n be trained to strict
moderation, abstinence in both alcohol and tobacco must after a time
come of the lad's own free will; the last thing that answers is to
multiply and enforce restrictions; the rebound is inevitable and often
fatal. But I do say that where there is a great pinching in the home in
order to afford the educational advantages of school and university, it
does show some radical defect in the training of our boys that they
should indulge in such expensive habits, especially the expensive and
wholly unnecessary habit of smoking, when the dear mother and young
sisters are doing without many a little home comfort in order to meet
the expense of the young rascal's education. One rich old grandmother
whom I met abroad promised each of her grandsons fifty pounds if they
would give up smoking; and it was marvellous how that stern necessity of
doing as other young men do disappeared like their own tobacco smoke
before the promise of that fifty pounds for their own pockets! They were
all able to claim it one after the other. If boys were not trained by
their mothers to be systematically selfish, might not the home-claims in
the heart be as strong as those fifty pounds in the pocket?

Secondly, with regard to betting and gambling, which may be classed with
drinking, as the fruitful parent of bad company, and a _descensus ad
infernum_:--do you not think a boy may be best guarded against a habit
of betting, which is so likely to lead on to gambling, by taking the
same line as a boy of my acquaintance took with his mother when she was
warning him against it: "Well, mother, you see, it always does seem so
mean to me to get a fellow's money from him without giving him anything
in return; it always does seem so like prigging, and some of our fellows
are awfully hard up, and can't afford to lose a penny." Mr. Gladstone
was evidently of the same opinion when he once said to his private
secretary, Sir Edward Hamilton, that he "regarded gambling as nothing
short of damnable. What can be the fun of winning other people's money?"
This strikes me as a way of putting it which would appeal most forcibly
to a boy; and if, in addition, we were to point out to him that, like
all shady things, it has a tendency to grow and sharpen the man into a
sharper and develop the blood-sucking apparatus of a leech, besides
bringing wretchedness and misery on others, he might be led to resist
the first beginnings of a betting habit which may lead