ble hereafter by having wishes and feelings of its
own.

"In later life, when you have been finally allowed to pass muster as a
full member of the world, you will yourself become liable to the
pesterings of the unborn--and a very happy life you may be led in
consequence! For we solicit so strongly that a few only--nor these the
best--can refuse us; and yet not to refuse is much the same as going into
partnership with half a dozen different people about whom one can know
absolutely nothing beforehand--not even whether one is going into
partnership with men or women, nor with how many of either. Delude not
yourself with thinking that you will be wiser than your parents. You may
be an age in advance of _them_, but unless you are one of the great ones
(and if you are one of the great ones, woe betide you), you will still be
an age behind your children.

"Imagine what it must be to have an unborn quartered upon you, who is of
a different temperament to your own; nay, half a dozen such, who will not
love you though you may tell them that you have stinted yourself in a
thousand ways to provide for their well-being,--who will forget all that
self-sacrifice of which you are yourself so conscious, and of whom you
may never be sure that they are not bearing a grudge against you for
errors of judgment into which you may have fallen, but which you had
hoped had been long since atoned for. Ingratitude such as this is not
uncommon, yet fancy what it must be to bear! It is hard upon the
duckling to have been hatched by a hen, but is it not also hard upon the
hen to have hatched the duckling?

"Consider it again, we pray you, not for our sake but for your own. Your
initial character you must draw by lot; but whatever it is, it can only
come to a tolerably successful development after long training; remember
that over that training you will have no control. It is possible, and
even probable, that whatever you may get in after life which is of real
pleasure and service to you, will have to be won in spite of, rather than
by the help of, those whom you are now about to pester, and that you will
only win your freedom after years of a painful struggle, in which it will
be hard to say whether you have suffered most injury, or inflicted it.

"Remember also, that if you go into the world you will have free will;
that you will be obliged to have it, that there is no escaping it, that
you will be fettered to it during your whole life, a