Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/75

 to work to clean and scrub, that no foul spot maj offend the stranger's eye; and will you not bestir yourself that your son may see nothing but what is pure and spotless within his home? The stork, the vulture, the eagle all follow in the ways pointed out to them in the parental nest. Cretonius half ruined himself by building; his son completed the ruin by building grander and more sumptuous mansions. If the father keeps the Sabbath, the son will carry his superstition further still; he will flout the laws of Rome, and observe the secret rites and practices of Moses.

The one and only vice which the young practise unwillingly is that of avarice, since it has a spurious appearance of virtue. Hence fathers take double pains, both by precept and example, to instil the love of money into their sons; they practise the meanest economies that they may be wealthy when they die. Our hardy ancestors, broken by wounds and years, deemed themselves happy with a reward of two acres, which to-day would not be thought big enough for a garden. In the hurry to be rich no law is regarded, no crime stops the way. Foreign purple has banished the hardy contentment of the old Marsian and Hernican heroes, and opened the door to every villainy. When the father bids his son rise at midnight to seek for gain, telling him that lucre smells sweet whatever the source from which it comes, he is instructing him to cheat, to cozen, and lxxi