rning. I scolded him for devoting so much time to his
law club; but he said that the members were, like himself, enthusiastic
students, and that he was always the first to leave their fascinating
debates and mimic trials. A week later, I marked the familiar bloat in
his cheeks, and suspected the truth.

"Placing a watch upon his movements--no easy matter, for he is very
shrewd and cautious--I soon found out that the law club was a myth, and
that his nights were passed in the wildest debauchery. He had not only
resumed all his old vices, but had acquired new ones.

"When I reproved him, as I did with just indignation, he threw off the
mask of concealment, which he said he was tired of wearing, and became
the same bold, defiant, reckless boy that he always was; while I
continued to be the same weak, foolish, fond parent. I cannot recount
the tortures inflicted upon me by my son since that fatal discovery. He
has not only abandoned all his law studies (having been expelled from
the office of Mulroy, Biggup & Lartimore for grossly insulting a young
female client), and utterly ruined his own body and soul, but, by his
acts, he has brought shame upon several families.

"When this new series of outrages came to my knowledge, I threatened to
disinherit him. He laughed at me. He knew how I loved him for his
mother's sake, and, with that hold upon my affections, he defied me.

"To heartless indifference he gradually added insults, and often cursed
me, his own father, in this very room, where his mother has rocked his
cradle a thousand times while she listened to my reading of an old poem
or novel. The last of his crimes of which I have heard, was brought to
my knowledge about six weeks ago. It was a piece of treachery the most
villanous, and I told my son, in plain words, what I thought of it. I
was weak and nervous from an illness which is hereditary in my family,
and I reprimanded him with more severity than usual. I told him, that if
God, in His infinite mercy, spared him, yet he was not secure from just
punishment from the friends of those whom he had wronged, and that the
human vengeance, which had been so long postponed, would surely come. He
looked at me with malice in his small gray eyes (not his mother's eyes),
and, when I ceased speaking, raised both hands to heaven, and, with the
most horrible blasphemy, called down its curses upon me; and then he
swore, that if I crossed his path, or thwarted his plans, or refused h