ss in working the reformation of Zack--the smile which was now
on his face would have left it in a moment; and, for the first time
in his life, he would have sat before one of his own pictures in the
character of an unhappy man.

CHAPTER IX. THE TRIBULATIONS OF ZACK.

A week elapsed before Mrs. Blyth's wavering health permitted her husband
to open the sittings of his evening drawing-academy in the invalid room.

During every day of that week, the chances of taming down Zack into
a reformed character grew steadily more and more hopeless. The lad's
home-position, at this period, claims a moment's serious attention.
Zack's resistance to his father's infatuated severity was now shortly to
end in results of the last importance to himself, to his family, and to
his friends.

A specimen has already been presented of Mr. Thorpe's method of
religiously educating his son, at six years old, by making him attend a
church service of two hours in length; as, also, of the manner in
which he sought to drill the child into premature discipline by dint of
Sabbath restrictions and Select Bible Texts. When that child grew to a
boy, and when the boy developed to a young man, Mr. Thorpe's educational
system still resolutely persisted in being what it had always been
from the first. His idea of Religion defined it to be a system of
prohibitions; and, by a natural consequence, his idea of Education
defined _that_ to be a system of prohibitions also.

His method of bringing up his son once settled, no earthly consideration
could move him from it an inch, one way or the other. He had two
favorite phrases to answer every form of objection, every variety of
reasoning, every citation of examples. No matter with what arguments
the surviving members of Mrs. Thorpe's family from time to time assailed
him, the same two replies were invariably shot back at them in turn from
the parental quiver. Mr. Thorpe calmly--always calmly--said, first, that
he "would never compound with vice" (which was what nobody asked him
to do), and, secondly, that he would, in no instance, great or small,
"consent to act from a principle of expediency:" this last assertion, in
the case of Zack, being about equivalent to saying that if he set out
to walk due north, and met a lively young bull galloping with his head
down, due south, he would not consent to save his own bones, or yield
the animal space enough to run on, by stepping aside a single inch in a
lateral d