s other musical instruments. He wasn't nearly so bad as
Alcibiades, but his mother lavished on him her maudlin love, and allowed
the fallacy to grow in his mind concerning the divinity that doth hedge
a king. In fact, when he asked his mother about his real father, she hid
the truth that his father was a rogue--perhaps to shield herself, for it
is only a very great person who can tell the truth--and led him to
believe his paternal parent was a god, and his birth miraculous. Now,
let such an idea get into the head of the average freshman and what will
be the result? A woman can tell a full-grown man that he is the greatest
thing that ever happened, and it does no special harm, for the man knows
better than to go out on the street and proclaim it; but you tell a boy
of eighteen such pleasing fallacies, and then have fawning courtiers
back them up, and at the same time give the youth free access to the
strong box, and it surely would be a miracle if he is not doubly damned,
and quickly, too. Agrippina would not allow the blunt old Burrus to
discipline her boy, and Seneca's plan was one of concession--he loved
peace. He hated to thwart the boy, because he knew that it would arouse
the ire of the mother, whose love had run away with her commonsense.
Love is beautiful--soft, yielding, gentle love--but the common law of
England upholds wife-beating as being justifiable and desirable on
certain occasions.

The real trouble was, the dam was out for Agrippina and Nero--there was
no restraint for either. There was no one to teach them that the liberty
of one man ends where the right of another begins. No more frightful
condition for any man or woman can ever occur than this: to take away
all responsibility.

When Socrates put the chesty Alcibiades three points down, and jumped on
his stomach with his knees, the youth had a month in bed, and after he
got around again he possessed a most wholesome regard for his teacher.
If Burrus and Seneca had applied Brockway methods to Agrippina and her
saucy son, as they easily might, it would have made Rome howl with
delight, and saved the State as well as the individuals.

Julius Caesar, like Lincoln, let everybody do as they wished, up to a
certain point. But all realized that somewhere behind that dulcet voice
and the gentle manner was a heart of flint and nerves of steel. No woman
ever made Julius Caesar dance to syncopated time, nor did a youth of
eighteen ever successfully order him to