morning, and it has,
of course, given your mother and me much pain. It is not the
money that we care about, but that our son should have
deliberately undertaken, or pretended to undertake, what he must
have known at the time he could not perform himself.

"I have written to my bankers to pay 100L. at once to your
account at the Oxford Bank. I have also requested my solicitor to
go over to Oxford, and he will probably call on you the day after
you receive this. You say that this person who holds your note of
hand is now in Oxford. You will see him in the presence of my
solicitor, to whom you will hand the note when you have recovered
it. I shall consider afterwards what further steps will have to
be taken in the matter.

"You will not be of age for a year. It will be time enough then
to determine whether you will repay the balance of this money out
of the legacy to which you will be entitled under your
grandfather's will. In the meantime, I shall deduct at the rate
of 50L. a year from your allowance and I shall hold your bond in
honor to reduce your expenditure by this amount. You are no
longer a boy, and one of the first duties which a man owes to his
friends and to society is to live within his income.

"I make this advance to you on two conditions. First, that you
will never again put your hand to a note or bill in a transaction
of this kind. If you have money, lend it or spend it. You may
lend or spend foolishly, but that is not the point here; at any
rate you are dealing with what is your own. But in transactions
of this kind you are dealing with what is not your own. A
gentleman should shrink from the possibility of having to come on
others, even on his own father, for the fulfillment of his
obligations, as he would from a lie. I would sooner see a son of
mine in his grave than crawling on through life a slave to wants
and habits which he must gratify at other people's expense.

"My second condition is, that you put an end to your acquaintance
with these two gentlemen who have led you into this scrape, and
have divided the proceeds of your joint note between them. They
are both your seniors in standing, you say, and they appear to be
familiar with this plan of raising money at the expense of other
people. The plain English word for such doings is, swindling.
What pains me most is, that you have become intimate with young
men of this kind. I am not sure that it will not be my duty to
lay the whole matter bef