look at
things in this better and clearer light. I quite agree with you about
the present bringing up of children. For a few years they are treated
as little idols by parents, who are too selfish to give themselves the
pain and trouble of correcting and disciplining them, and this, too,
even in cases where the parents themselves are true Christians; and
then, when they begin to get unbearable, and have passed out of the
winning ways of early childhood, they are too often thrown back upon
themselves, and made to suffer the penalty of neglect of discipline and
training, which ought properly to be inflicted on the parents, who have
not done their duty towards them.'

"`It is so. I have seen it; I have felt it, Colonel Dawson,' he replied
warmly; `and so I just leave Horace's education entirely in your hands.'

"And thus it was that I brought up my dear nephew, as I still continued
to call him, in my own way--that is to say, to eat what was given him,
to do what was told him, to go where I allowed him, and to have as much
liberty as I thought good for him; to listen when his elders were
speaking, to be diligent in his lessons, early in his hours of rising
and going to bed, and regular in all his habits. And he will tell you
himself, I don't doubt, as he has told me over and over again, that, so
far from feeling this discipline and these wholesome restraints a
bondage, he was as happy as the day was long under them. And I am sure
of this, dear friends, that the little, stuck-up, pampered, self-willed,
selfish children which abound in our day, who are supposed to rejoice in
having their own way, are really slaves to themselves, as well as a
burden to their friends, and are strangers to that vigorous enjoyment
which is the privilege of a childhood passed under judicious and even
discipline.

"Well, so it was with Horace; and so his father rejoiced to find it.
And what made me rejoice still more was the happy conviction that a
deeper work still was beginning to manifest itself in the heart and life
of the dear boy. Yes, you may think it strange, dear friends that I am
entering into all these particulars on an occasion so public as the
present, and with your young squire by my side; but I have a reason for
it, as you will see by-and-by, and I am doing it with the full consent
and approval of my dear nephew himself. Let me, then, proceed with my
story.

"When Horace was sixteen years of age he expressed to me his earn