to
boarding-school, and then there was never found a time when it was
convenient to have him come home again. He could not come in the
spring, for then they were house-cleaning, nor in the autumn, because
then they were house-cleaning; and so he spent his vacations at
school, unless, by good luck, a companion who was so fortunate as to
have a home invited him there. His associations, associates, habits,
principles, were as little known to his mother as if she had sent him
to China. Aunt Zeruah used to congratulate herself on the rest there
was at home, now he was gone, and say she was only living in hopes of
the time when Charlie and Jim would be big enough to send away, too;
and meanwhile Charlie and Jim, turned out of the charmed circle which
should hold growing boys to the father's and mother's side, detesting
the dingy, lonely playroom, used to run the city streets, and hang
round the railroad depots or docks. Parents may depend upon it that,
if they do not make an attractive resort for their boys, Satan will.
There are places enough, kept warm and light and bright and merry,
where boys can go whose mothers' parlors are too fine for them to sit
in. There are enough to be found to clap them on the back, and tell
them stories that their mothers must not hear, and laugh when they
compass with their little piping voices the dreadful litanies of sin
and shame. In middle life, our poor Sophie, who as a girl was so gay
and frolicsome, so full of spirits, had dried and sharpened into a
hard-visaged, angular woman,--careful and troubled about many things,
and forgetful that one thing is needful. One of the boys had run away
to sea; I believe he has never been heard of. As to Tom, the eldest,
he ran a career wild and hard enough for a time, first at school and
then in college, and there came a time when he came home, in the full
might of six feet two, and almost broke his mother's heart with his
assertions of his home rights and privileges. Mothers who throw away
the key of their children's hearts and childhood sometimes have a sad
retribution. As the children never were considered when they were
little and helpless, so they do not consider when they are strong and
powerful. Tom spread wide desolation among the household gods,
lounging on the sofas, spitting tobacco juice on the carpets,
scattering books and engravings hither and thither, and throwing all
the family traditions into wild disorder, as he would never have done