his children were too young to offer serious resistance. If their
wills were "well broken" in childhood, to use an expression then
much in vogue, they would acquire habits of obedience which they would
not venture to break through till they were over twenty-one years old.
Then they might please themselves; he should know how to protect
himself; till then he and his money were more at their mercy than he
liked.

  How little do we know our thoughts- our reflex actions indeed,
yes; but our reflections! Man, forsooth, prides himself on his
consciousness! We boast that we differ from the winds and waves and
falling stones and plants, which grow they know not why, and from
the wandering creatures which go up and down after their prey, as we
are pleased to say, without the help of reason. We know so well what
we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we not? I fancy that there
is some truth in the view which is being put forward nowadays, that it
is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which
mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

  CHAPTER VI

  MR. Pontifex was not the man to trouble himself much about his
motives. People were not so introspective then as we are now; they
lived more according to a rule of thumb. Dr. Arnold had not yet sown
that crop of earnest thinkers which we are now harvesting, and men did
not see why they should not have their own way if no evil consequences
to themselves seemed likely to follow upon their doing so. Then as
now, however, they sometimes let themselves in for more evil
consequences than they had bargained for.

  Like other rich men at the beginning of this century he ate and
drank a good deal more than was enough to keep him in health. Even his
excellent constitution was not proof against a prolonged course of
overfeeding and what we should now consider overdrinking. His liver
would not infrequently get out of order, and he would come down to
breakfast looking yellow about the eyes. Then the young people knew
that they had better look out. It is not as a general rule the
eating of sour grapes that causes the children's teeth to be set on
edge. Well-to-do parents seldom eat many sour grapes; the danger to
the children lies in the parents eating too many sweet ones.

  I grant that at first sight it seems very unjust that the parents
should have the full and the children be punished for it, but young
people should remember that for many years they were part and parcel
of their parents and therefore had a good deal of the full in the
person of their parents. If they have forgotten the full now, that. is
no more than people do who have a headache after having been tipsy
overnight. 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 really hard is
when the parents have the full 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 all 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 especially 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 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; all he saw was that he was spending much more money
upon his children than the law would have compelled 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 well he would have them in for the
full of shaking his will at them. He would in his imagination cut them
all out one after another and leave his money to found almshouses,
found almshouses, till 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 allow their conduct to be in any way