Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/20

 in his father's establishment. The father turned to his friend and said: "I wish I knew how I could hold my boy in." But my friend understood why he could not. He knew that only two or three years before the son had been rewarded for passing examinations at college, examinations that it ought to have been taken for granted that he would pass. But his father thought he should be rewarded for passing them, and he bought a car and sent it up to him at college. Now he wonders why this son does not know how to bind himself to arduous duty.

And in our own lives the easy education does not go easily all the way. There comes a time when, having always indulged ourselves, we can't break the habit; when, never having taken our lives in our hands and reined them to the great ministries of mankind, we discover that we cannot. We find that we obey our caprices; follow any impulse; cannot stick to any task; do not know a principle when we see it; have no iron or steel anywhere in our character; are the riffraff of the world that the worthy men and women have to bear along as they go. In Mr. Kipling's inelegant lines:

"We was rotten 'fore we started—we was never disciplined; We made it out a favour if an order was obeyed; Yes, every little drummer 'ad 'is rights and wrongs to mind, So we had to pay for teachin'—an' we paid!"