Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/212

 is father of the man; consequently, if you bring a boy up badly, the complete growth of him when he reaches man's estate is hardly likely to be satisfactory.

"It is a dangerous fallacy," says the author of "Boy," "to aver that every man has the making of his destiny in his own hands: to a certain extent he has, no doubt, and with education and firm resolve, he can do much to keep down the Beast and develop the Angel; but a terrific responsibility rests upon those often voluntarily reckless beings, his parents, who, without taking thought, use God's privilege of giving life, while utterly failing to perceive the means offered to them for developing and preserving that life under the wisest and most harmonious conditions."

The career of the particular "boy" under notice is traced from the time when, a crawling babe, he gravely surveys his father's drunken antics and ascribes them to attacks of illness. Hence his frequent references to the "poo' sing" whose too close attentions to the bottle have earned him this mistaken infantile sympathy. "Boy's" especial admirer is a maiden lady of ample means, who has an ardent desire to adopt him, but whose wishes are invariably thwarted by "Boy's" mother, a "large, lazy, and unintelligent" woman with lim