EXCEPTIONS TO ONE OF KING SOLOMON'S RULES—A WINTER'S EVENING AT
DANIEL'S FIRE-SIDE.
These are my thoughts; I might have spun them out into a greater
length, but I think a little plot of ground, thick sown, is better
than a great field which, for the most part of it, lies fallow.
NORRIS.
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old his feet
will not depart from it.” Generally speaking it will be found so; but
is there any other rule to which there are so many exceptions?
Ask the serious Christian as he calls himself, or the Professor
(another and more fitting appellative which the Christian Pharisees
have chosen for themselves)—ask him whether he has found it hold good?
Whether his sons when they attained to years of discretion (which are
the most indiscreet years in the course of human life) have profited
as he expected by the long extemporaneous prayers to which they
listened night and morning, the sad sabbaths which they were compelled
to observe, and the soporific sermons which closed the domestic
religiosities of those melancholy days? Ask him if this discipline has
prevented them from running headlong into the follies and vices of the
age? from being birdlimed by dissipation? or caught in the spider's
web of sophistry and unbelief? “It is no doubt a true observation,”
says Bishop Patrick, “that the ready way to make the minds of youth
grow awry, is to lace them too hard, by denying them their just
freedom.”
Ask the old faithful servant of Mammon, whom Mammon has rewarded to
his heart's desire, and in whom the acquisition of riches has only
encreased his eagerness for acquiring more—ask him whether he has
succeeded in training up his heir to the same service? He will tell
you that the young man is to be found upon race-grounds, and in
gaming-houses, that he is taking his swing of extravagance and excess,
and is on the high road to ruin.
Ask the wealthy Quaker, the pillar of the meeting—most orthodox in
heterodoxy,—who never wore a garment of forbidden cut or colour, never
bent his body in salutation, or his knees in prayer,—never uttered the
heathen name of a day or month, nor ever addrest himself to any person
without religiously speaking illegitimate English,—ask him how it has
happened that the tailor has converted his sons? He will fold his
hands, and twirl his thumbs mournfully in silence. It has not been for
want of training them in the way wherein it was his wish that they
should go.
You are about, Sir, to send your son to a public school; Eton or
Westminster; Winchester or Harrow; Rugby or the Charter House, no
matter which. He may come from either an accomplished scholar to the
utmost extent that school education can make him so; he may be the
better both for its discipline and its want of discipline; it may
serve him excellently well as a preparatory school for the world into
which he is about to enter. But also he may come away an empty coxcomb
or a hardened brute—a spendthrift—a profligate—a blackguard or a sot.
To put a boy in the way he should go, is like sending out a ship well
found, well manned and stored, and with a careful captain; but there
are rocks and shallows in her course, winds and currents to be
encountered, and all the contingencies and perils of the sea.
How often has it been seen that sons, not otherwise deficient in duty
toward their parents, have, in the most momentous concerns of life,
taken the course most opposite to that in which they were trained to
go, going wrong where the father would have directed them aright, or
taking the right path in spite of all inducements and endeavours for
leading them wrong! The son of Charles Wesley, born and bred in
methodism and bound to it by all the strongest ties of pride and
prejudice, became a papist. This indeed was but passing from one
erroneous persuasion to another, and a more inviting one. But Isaac
Casaubon also had the grief of seeing a son seduced into the Romish
superstition, and on the part of that great and excellent man, there
had been no want of discretion in training him, nor of sound learning
and sound wisdom. Archbishop Leighton, an honor to his church, his
country, and his kind, was the child of one of those firebrands who
kindled the Great Rebellion. And Franklin had a son, who
notwithstanding the example of his father (and such a father!)
continued stedfast in his duty as a soldier and a subject; he took the
unsuccessful side—but
_nunquam successu crescat honestum._[1]
[Footnote 1: LUCAN.]
No such disappointment was destined to befal our Daniel. The way in
which he trained up his son was that into which the bent of the boy's
own nature would have led him; and all circumstances combined to
favour the tendency of his education. The country abounding in natural
objects of sublimity and beauty (some of these singular in their kind)
might have impressed a duller imagination than had fallen to his lot;
and that imagination had time enough for its workings during his
solitary walks to and from school morning and evening. His home was in
a lonely spot; and having neither brother nor sister, nor neighbours
near enough in any degree to supply their place as playmates, he
became his father's companion imperceptibly as he ceased to be his
fondling. And the effect was hardly less apparent in Daniel than in
the boy. He was no longer the same taciturn person as of yore; it
seemed as if his tongue had been loosened, and when the reservoirs of
his knowledge were opened they flowed freely.
Their chimney corner on a winter's evening presented a group not
unworthy of Sir Joshua's pencil. There sate Daniel, richer in
marvellous stories than ever traveller who in the days of mendacity
returned from the East; the peat fire shining upon a countenance which
weather-hardened as it was, might have given the painter a model for a
Patriarch, so rare was the union which it exhibited of intelligence,
benevolence and simplicity. There sate the boy with open eyes and
ears, raised head, and fallen lip, in all the happiness of wonder and
implicit belief. There sate Dinah, not less proud of her husband's
learning than of the towardly disposition and promising talents of her
son,—twirling the thread at her spinning wheel, but attending to all
that past; and when there was a pause in the discourse, fetching a
deep sigh, and exclaiming “Lord bless us! what wonderful things there
are in the world!” There also sate Haggy, knitting stockings, and
sharing in the comforts and enjoyments of the family when the day's
work was done. And there sate William Dove;—but William must have a
chapter to himself.