FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135  
136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   >>   >|  
irection, east or west. "My son requires the most unremitting parental discipline and control," Mr. Thorpe remarked, in explanation of his motives for forcing Zack to adopt a commercial career. "When he is not under my own eye at home, he must be under the eyes of devout friends, in whom I can place unlimited confidence. One of these devout friends is ready to receive him into his counting-house; to keep him industriously occupied from nine in the morning till six in the evening; to surround him with estimable examples; and, in short, to share with me the solemn responsibility of managing his moral and religious training. Persons who ask me to allow motives of this awfully important nature to be modified in the smallest degree by any considerations connected with the lad's natural disposition (which has been a source of grief to me from his childhood) with his bodily gifts of the flesh (which have hitherto only served to keep him from the cultivation of the gifts of the spirit); or with his own desires (which I know by bitter experience to be all of the world, worldly);--persons, I say, who ask me to do any of these things, ask me also to act from a godless principle of expediency, and to violate moral rectitude by impiously compounding with vice." Acting on such principles of parental discipline as these, Mr. Thorpe conscientiously believed that he had done his duty, when he had at last forced his son into the merchant's office. He had, in truth, perpetrated one of the most serious mistakes which it is possible for a wrong-headed father to commit. For once, Zack had not exaggerated in saying that his aversion to employment in a counting-house amounted to absolute horror. His physical peculiarities, and the habits which they had entailed on him from boyhood, made life in the open air, and the constant use of his hardy thews and sinews a constitutional necessity. He felt--and there was no self-delusion in the feeling--that he should mope and pine, like a wild animal in a cage, under confinement in an office, only varied from morning to evening by commercial walking expeditions of a miserable mile or two in close and crowded streets. These forebodings--to say nothing of his natural yearning towards adventure, change of scene, and exhilarating bodily exertion--would have been sufficient of themselves to have decided him to leave his home, and battle his way through the world (he cared not where or how, so long as he batt
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135  
136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
morning
 

evening

 

discipline

 
parental
 
counting
 
office
 

natural

 

bodily

 

Thorpe

 

devout


commercial
 
friends
 

motives

 

boyhood

 

merchant

 

constant

 

mistakes

 

habits

 

employment

 

amounted


father
 

perpetrated

 

commit

 
aversion
 

exaggerated

 
headed
 
peculiarities
 

physical

 

absolute

 

horror


entailed

 

confinement

 
change
 
exhilarating
 

exertion

 
adventure
 

streets

 

forebodings

 

yearning

 

sufficient


decided

 

battle

 
crowded
 

delusion

 
feeling
 
constitutional
 

necessity

 

expeditions

 
walking
 

miserable