Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath."

Young Milton had set his heart on going into the army. Old Milton had
resolved to thwart the desire of his son. The mother Milton, a meek and
loving soul, experienced some hard times between the two. Both loved
_her_ intensely, and each loved himself, not better perhaps, but too
much!

It is a sad task to have to recount the disputes between a father and a
son. We shrink from it and turn away. Suffice it to say that one day
Miles and his father had a Vesuvian meeting on the subject of the army.
The son became petulant and unreasonable; the father fierce and
tyrannical. The end was that they parted in anger.

"Go, sir," cried the father sternly; "when you are in a better frame of
mind you may return."

"Yes, father, I will go," cried the son, starting up, "and I will
_never_ return."

Poor youth! He was both right and wrong in this prophetic speech. He
did return home, but he did not return to his father.

With fevered pulse and throbbing heart he rushed into a plantation that
lay at the back of his father's house. He had no definite intention
save to relieve his feelings by violent action. Running at full speed,
he came suddenly to a disused quarry that was full of water. It had
long been a familiar haunt as a bathing-pool. Many a time in years past
had he leaped off its precipitous margin into the deep water, and
wantoned there in all the abandonment of exuberant youth. The leap was
about thirty feet, the depth of water probably greater. Constant
practice had rendered Miles so expert at diving and swimming that he had
come to feel as much at home in the water as a New-Zealander.

Casting off his garments, he took the accustomed plunge by way of
cooling his heart and brain. He came up from the depths refreshed, but
not restored to equanimity. While dressing, the sense of injustice
returned as strongly as before, and, with it, the hot indignation, so
that, on afterwards reaching the highway, he paused only for a few
moments. This was the critical point. Slowly but decidedly he leaned
to the left. He turned his back on his father's house, and caused the
stones to spurt from under his heels as he walked rapidly away.

If Miles Milton had thought of his mother at that time he might have
escaped many a day of bitter repentance, for she was as gentle as her
husband was harsh; but the angry youth either forgot her at the moment,
or, more probably, thrus