Page:The Spoilt Child.djvu/95

 ed altogether by his association with these young scamps, and he ended by paying no attention at all to his father.

Boys who have not been accustomed from their childhood to innocent and harmless amusements, are apt to take to diversions of a low kind. The children of Englishmen are instructed by their parents in a variety of innocent pastimes, in order that they may have sound minds and sound bodies: some draw and paint: some cultivate a taste for botany: some learn music: some devote themselves to sport and gymnastics: each takes up the form of harmless enjoyment most congenial to him. Boys in this country follow the example that is set them: their one wish is to be dressed in gorgeous attire, with a profusion of gold embroidery and jewels: to make up picnic parties of their chums and gay companions, and to live luxuriously in all a Babu's style. Fondness for display and extravagance naturally characterizes the season of youth: if care is not very early exercised in this matter, the desire grows in intensity, and a variety of evils result, by which eventually body and mind alike may be irretrievably ruined. Matilall gradually threw off all restraint: he became so depraved that, continuing to throw dust in his father's eyes, he now openly spoke of him in the most unfilial and atrocious manner. The constant burden of his talks with his companions was: "Ah, if my old father would but die, I could then enjoy myself to my heart's content!" Any money he demanded from his parents they gave him: if there was any hesitation on their part, he would at once say: "Very well, then, I will go hang myself, or else take poison." His parents in their alarm thought: "Ah, what must be, must! Our life is bound up with the boy's life, he is our Shivratri lamp: let him live and we shall have our libations when we are gone."