g into
melancholy or a worse form of madness. Dudley Venner had a kind of
superstition, too, that, if Elsie could only outlive three
septenaries, twenty-one years, so that, according to the prevalent
idea, her whole frame would have been thrice made over, counting from
her birth, she would revert to the natural standard of health of mind
and feelings from which she had been so long perverted. The thought of
any other motive than love being sufficient to induce Richard to
become her suitor had not occurred to him. He had married early, at
that happy period when interested motives are least apt to influence
the choice; and his single idea of marriage was, that it was the union
of persons naturally drawn towards each other by some mutual
attraction. Very simple, perhaps; but he had lived lonely for many
years since his wife's death, and judged the hearts of others, most of
all of his brother's son, by his own. He had often thought whether, in
case of Elsie's dying or being necessarily doomed to seclusion, he
might not adopt this nephew and make him his heir; but it had not
occurred to him that Richard might wish to become his son-in-law for
the sake of his property.

It is very easy to criticize other people's modes of dealing with
their children. Outside observers see results; parents see processes.
They notice the trivial movements and accents which betray the blood
of this or that ancestor; they can detect the irrepressible movement
of hereditary impulse in looks and acts which mean nothing to the
common observer. To be a parent is almost to be a fatalist. This boy
sits with legs crossed, just as his uncle used to whom he never saw;
his grandfathers both died before he was born, but he has the movement
of the eyebrows which we remember in one of them, and the gusty temper
of the other.

These are things parents can see, and which they must take account of
in education, but which few except parents can be expected to really
understand. Here and there a sagacious person, old, or of middle age,
who has _triangulated_ a race, that is, taken three or more
observations from the several standing-places of three different
generations, can tell pretty nearly the range of possibilities and the
limitations of a child, actual or potential, of a given stock,--errors
excepted always, because children of the same stock are not bred just
alike, because the traits of some less known ancestor are liable to
break out at any time, and b