with the remembrance of how his mother used to get up at five
o'clock and arrange all the business of the day,--how she kept all the
accounts,--how she saw to everything and settled everything,--how there
never were break-downs or irregularities in her system?

This would be unfair. If a man wanted such a housekeeper, why did he not
get one? There were plenty of single women, who understood washing,
ironing, clear-starching, cooking, and general housekeeping, better than
the little canary-bird which he fell in love with, and wanted for her
plumage and her song, for her merry tricks, for her bright eyes and
pretty ways. Now he has got his bird, let him keep it as something fine
and precious, to be cared for and watched over, and treated according to
the laws of its frail and delicate nature; and so treating it, he may
many years keep the charms which first won his heart. He may find, too,
if he watches and is careful, that a humming-bird can, in its own small,
dainty way, build a nest as efficiently as a turkey-gobbler, and hatch
her eggs and bring up her young in humming-bird fashion; but to do it,
she must be left unfrightened and undisturbed.

But the evils of domestic intolerance increase with the birth of
children. As parents come together out of different families with
ill-assorted peculiarities, so children are born to them with natures
differing from their own and from each other.

The parents seize on their first new child as a piece of special
property which they are forthwith to turn to their own account. The poor
little waif, just drifted on the shores of Time, has perhaps folded up
in it a character as positive as that of either parent; but, for all
that, its future course is marked out for it, all arranged and
predetermined.

John has a perfect mania for literary distinction. His own education was
somewhat imperfect, but he is determined his children shall be
prodigies. His first-born turns out a girl, who is to write like Madame
de Stael,--to be an able, accomplished woman. He bores her with
literature from her earliest years, reads extracts from Milton to her
when she is only eight years old and is secretly longing to be playing
with her doll's wardrobe. He multiplies governesses, spares no expense,
and when, after all, his daughter turns out to be only a very pretty,
sensible, domestic girl, fond of cross-stitching embroidery, and with a
more decided vocation for sponge-cake and pickles than for poetr