be commended. It is a good thing for a man to live in a
family for the same reason that it is a good thing for a man to be
besieged in a city. It is a good thing for a man to live in a family in
the same sense that it is a beautiful and delightful thing for a man to
be snowed up in a street. They all force him to realize that life is
not a thing from outside, but a thing from inside. Above all, they all
insist upon the fact that life, if it be a truly stimulating and
fascinating life, is a thing which, of its nature, exists in spite of
ourselves. The modern writers who have suggested, in a more or less
open manner, that the family is a bad institution, have generally
confined themselves to suggesting, with much sharpness, bitterness, or
pathos, that perhaps the family is not always very congenial. Of course
the family is a good institution because it is uncongenial. It is
wholesome precisely because it contains so many divergencies and
varieties. It is, as the sentimentalists say, like a little kingdom,
and, like most other little kingdoms, is generally in a state of
something resembling anarchy. It is exactly because our brother George
is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in
the Trocadero Restaurant, that the family has some of the bracing
qualities of the commonwealth. It is precisely because our uncle Henry
does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that
the family is like humanity. The men and women who, for good reasons
and bad, revolt against the family, are, for good reasons and bad,
simply revolting against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like
mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind Our youngest brother is
mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the world; he is
old, like the world.

Those who wish, rightly or wrongly, to step out of all this, do
definitely wish to step into a narrower world. They are dismayed and
terrified by the largeness and variety of the family. Sarah wishes to
find a world wholly consisting of private theatricals; George wishes to
think the Trocadero a cosmos. I do not say, for a moment, that the
flight to this narrower life may not be the right thing for the
individual, any more than I say the same thing about flight into a
monastery. But I do say that anything is bad and artificial which
tends to make these people succumb to the strange delusion that they
are stepping into a world which is actually larger an