ting, and men did not see why
they should not have their own way if no evil consequences to themselves
seemed likely to follow upon their doing so. Then as now, however, they
sometimes let themselves in for more evil consequences than they had
bargained for.

Like other rich men at the beginning of this century he ate and drank a
good deal more than was enough to keep him in health. Even his excellent
constitution was not proof against a prolonged course of overfeeding and
what we should now consider overdrinking. His liver would not
unfrequently get out of order, and he would come down to breakfast
looking yellow about the eyes. Then the young people knew that they had
better look out. It is not as a general rule the eating of sour grapes
that causes the children's teeth to be set on edge. Well-to-do parents
seldom eat many sour grapes; the danger to the children lies in the
parents eating too many sweet ones.

I grant that at first sight it seems very unjust, that the parents should
have the fun and the children be punished for it, but young people should
remember that for many years they were part and parcel of their parents
and therefore had a good deal of the fun in the person of their parents.
If they have forgotten the fun now, that is no more than people do who
have a headache after having been tipsy overnight. The man with a
headache does not pretend to be a different person from the man who got
drunk, and claim that it is his self of the preceding night and not his
self of this morning who should be punished; no more should offspring
complain of the headache which it has earned when in the person of its
parents, for the continuation of identity, though not so immediately
apparent, is just as real in one case as in the other. What is really
hard is when the parents have the fun after the children have been born,
and the children are punished for this.

On these, his black days, he would take very gloomy views of things and
say to himself that in spite of all his goodness to them his children did
not love him. But who can love any man whose liver is out of order? How
base, he would exclaim to himself, was such ingratitude! How especially
hard upon himself, who had been such a model son, and always honoured and
obeyed his parents though they had not spent one hundredth part of the
money upon him which he had lavished upon his own children. "It is
always the same story," he would say to himself, "the