Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/121

 law of Nature, you are likely to die first, and the aggregate amount of suffering is, therefore, much less than it would be did the course of domestic affection flow the other way. So you toil, and slave, and scheme for the child's benefit, forgiving its errors, repairing its follies, re-establishing its fortunes, just as, long ago, you used to rebuild with loving patience those houses of cards the urchin blew down with such delight. But, as of all human affections, this, if not the strongest, is certainly the deepest and most abiding, so when wounded, does it inflict on our moral being the sharpest and most enduring pain. "Is there any cause in Nature that makes these hard hearts?" says poor King Lear, forced, against his own instincts, to acknowledge the venomed bite of that "serpent's tooth" with which elsewhere he compares a "thankless child." I have known men, and women, too, accept