f
environment with his school-boy son might involve. But there is another
side to the question; and at Christmas-time, for instance, most papas
would probably be glad enough to exchange the joys and responsibilities
of paternity for the simple taste which can tackle plum-pudding and the
youthful digestion for which this delicacy has no terrors. However,
while it is impossible, or at least inexpedient, for papa to play at
being his own urchin, the latter is restrained by no considerations,
moral or otherwise, from attempting to personate his papa.

It is often said sententiously that the child is the father of the man.
In this case most of us should blush for our parentage. It will be
conceded at once (subject, of course, to special reservations in favor
of individual brats) that the baby is the most detestable of created
beings. But its physical impotence to some extent neutralizes its moral
baseness. In the child the deviltries of the baby are partially curbed,
but this loss is compensated for by superior bodily powers. Now, the
virtuous child--if such a conception can be framed--when representing
papa would delight to dwell on the better side of the paternal
character, the finer feelings, the flashes of genius, the sallies of
wit, the little touches of tenderness and romance, and so forth. Very
likely; but the actual child does just the reverse of this. Is there a
trivial weakness, a venial shortcoming, a microscopic spot of
imperfection anywhere? The ruthless little imp has marked it for his
own, and will infallibly reproduce it, certainly before your servants,
and possibly before your friends.

"Now we'll play at being in church," quoth Master George in lordly wise
to his little sisters. "I'm papa." Whereupon he will twist himself into
an unseemly tangle of legs and arms which is simply a barbarous travesty
of the attitude of studied grace with which you drink in the sermon in
the corner of your family pew.

"Master George, you mustn't," interposes the housemaid, in a tone of
faint rebuke, adding, however, with a thrill of generous appreciation,
"Law, 'ow funny the child is, and as like as like!" Applause is
delicious to every actor, and under its stimulus your first-born essays
a fresh flight. Above the laughter of the nurses and the admiring
shrieks of his sisters there rises a weird sound, as of a sucking pig
_in extremis_. Your son, my unfortunate friend, is attempting, with his
childish treble pipes, to form