nd was consequently possessed of
an hereditary tendency to pluck at forbidden fruit; and that his
disposition and age made it next to a certainty, that if he were
restrained from enjoying openly the amusements most attractive to him,
he would probably end in enjoying them by stealth. Mr. Thorpe met
all arguments of this kind by registering his usual protest against
"compounding with vice;" and then drew the reins of discipline tighter
than ever, by way of warning off all intrusive hands from attempting to
relax them for the future.

Before long, the evil results predicted by the opponents of the father's
plan for preventing the son from indulging in public amusements,
actually occurred. At first, Zack gratified his taste for the drama, by
going to the theater whenever he felt inclined; leaving the performances
early enough to get home by eleven o'clock, and candidly acknowledging
how he had occupied the evening, when the question was asked at
breakfast the next morning. This frankness of confession was always
rewarded by rebukes, threats, and reiterated prohibitions, administered
by Mr. Thorpe with a crushing assumption of superiority to every
mitigating argument, entreaty, or excuse that his son could urge, which
often irritated Zack into answering defiantly, and recklessly repeating
his offense. Finding that all menaces and reproofs only ended in making
the lad ill-tempered and insubordinate for days together, Mr. Thorpe so
far distrusted his own powers of correction as to call in the aid of his
prime clerical adviser, the Reverend Aaron Yollop; under whose ministry
he sat, and whose portrait, in lithograph, hung in the best light on the
dining-room wall at Baregrove Square.

Mr. Yollop's interference was at least weighty enough to produce a
positive and immediate result: it drove Zack to the very last limits of
human endurance. The reverend gentleman's imperturbable self possession
defied the young rebel's utmost powers of irritating reply, no matter
how vigorously he might exert them. Once vested with the paternal
commission to rebuke, prohibit, and lecture, as the spiritual pastor and
master of Mr. Thorpe's disobedient son, Mr. Yollop flourished in his new
vocation in exact proportion to the resistance offered to the exercise
of his authority. He derived a grim encouragement from the wildest
explosions of Zack's fury at being interfered with by a man who had
no claim of relationship over him, and who gloried, prof