ugh to work,
and it seems to have been the firm belief that the boy would come to no
good end. In order to discipline him, the father put the youngster in
college on such a scanty allowance that the lad was obliged to run away
and go to teaching school in order to be free from financial humiliation.
Here was the best possible proof that the young man had the germs of
excellence in him; but the father took it as a proof of depravity, and
sent warning letters to the young school-teacher's friends threatening
them "not to harbor the scapegrace."

The years went by and the parental distrust slackened very little. The boy
was slim and slender and his hair was tow-colored and his head too big for
his body. He had gotten a goodly smattering of education some way and was
intent on being a lawyer. He seemed to know that if he was to succeed he
must get well away from the parent nest, and out of the reach of daily
advice.

His desire was to go "Out West," and the particular objective point was
Auburn, New York.

The father gave him fifty dollars as a starter, with the final word, "I
expect you'll be back all too soon."

And so young Seward started away, with high hopes and a firm determination
that he would agreeably disappoint his parents by not going back.

He reached Albany by steamboat, and embarked on a sumptuous canal packet
that bore a waving banner on which were the words woven in gold, "Westward
Ho!"

And he has slyly told us how, as he stepped aboard that "inland palace,"
he bethought him of having written a thesis, three years before, proving
that De Witt Clinton's chimera of joining the Hudson and Lake Erie was an
idea both fictile and fibrous. But the inland palace carried him safely
and surely. He reached Auburn, and instead of writing home for more money,
returned that which he had borrowed. The father, who was a pretty good
man in every way, quite beyond the average in intellect, lived to see his
son in the United States Senate.

And the moral for parents is: Don't worry about your children. You were
young once, even if you have forgotten the fact. Boys will be boys and
girls will be girls--but not forever. Have patience, and remember that
this present brood is not the first generation that has been brought
forth. There have been others, and each has been very much like the one
that passed before. The sentiment of "Pippa Passes" holds: "God's in His
Heaven, all's right with the world."

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