cannot fight you. This is cal ed moral influence, and it wil enable you to bounce them as much as you please. They think you know and they wil not have yet caught you

lying often enough to suspect that you are not the unworldly and scrupulously truthful person which you represent yourself to be; nor yet wil they know how great a coward you are, nor how soon you wil run

away, if they fight you with persistency and judgement. You keep the dice and throw them both for your children and yourself. Load them then, for you can easily manage to stop your children from examining them.